Just Exactly Perfect

A review by Kelvin Russell of “Just Exactly Perfect” by Edward J. Brennan

I was interested to open Ed Brennan’s book “Just Exactly Perfect”: about skiing, but with links to Pirsig and also to Flow. I wasn’t disappointed!

The book is mostly columns about skiing in Vermont, written by a skier for skiers. But, Brennan brings to the fore the influences on his skiing, his other activities and his reading. He has read widely and includes this broad literary influence both as quotes and as references in his prose.  In a practical sense he has been strongly influenced by experienced and brilliant skiers whom he discusses and to whom he gives appropriate credit. But underlying this are influences from Zen, philosophy and psychology.

Part of the attraction of the book is that Brennan, personally, doesn’t just ski. Particularly he makes reference to the benefit of water skiing to his snow skiing style. He drops in his experiences of motorcycling, skateboarding, open water swimming, mountain bike riding, hiking, and yoga. He relates these back to the ideas that inform his skiing.

The book is suitable for dipping into occasionally. Although it has been organised by the seasons (ski seasons, summer doesn’t rate an entry in the table of contents!) it is not a narrative. Curiously, the last two chapters are on skateboarding and water skiing (summer at last?), so they don’t provide a conclusion. What links the stories is the sense of searching for perfection. Brennan approaches this physically via skiing and the other activities he discusses, and from entirely the other direction via religion, spirituality and philosophy.

Slightly problematically there’s lots of jargon. The ski terms I don’t recognise, and the names of runs and the towns in his vicinity are local knowledge that can be bewildering at times for someone not familiar. (A glossary might have helped!) On the other hand, I feel I’ve been given a privileged window into an activity which I have little contact with – my friends ski, but I’ve not been on skis since I was a teenager – it’s illuminating to be given some insight into what is the same and what is different.

Brennan opens the book with a quote from Rene Daumal: You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again.

“Being”, as in “be here now”, makes an entrance in the book’s subtitle and gets mentioned along the way. More consistent, perhaps, is “flow.” Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi’s psychological work is quoted frequently and five of his books reach the comprehensive reading list at the end. In the introductory pages he makes flow centre to his effort, pursuing flow by skiing rather than skiing with the assistance of flow.

Robert Pirsig’s book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” similarly is quoted throughout. Brennan draws on Pirsig’s description of his writing process in his own approach, appropriate given that they’re both authors. More importantly he draws on Pirsig’s discussion of Quality and the way it has informed his pursuit of excellence in skiing. Both Pirsig and Brennan see eastern philosophies informing their practical activities.

Brennan bookends his book with the Zen adage: before enlightenment chop wood carry water; after enlightenment chop wood carry water. The journey implied by the book, the repeated lessons and experiences of a life-long expert skier, bring to mind T. S. Eliot’s conclusion to the Four Quartets:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Perhaps Brennan has set his sights higher. At the end of the first section, in a chapter “Expert Ease”, he lists many of his influences and notes that the philosophy they propound is freely available, you just need to be sensitive to it. In Brennan’s phrasing, “you must have the antennae for it.” The chapter concludes with a quote from Pirsig about enlightenment and the comment “there it is again: enlightenment.” 

Whether Brennan pursues enlightenment by skiing, or better skiing by flow, is an open question. What we are left with is a book on one man’s path to excellence illustrated with vignettes on the joy of skiing and anchored with references to philosophy, psychology and religion.

Like Pirsig’s book, “Just Exactly Perfect” can be read on the level of activity or on a deeper level where the activity is a field for exploring excellence. It is valuable as a window both onto the experience of skiing and onto another person’s search for perfection. 

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The author’s website is https://edward-brennan.com/ Links to purchase his book are there.

Kelvin is a motorcyclist with a long interest in the writings of Robert Pirsig. His blog is here: https://r65ls.blogspot.com/

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