Mr. Stickfigure on the Perils of Being a Dilettante

I.

On the night of my eighth grade graduation—an affair whose celebratory vigor I have only seen matched in Brooklyn—Dad took me aside. “As you go through life, you will see that you can do this and this and this”—he pulled fates from thin air with the tips of his fingers—“and you will see that this is beautiful, this is good, that is good. For someone like you,” he said, “the only danger is in there being too many ways to go.”

As I listened, I knew he was right, but I could not see why this fecundity of fortune would ever be a problem. Now, I’ll admit, I’m beginning to guess.

I recently read an article written by a friend of mine who I went to undergrad with and who now teaches college English. The article is a critical review of an art installation, and it is both profound in content and professional in form. I am accustomed to profundity from my friend, but the professionalism of his prose was new and almost startling. And there was no denying what made the difference: ten more years of experience and training in a field of study, ten more years of knowledge. Yes, there was evidence of practice, of the honing of a craft, of my friend’s axiomatic intelligence. What was new to me, however, was the competence with which he handled knowledge. This knowledge, moreover, was knowledge that had been gathered up and worked on for ten years, irreducible to a shorter span of time or fewer pieces of paper than are contained in the thousands of books my friend has gutted over the decade.

What worries Stickfigure, then, is that it was the knowledge, or the implication of this knowledge, that made the piece so well-written. This is by no means to imply that the profundity of ideas was enough to shine through clunky, academic style—quite the opposite. The coherent elegance of the style, rather, seemed inextricable from the vast, coordinated field of knowledge it relied on. This worries me because I’m afraid that if I’m ever going to be a writer, I’m going to have to do more than practice writing.

The dilettante, you see, goes through life hoping that a quick wit and attention to immediate details will somehow compensate for a lack of experience. Given the diverse superficiality of our world, one can, apparently, live to be thirty without really digging in. So Dad was trying to tell me two things, I think. One was that the world would be my oyster. The other was that to find a pearl, you have to dive down deep.

II.

Of course, one does not live to thirty without digging in. Mr. Stickfigure is now neck-deep in balanced literacy, and it’s close enough to his nose that he can smell it. If it wasn’t for the overwhelming stench of decay that permeates urban education in general, the whiff of balanced literacy would now be unbearable.

I wouldn’t let it bother me if balanced literacy wasn’t the best evidence of my own professionalization. Too bad I don’t want to write those big, soft-cover best-practices books that get handed out at study groups and lugged home to be dropped on a pile of un-graded papers. Sorry, Pops, I’m still reaching for fifty fates. In the meantime, I write stuff like this.

III.

And there is the secret side. I went to my ten-year high school reunion, far away from Brooklyn. Many of my old classmates are also teachers by now. As we stood around comparing notes, someone said, “I can’t believe no one has done anything really big.”

Are you kidding? I though. I’ve flipped the world on its head and I walk on what you call the ceiling.

I may be a dilettante, but I’m a patient one. Give me ten more years and I’ll show you something worth the time it took to learn. I’ll show you what only I have ever seen.