Althouse: It's not the strict adherence to a plan... it's also the strict avoidance of trying to do it very well — 4 decades of rigorous anti-perfectionism.

December 28, 2020

It's not the strict adherence to a plan... it's also the strict avoidance of trying to do it very well — 4 decades of rigorous anti-perfectionism.

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ADDED: Here's the New Yorker article. Excerpt: "Her strain of snapshot conceptualism, profoundly personal and eminently personable, could have been overwhelmed with minutiae or weighed down by retrospective insight. Instead, with its light touch and searching, unsmiling star, the book breathes with open-ended nuance."

36 comments:

David Begley said...: Not quite the same as writing a near perfect blog - every single day - since January 2004.; 12/28/20, 6:20 AM
stevew said...: That's really cool. It is annoying that the author feels a need to criticize her. Just enjoy the photos, they capture a number of basic human traits, features, conditions, and situations. Beautiful in their ordinaryness.; 12/28/20, 6:22 AM
tim maguire said...: Rigorous anti-perfectionism is its own form of perfectionism.; 12/28/20, 6:40 AM
Lucien said...: I bet she walks the dog at least once a day, though.; 12/28/20, 6:49 AM
gspencer said...: "began taking a self-portrait each morning"

Before [whizzing, coffee, dog-walking, sex]?

Inquiring minds need to know.; 12/28/20, 6:55 AM
Fernandinande said...: it's also the strict avoidance of trying to do it very well — 4 decades of rigorous anti-perfectionism.

LOL.; 12/28/20, 6:58 AM
Rob said...: For sixty years I subscribed to The New Yorker. John Updike, John Cheever, John O’Hara, John Hersey, John McPhee (so many Johns!), Donald Barthelme, Anne Tyler, Calvin Trillin, Pauline Kael. Penelope Gilliat, Janet Malcolm, Renata Adler. Eight months ago I let my subscription lapse.

You know what I find I miss in not reading the 2020 New Yorker? Nothing. Not a goddamn thing.; 12/28/20, 7:14 AM
Paco Wové said...: The sprezzatura of mediocrity.; 12/28/20, 7:20 AM
Curious George said...: "on and off" is not "strict adherence."; 12/28/20, 7:27 AM
Temujin said...: Rob- well said. I remember it as a serious read. But that was a long time ago. As it was for most publications now. So much mediocrity passed off as high level creativity and thinking.; 12/28/20, 7:34 AM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: "began taking a self-portrait each morning"

gspencer said..Before [whizzing, coffee, dog-walking, sex]?

I'm not sure that is the correct sequence of events. Coffee and the dog can surely wait?; 12/28/20, 7:56 AM
mezzrow said...: Would anti-perfectionism seem like such a virtue if we were not daily slaves to the quest for perfectionism? The virtue seems to me to be in the grace exhibited by the acceptance of the imperfection.

How does this project emulate your life?
Can you own and accept your own imperfections?
Do your imperfections require forgiveness?

What is the value of mediocrity when compared to something inferior to it? How long has mankind endured on the sinister side of today's bell curve of progress?

So many questions.; 12/28/20, 8:06 AM
mikee said...: I recall an article in Astronomy Today, back in the era of film, about photographing the annual path of the moon in the sky by taking one pic at the same minut & hour, per day or week, for an entire year, to capture the figure-8 analemma of the celestial motion. The first year's attempt failed around week 40, as the hour chosen to take the weekly pic left the moon below the horizon for part of the year. Imperfect, and in retrospect, foreseeable?; 12/28/20, 8:17 AM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: It is all in your own viewpoint. Perfect or perfectly imperfect.

Anti perfectionism is perfect for me.

It is just too much work and too introspective to try to be perfect or live perfectly. As Mother Mary in the Beatles advised. "Let it be"

Semantic satiation...perfect.; 12/28/20, 8:31 AM
Political Junkie said...: Agree with David Begley.; 12/28/20, 8:31 AM
Biotrekker said...: Solipsism is rampant.; 12/28/20, 8:58 AM
Original Mike said...: @mikee - I think you mean the sun.; 12/28/20, 9:00 AM
DavidUW said...: If I wanted to spend time seeing average - and below, I could just go for a walk.
And get some exercise.; 12/28/20, 9:55 AM
Freeman Hunt said...: Does Instagram not allow links? See more at the link in our bio? What is this?; 12/28/20, 10:27 AM
Jupiter said...: This ain't no party. This ain't no disco. This ain't no foolin' around.; 12/28/20, 10:38 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "Does Instagram not allow links? See more at the link in our bio? What is this?"

Yeah, that is weird.

I added a link to the article in the post.; 12/28/20, 11:16 AM
Joe Smith said...: OCD much?

Taking a self-portrait, or a photo of a lake, perhaps...; 12/28/20, 11:20 AM
Michael K said...: A war on "perfectionism" is a nice fit with Affirmative Action. Stanford is planning special math courses for POCs.; 12/28/20, 11:49 AM
Joe Smith said...: "Stanford is planning special math courses for POCs."

Juan has five tacos. He gives Maria two tacos. How many tacos does Juan have?

Zero tacos. Juan was hungry.

This answer would be acceptable as POC must be admitted at all cost.; 12/28/20, 12:03 PM
MountainJohn said...: A victory for Ellsworth Toohey.; 12/28/20, 12:06 PM
Michael K said...: This answer would be acceptable as POC must be admitted at all cost.

Medical schools are under pressure now to be certain that all POCs graduate. When Willie Brown was Speaker of the CA Assembly, he introduced a bill to require UC to graduate all blacks they accepted. CA was still sane then and it went nowhere.; 12/28/20, 12:37 PM
Joe Smith said...: As long as affirmative action exists, minorities will be second-class citizens.

There will always be a suspicion, no matter how small, that they didn't earn their position...

If I were a smart black man I'd be really pissed off.; 12/28/20, 12:42 PM
Scot said...: NYTimes wrote a story about these women a few years ago. Same idea, but annual portraits. https://www.godupdates.com/same-photo-of-4-sisters-43-years/; 12/28/20, 12:45 PM
mockturtle said...: Seriously? Are some people this self-absorbed?; 12/28/20, 12:56 PM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: Michael K,

When Willie Brown was Speaker of the CA Assembly, he introduced a bill to require UC to graduate all blacks they accepted. CA was still sane then and it went nowhere.

There's a Heinlein novel (I think it's The Number of the Beast, b/c Liz and Lori Long show up about 2/3 of the way through that one and the last third is therefore unreadable) in which the state of CA, having determined through studies that people with college degrees earn more money, naturally granted an automatic college degree to all residents of the state.

The book was published in 1980; Willie Brown became Speaker in 1981. But he may have floated the idea earlier than that, or (alternatively) picked it up from Heinlein (very unlikely, I know) and ran with it. Or, of course, it's just a weird, CA-style coincidence.; 12/28/20, 12:59 PM
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...: Ann,

Instead, with its light touch and searching, unsmiling star, the book breathes with open-ended nuance.

Someone was mighty proud of that sentence. Me, I don't really like books breathing, like the "living, breathing Constitution." Especially breathing [with] "open-ended nuance." I am not wholly certain what that's even supposed to convey.; 12/28/20, 1:05 PM
madAsHell said...: “It is not Floyd’s strict adherence to a plan that makes her project so compelling,” Johanna Fateman writes. “It’s that she completed it with a laid-back kind of tenacity—an anti-perfectionistic, unfixed attitude,

Woman love to hear that their eyes are lying.

Anal retentive - Preoccupied with achieving order and control and with collecting, possessing, and retaining objects.; 12/28/20, 1:50 PM
madAsHell said...: I'll bet she has a fine collection of toe- and finger-nails; 12/28/20, 1:51 PM
mikee said...: Lunar analemmas work like solar ones, but have a different periodicity.
Bad lunar analemma, run into horizon: https://skyandtelescope.org/wp-content/uploads/2016-05-20_573e9ccc9264e_Analema_2013-2014_1_1000px.jpg

Good lunar analemmas, over several years: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-fLpf2RznmA; 12/28/20, 1:55 PM
Original Mike said...: I've never seen a lunar analemma before. Thanks, mikee.; 12/28/20, 5:46 PM
wildswan said...: "breathing [with] "open-ended nuance"
Sometimes I think that some writers for the utterly woke are aware how ridiculous the writing is becoming and are trying to see how far they can go with self-parody. But I think there is no limit. I was just reading about Bryn Mawr which recently capitulated to the woke and abolished all European content and all grades from its educational program while introducing bullying. For only $74,000 a year.; 12/29/20, 8:26 AM