here today, I'm afraid, just a brief word of gratitude to the late Stephen Jay Gould for his Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville: A Lifelong Passion for Baseball.
Not only are these essays thoughtful, well crafted, and fun to read, I also found them uplifting. Uplifting, that is, in the sense of helping me feel that I was learning--expanding my mental horizons--while enjoying a subject that can too easily become leaden.
To give you a taste of what I mean, here are three samples of his writing:
1) "Miller's fascinating story testifies to the power of patience, giving a productive twist to the old Roman maxim for a life of pleasure: festina lente, or make haste slowly." Festina lente? How did I not know this phrase before!?
2) "In observing an awesome skill that we do not possess, we tend to misread ease of performance as natural inclination. Even Red Barber so erred in asking Fred Astaire whether dancing came easily to him. 'I was interested in interviewing Astaire to find out the correlation between his dancing and athletic ability. And to my surprise he said, "Well, I wouldn't say that dancing comes so easily to me. I work at it. I practice hour after hour," and suddenly you see a man who does something so effortlessly--seemingly effortlessly--and you find out that each of us who are genuine professionals pays a price.' "
3) "True innovation carries within itself the seeds of its own obsolescence."
Of course, three small excerpts don't really do justice to this collection. But perhaps they'll whet an appetite to find some of Triumph & Tragedy.
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