The Connoisseur Conundrum and the Empty Vase

Today my whole world went sideways.

As of this morning, there was an empty vase in my apartment in Belgrade.

This was my late mother-in-law’s home that my wife inherited two years ago. For the past nine months we have been gradually renovating the place as our own.

It’s been a puzzle. Our goal was to preserve as much of dear Ruzica’s belongings as possible — not only to honor her memory but to nourish our own sentimental attachments. The gaps would be filled with cheap Scandinavian furniture and our own paintings. The complication was that the keepers included a living room set of sofa and arm chairs dating to 1970.

They are mammoth mid-century Yugo modern, each weighing 200 kilos (35,667 pounds.) But the red–and-orange brocade is in remarkable condition and it’s the best nap sofa ever. EVER. We tossed the side tables and 75% of the artwork and tchotchkes. But we kept the Brobdingnagian upholstered stuff and some ceramics, including that Chinese-style vase.

It might be a quality piece, it might be a cheap reproduction. I haven’t the eye to tell the difference, but I like it. So there it sits, on the floor next to a new chest of drawers, exemplifying what’s called The Connoisseur Conundrum. Namely, is it better to have refined, sophisticated, even rarified expertise on pottery (or art, literature, dance, music, cuisine, cigars) or to be less cultured and more easily satisfied by what connoisseurs might consider pedestrian, down market, vulgar or even kitsch?

It’s a dilemma because refined eyes, ears and palates offer richer, deeper experiences, but also by definition consign the sophisticate to endless dissatisfaction.

Possibly the most famous expression of the problem was a scene in the 2004 film Sideways, featuring Paul Giamatti as Miles, an enthusiastic oenophile whose life is joyless except when his nose is deep-sniffing a glass of fine and complex Pinot noir, identifying notes of citrus, strawberry, passion fruit, and, “oh, there’s just like the faintest soupçon of like, uh, asparagus.”

He’s traveling with his unlikely old pal, Jack — played by Thomas Haden Church — on a bachelor trip through wine country, during which Jack has detected not a single soupçon of vegetation. The happy philistine chugs down whatever he is served. Pearls before swine and all that. When Miles sneers at a prizewinning Cabernet as “flat and over-ripened,” Jack says it seemed great to him. And, most iconically, when the two have a double date with two attractive wine baristas, Miles balks. Or freaks, actually.

“If anybody orders Merlot I’m leaving,” he hollers. “I’m not drinking fucking Merlot!”

This fictional tantrum literally tanked real-world Merlot sales and sent Pinot Noir soaring. So who was wrong? Miles or Jack? Well, neither. There’s no accounting for taste, nor any reason — apart from pure snobbery — to do so. The Connoisseur Conundrum is not, of the two, who is correct. Rather the unanswerable question is, of the two, who is the more blessed?

Oddly, the subject was on my mind in a wholly different context yesterday in a conversation with a friend who has sung (and acted) professionally for 55 years. The subject was how I love singing, though I couldn’t carry a tune in a Kuwaiti 747. I asked him if I should just keep my mouth shut.

“No, Bob. Sing! Sing long and loud. Just don’t leave any witnesses.”

Haha. The conversation shifted to my general fondness for classical music, and my confession that I love, for instance, Beethoven and Puccini — but absolutely cannot distinguish one performance of the “Moonlight Sonata” or “Nessun dorma” from another. Not on my best day.

I’ve often heard a public-radio show called “First Listen,” in which a panel of musicians audition a new recording and discuss its merits. At no point have I ever had the slightest idea what they were talking about. They are Miles. I am Jack. The recordings were the pearls. I’m the swine. The performances all sound great to me.

And I suppose it gets worse. Not only do I vastly prefer Andrew Lloyd Webber songs to Stephen Sondheim’s, I enjoy them hard. “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” “Memory” and, especially, “Tell Me on a Sunday.” I hate his musicals but can’t resist his tunes. Yeah, gimme some show music. Gimme some jazz, gimme some blues, gimme some 70s folk, gimme some American Songbook. Keep your country and rock. It’s all yours.

I don’t know if that makes me a snob. It certainly makes me a traitor to my generation. (GEN X: “OK, boomer. Do we have to listen to your Led Zeppelin forever?” ME: “Nah. You’re good.”)

As you can see, connoisseur-wise, I inhabit both sides of the question, and the middle, too. For example, when it comes to cinema and literature, I am unapologetically Miles and have no time for popular dross. I have seen a lot of Kurosawa and Alexander Payne movies (Sideways!) but I have seen no Marvel flick or Mission Impossible 1, 2 or 58). I slightly know James Patterson, but I will never so much as crack one of his books. And I know this deprives me of nothing, because there are more great novels and films than I will live to savor. So a peak fiction experience entails no sacrifice. From Muriel Barbery to John le Carré to Twain to Nabokov to Ishiguro to Tolstoy, I am Miles with the endless opportunities of undiscriminating Jack. There’s all the Pinot in the world. I needn’t settle for any fucking Merlot.

Therefore, I exempt literature and film from the Connoisseur Conundrum — which I feel empowered to do, because I made the term up. Such a concept has been cited by others, but only in the context of a collector facing the difficult choice of which masterpiece to acquire next.

Yeah, who cares? I was once treated to a $3,000 dinner in an exclusive Bay Area restaurant that, for the entire evening, closed the dining room to mere mortals. I’ve had plenty of fancy and pricey meals in my life, but this one was special — in that none of it tasted very good. Hahahaha! $3,000! The connoisseurs who chose that acquisition (it was a charity event, FWIW) were totally hosed. On my way home, I stopped at a Burger King. $8.50. It was fantastic. We swine love us some slops, we surely do.

But I want to get back to the vase. This morning it was empty. I thought it needed some flowers. So I headed a mile over to Uli, a vast hypermarket a mile from here filled with cheap Chinese goods. Basically, a brick-and-mortar Temu. There, sure enough, I found some beautiful orchids, which as of now grace the vase.

See? Gorgeous. And only $12.

Because they are fake. Yes, I bought plastic orchids, an act I never before today could even imagine myself committing. Vulgar? Down market? Kitsch? Yeah, probably. Whatever. They look good to me.