A Few Not-So-Trivial Pursuits to Master

To call someone or something “amateurish” is seldom a compliment. The term implies ineptness, ignorance and foolish presumption. Yet the original meaning of “amateur” can be found in its Latin root, amare: The amateur is someone who does something just for the love of it, not for money, fame, honor or personal gain.

Wayne Booth, now in his late 70s, began playing the cello in his early 30s. By vocation a distinguished literary scholar and critic who is a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, Booth (when not lecturing, marking papers, attending seminars or writing books) has devoted countless hours to practicing his instrument and getting together with other amateur musicians to play chamber music--just for the love of it. In his book of that title, he ruminates on the phenomenon of “amateuring” in general and on the quality and meaning of his own experiences as an amateur musician.

Students of literature familiar with Booth’s earlier works, notably “The Rhetoric of Fiction,” may well remember how thorough, analytical and erudite this professor can be when he gets down to exploring his subject. But his latest book, while reflective of its author’s inquiring and meticulous mind, could not by any means be called a tome. Divided into four main “movements” with an “overture” preceding them, “For the Love of It” is a very personal book: a playful yet serious attempt to understand--and to communicate--the unique pleasures to be found in doing something for its own sake.

Only those fortunate enough to have some spare time can afford to become amateurs. Booth thinks there is a big difference between passive, unchallenging leisure activities (couch potatoes, take note!) and activities that demand learning, effort and skill. With a jocular reference to his own Mormon upbringing, Booth proposes that there is great satisfaction to be found in activities that allow us to better ourselves. He offers some amusing tales of his own struggles with the cello, which he first took up in the somewhat mistaken belief that it would be easier than, say, the violin, because the parts written for it had fewer notes and fast-tempo passages. What he’d overlooked was the difficulty of reaching some of those notes on such a large instrument!

Although the hope is that one will get better all the time, the reality can be filled with humiliating setbacks. Describing these difficulties is also part of the story, Booth explains, because it underlines “how intense and important the pleasures must be, if they can far overbalance such pains.” In this, the amateur resembles the courtly lover who dwells on all that he suffers for the sake of his love.

Booth offers many perceptive insights that apply to all kinds of amateur activities, from gardening and cookery to pottery and painting (one of Winston Churchill’s favorite pursuits). But many of his richest meditations pertain specifically to music, especially chamber music.

Booth and his wife, Phyllis, a violinist, often get together with other amateurs to play music by Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Tchaikovsky or Shostakovich. The pleasures of camaraderie are but one of many rewards he has found. Playing music, he believes, has also made him a better listener, better able to appreciate the great works of the masters. And to play the works of the mighty dead is to bring oneself into direct and intimate contact with them.

“What are resurrected are . . . not . . . [the composers’] real lives,” notes Booth. “Reading honest biographies of those we worship I often feel my admiration declining.” Yet whatever faults a Beethoven or a Tchaikovsky may have had in his daily life, such men become, in and through the music they’ve left us, “disinterested, generous-spirited, exhilarated, loving friends.”

Booth also describes very poignantly how music has brought him comfort in times of sorrow.

Although he writes with a light touch, often using anecdotes from his personal experience, Booth isn’t afraid to wax metaphysical, philosophical or hyper-analytical. At one point, he describes the difficulties he’s had writing this book. He worries about finding the right style: Has he been too jokey? Too much of a proselytizer? How should he organize the material? And here’s an irony: Time spent writing the book is time taken away from his cello! A further irony: The value of amateur pursuits is that one does them for their own sake: Here, he looks at his musical experiences as potential “material” for the book!

Fortunately for Booth, none of these problems proved serious enough to interfere with his joy in music-making. And fortunately for the rest of us, the trouble it took him to write the book has resulted in pleasure and enlightenment for his readers, many of whom will quite likely feel inspired by his words to go out and find new and challenging ways of enriching their lives.