An instructor of mine in college once admonished his class of graduate students that they all read too much. It was spring, the term almost over, and he threw down the challenge that we all should enroll in a drawing class over the summer. His judgment surprised everyone, because both the scholarship and writing of this particular teacher were of the first degree, and that achievement, we knew, had entailed a lot of reading. Wordless drawing?
There is, unquestionably, wisdom in that scholar’s advice, but there is a median way to freshen our mental habits: read about an unfamiliar subject. The point of such a diversion is not only to think about things never conceived before, but to observe closely how another author expresses those new ideas. Here, for example, is a passage from one such subject unfamiliar to many (certainly to me): sailing. Percy Blandford, in his The Art of Sailing (1972), prefaces his subject to the general reader like this:
One of the fascinating things about sailing is that you can never finish learning. It is always possible to improve your ability and technique. You cannot learn all about sailing from a book, but it is certainly possible to learn the rudiments of sailing technique and get out on a quiet piece of water and teach yourself to sail.
That passage, and the author’s style generally, has a downright quality: a simple sentence structure that carries a common diction. If not exhortative, it is encouraging, and the first three lines about what is practically possible are raised to a new level with the beautiful little phrase on a quiet piece of water. We might very well learn from that brief piece of poetry something of the writer’s relationship to his subject—a valuable insight for readers to have into the authors they are reading closely. Blandford apparently relishes all that knowledge one can never finish learning, but not at the price of doing.
Indeed, he says as much in another passage worth considering. Here we see a writer on the art of sailing saying things any serious student of the art of language has wondered about: just what is the balance between theory and practice:
It is possible to get very scientific about sailing and there are books devoted to the theoretical problems involved…, but this is a practical book and we are only concerned with how to sail, without bothering too much about the reasons behind it…. In any case the actual practice of sailing is art as much as science. The man with a feel for the wind and its actions may get better results than the man who sees every movement as a scientific problem.
Blandford has decided here not to sail directly into the wind. There are reasons behind the techniques of sailing, he acknowledges, but the emphasis of what he has to teach will be on the practice, not the study, of being on the water. Considering that passage closely, we learn how the devotee of another art has decided to negotiate the balance of theory and practice. He defines his territory (“this is a practical book”), and justifies that position by asserting the equality of acting and learning (“the actual practice of sailing is art as much as science”). And he finally tacks around the problem by rhetorically stretching necessary reasons into scientific problems.
And where would the idea of saying that Blandford decided not to sail directly into the wind come from? From my reading Blandford, of course: “No boat can sail directly towards the wind.” And maybe there’s another lesson to learn right there: that taking the difficulty of any study head-on might just blunt our efforts. Better to tack, and enrich our work by discovering fresh metaphors and new ideas from an unfamiliar world.
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