In Frivolity, Much Is Revealed
In the Acknowledgments at the end of his book, The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz, Erik Larson writes that when he began his research for the book, “I set out to hunt for the stories that often get left out of the massive biographies of Churchill, either because there’s no time to tell them or because they seem too frivolous. But it is in frivolity, in the little moments, that Churchill often revealed himself.” Some things revealed in frivolity, in the little moments, in the small details, in the seemingly inconsequential—that’s the theme of this SIX at 6…
Little Did I Know You Were Just Reading My Tongue
Throughout the early part of his professional tennis career, Andre Agassi could never beat a player named Boris Becker. In particular, Agassi struggled to return Becker’s serve. “His serve was something the game had never seen before,” Agassi explains. After yet another loss to Becker in the semifinals of the 1988 Indian Wells Open, Agassi writes, “I promise myself I won’t lose to him the next time we meet.” He wasn’t entirely sure how he’d make good on that promise, but he began to watch film of Becker, obsessively studying his serve. “And I started to realize,” Agassi said, “he had this weird tick with his tongue. I’m not kidding. He would go into his rocking motion, and just as he was about to toss the ball, he would stick his tongue out. It would either be right in the middle of his lip, or it would be to the left corner of his lip.” If Becker stuck his tongue out over the middle of his lip, he would serve the ball up the middle. If he put it to the side, he would serve the ball to the side. After he learned the way Becker revealed himself in his little tongue tick, Agassi said, “The hardest part wasn’t returning his serve. The hardest part was not letting him know that I knew this. I had to resist the temptation of reading his serve for the majority of the match, and instead, choose the moments when I was going to use that information on a given point to execute a shot that would allow me to break the match open.” Of the next 11 matches between the two, Agassi won 10 of them. After Becker retired in 1999, over a beer, Agassi said to Becker, “By the way, did you know you used to do this with your serve?” Agassi said, “He about fell off the chair. And then he said, ‘I used to go home all the time and tell my wife, it’s like he reads my mind! Little did I know you were just reading my tongue.’”
Spoons, A Small But So-Obvious Detail
In an interview with the restaurateur Will Guidara, the artist and podcast host Debbie Millman makes a short, little, passing comment about how, at her local branch of a popular frozen dessert franchise, the plastic spoons are jagged and hard on the mouth. After she then asks one of her prepared questions (which was unrelated to the spoon comment), Guidara says he will answer the question, but before doing so, he wants to say something about what the spoon reveals. “That is the sign of a company with leaders or executives that don’t take the time to experience their own product. Or when they’re tasting their soft serve, they’re doing so in their nice office with a normal spoon, as opposed to experiencing it in the way that the people they’re serving are experiencing it. Because, while those are small details, if you actually experience them, it’s so obvious.”
The Ear and Toenail School
The great connoisseur of Italian Renaissance art Bernard Berenson made a fortune on his ability to authenticate paintings. In the late 19th, early 20th century, no one knew what was a Michelangelo or a Raphael or a Leonardo Da Vinci painting. To figure out who did what, Berenson borrowed a technique from a Swiss anatomy teacher named Giovanni Morelli. Berenson’s biographer says it became known as the “ear and toenail school.” Berenson found that, since a good painter could mimic the broader subjects and strokes of a master, the surest way to classify paintings was to look where the painter thought the lay observer wouldn’t look. That true mastery was revealed in the tiny details. Take a Madonna—amateur painters, Berenson realized, tended to focus on perfecting prominent features, such as Mary’s face, and neglect smaller elements like Jesus’ toenails. In assessing paintings, Berenson ignored the obvious focal points that any decent painter could replicate, and instead, he inspected the easy-to-overlook details. It is there that painters reveal their level of craft, technique, and skill.
The Big Choices Are Not Very Revealing
A Harvard psychologist once asked Amos Tversky why he became a psychologist. “It’s hard to know how people select a course in life,” he said. “The big choices we make are practically random. The small choices tell us more about who we are. Which field we go into may depend on which high school teacher we happen to meet. Who we marry may depend on who happens to be around at the right time of life. On the other hand, the small decisions are very systematic. That I became a psychologist is probably not very revealing. What kind of psychologist I am may reflect deep traits.”
A Small Thing Makes A Great Revelation
In a collection of biographies of prominent Greeks and Romans, Plutarch explains why he didn’t set out to tell the complete life stories of his subjects. “It is not Histories that I am writing, but Lives,” he writes. “In the most glorious deeds there is not always an indication of virtue or vice, indeed a small thing like a phrase or a jest often makes a greater revelation of a character than battles where thousands die, or the greatest armaments, or sieges of cities.” In the frivolity, in the little moments, in a small thing like a phrase, a jest, a tongue tick, a spoon, or a toenail—often, much is revealed.