Jack Hitt

Let’s get this out of the way: Hitt does almost nothing to suggest that American amateurism is different from anyone else’s amateurism, though he does say it’s part of our self-image. (The quality of his evidence includes this century-hopping comparison of fictional archetypes: “The mad scientists of Europe spawned monsters. Our absentminded professors [don’t get why they’re amateurs, but ok] created flubber ….”) He includes women in his story, but only in more traditionally show more male amateur pursuits, though his author’s note indicates that he did research fan fiction. His account of the amateur identifies two kinds: “They are either outsiders mustering at some fortress of expertise hoping to scale the walls, or pioneers improvising in a frontier where no professionals exist.” I think that reductiveness has a gendered component. That said, this is a readable book about the wacky and the non-wacky. Hitt covers amateurism as a path to success as well as a path to doing nothing much in particular or even being affirmatively and damagingly wrong: in his example, amateur archeaologists who end up promoting racist narratives about early “Caucasian” migrations to North America. One of these guys decided that a skull he’d found must have looked just like Jean-Luc Picard, and sure enough the facial reconstruction ended up looking just like Patrick Stewart. He “suggested to the artist that he not include the ‘epicanthic fold’ of the Asian eye since leaving that out would be ‘neutral’”—an almost perfect indictment of “neutrality.”

I liked Hitt’s point that we often bemoan the demise of the amateur because some field or other is getting so specialized, but “each generation also discovers that what they thought were very expensive, highly unobtainable technologies suddenly turn into the next generation’s play toys.” Also, did you know that a kid in Michigan became the eighteenth amateur to create nuclear fusion in his backyard?

Hitt is also fun to read about the payoffs from tinkering and failing. Discussing one woman who’s trying to genetically engineer yogurt to do various things (such as glow) in her spare time, he talks about her pleasure in finding older, cheaper ways to carry out parts of the process, and about the encouragement found in small victories when you don’t have a boss with a deadline for one big solution. “Amateurs are often fixing things, their own devices, so there is this constant reinforcement of feeling smart and competent.” Though, he points out, this can also lead to people spending their lives trying to make the one last tweak that will make the perpetual motion machine work. And Hitt emphasizes that amateurs (even the mostly male mechanical tinkerers of common tropes) actually tend to work in packs, cross-pollinating each others’ ideas. show less

This is that staple of modern publishing: the non-fiction book built around narrative articles written forward popular magazines. But Jack Hitt proves to be a deeper observer and shrewder critic than the average journalist. He knows how language can manipulate and sees as clearly through the jargon of academes as he does through the hyperbolic his amateurs.

In this entertaining and wide ranging book journalist Jack Hitt explores what it is to be an amateur and why it has been a quintessentially American pursuit since the time of Ben Franklin, a man Hitt sees as a sort of founding father of amateurism. The word amateur came into English from the French word meaning passionate lover, and while amateurs can be off-track or irritatingly obsessed, they sometimes see possibilities more clearly than professionals because they aren’t so invested in show more the prevalent paradigm. An amateur invented the Dobsonian telescope, making backyard astronomy affordable, backyard rocketry amateurs have been hired by NASA, amateurs like the young Steve Jobs envisioned the personal computer, and it was ardent birding amateurs who spotted flaws in the evidence the Cornel Lab of Ornithology presented to prove that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker was not extinct. A recent piece in the Washington Post Magazine profiled an amateur fossil collector in Maryland who has revolutionized the thinking about what sorts of dinosaurs lived in the eastern United States.

According to Hitt, the cutting edge of amateurism today is the scary sounding “biohacking”, or extracting DNA from one life form and inserting it in another in order to achieve sometimes whimsical results, like yogurt that can glow in the dark. It’s apparently bored computer programmers, unexcited by tweaking existing programs like Excel, who are looking for the next frontier and driving this trend.

Bunch of Amateurs has plenty of Bill Bryson-like side trips whose purpose isn’t always obvious, at least at first, but they are all so interesting I was happy to see where they led. It was fascinating and somewhat horrifying to read about the sordid origin of the word Caucasian, and Hitt’s descriptions of the distinctly different types of robots being created in America (functional), Japan (physically life-like) and Europe (emotionally intelligent) have embedded cultural observations I’m still trying to parse, and sent me running to internet to see examples . show less

This book has been so much more than I expected. Hitt is about 35 years old when he decides to up and walk to Santiago de Compostela. He seems to have many and few reasons, none of which he can articulate to inquirers. He starts with a visit to the Cloisters in New York City. After months of planning, he's finally on his way to France to start off this medieval pilgrimage.

His narration is rich with history about Charlemagne and Roland, the Knights of Templar, the Basques, and so much more. I show more found myself with new interests just because he makes it all sound so interesting.

The best part is that the book is hilarious. Whether he's shrieking from thunderstorms, getting drunk on Spanish wine, or growling at dogs, he's brutally honest and humble with his audience. The people he meets along the way are as colorful as the history of the walk itself. I found myself laughing out loud at many of his anecdotes.

I'm so glad I found this book again. I had picked it up in a public library many, many years ago. I did not get a chance to finish it. I had to return it, but I could never remember the name or the author. Finally, after much googling and searching, I found the book. It was worth it. show less