As he watches his daughter effortlessly picking up how to swim or play chess, Vanderbilt worries that he has left it too late. All parents are beginners, and beginner teachers, clumsily passing on knowledge to their children (never more so than this year). The spur for all this comes from Vanderbilt’s experience of parenthood, an “epistemically unique” activity which can only be learned in the doing of it. They are simply “capricious and tenacious enthusiasms”, in James Dickey’s phrase, done for the fun of it. None of these undertakings turn into life-altering passions. With the help of a jeweller, he even makes his own wedding ring. He hires a singing teacher and joins the Britpop Choir, which performs songs by Blur and Oasis. Stuck in a gentle rut of mid-career competence, he decides to spend a year learning new skills. In this book, Tom Vanderbilt joins the growing army of beginners.
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