1. Introduction, With Jokes
Jokes. Ha! Ha! I am amongst those willing to become a captive audience (or whatever the singular of the word “audience” is), if only the joke is funny (not unfunny) and it is told well, either in the elegant or the embroidered style. A joke is a bit of folk art. Why scorn it? And the joke cycles—fascinating, are they not? Traffic jokes, psychoanalysis jokes. . . . Have you heard the mother-in-law joke?
A mother-in-law gives her daughter’s husband (son-in-law) two ties for Father’s Day. Daughter, son-in-law, and children come to visit Grandma on this occasion, all properly dressed. Dad is wearing one of mother-in-law’s ties. She opens the door, and says to him straight off:
What’s the matter, you didn’t like the other tie?
Curiously enough (why curiously enough?) I have recently heard a number of other jokes in what I call the mother-mother-in-law-grandma complex. It is a recurrent trend. I have a sociological friend, he is in fact a sociologist, and I plan to ask him to explain this trend to me, in its urban-rural sociometrics, and all the rest of it. If I remember to, I will tell him the following joke:
A woman is running along the ocean beach, and she cries: “Help, help, my son the doctor is drowning.”
—trusting that he (the sociologist) will be cognizant of the Jewish middle class prestige propulsions involved here, and not be unaware of the tragic status-destiny dichotomy which provides the atmosphere for this fine current joke.
Then there was that party a while back at a friend’s house, and an elegant girl came in, I don’t mean that she was elegantly dressed, but there was something fine and real about her, one of those absolute strangers you feel you have known forever and will continue to know forever. What a lovely, warm, and reassuring smile! And she brought into the room romance, I mean the coming into existence of so many possibilities, beauty to be sought and never reached, all those forgotten streaks of glory. It was something which the room needed very much.
You know how even the prettiest girl gets lost in a room full of noise and drinking, and then suddenly you are standing together, in all that noise, all that (suddenly) lovely confusion, and she tells you, what? A joke:
A grandma is wheeling her grandson; an acquaintance looks into the carriage and says:
My, what a pretty baby.
Says Grandma:
You should see his picture.
We discussed the formal problems raised by the last line of this elegant joke. There are possible variants: “You should see the picture” or “But you should see his picture” and we discussed these variants, seriously weighed them. Her smile was warm, reassuring, I felt very much at home, not so much in the house of this friend, this stranger, but at home in the world, once more at home in the world, this cold and bitter world, this monster of a world, I was home in a world suddenly made warm and reassuring, a glorious world, full of infinite promise, round and golden, a world in which it was no longer possible to fall off.
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2. The Middle Ground
Let us by no means forget the great middle-ground of experience: the American Midwest, the Victorian novelists, Wednesday at three o’clock in the afternoon, the land lying between woman’s breasts, all the forgotten working hours, and through the confusion of friends and strangers talking, for we were amongst friends and strangers, it seemed that she had a position with, worked for, earned her livelihood—was it with the B & O?—sounded pretty much like the B & O, an established transit corporation, no doubt one of the few corporate organizations which had in its title the name of a city and a state. It struck me as pretty odd that she should be with (that’s a nice way of saying that you work for somebody) that she should be with an organization half-city and half-state, a kind of industrial mermaid. She was with them in a capacity, and you can spend an awful (in the sense of long) amount of time with a company if you are with them in a capacity, but it really wasn’t so long, it just seemed long, because it’s an everyday thing, you’ve got to be there or give an excuse, like a marriage that way, it’s a way of paying for your leisure, but she spoke pleasantly of the task (not an ordeal at all), she was not amongst those who suffered in order to enjoy later, she gave the impression of enjoying the working day (but who knows?), caught it all up in that warm reassuring smile, the one mentioned in Section 1.
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3. A Connection
At a certain point, between old friends and between friends newly met, there comes a pause, we are all acquainted with that pause: nothing is said, some are embarrassed, some are relaxed, some absolutely relish this pause (enjoy the embarrassment and upset by the relaxation). If the friends are old, and the pauses numerous and lengthy, well then the situation requires grave analysis. With old friends newly made, it is always possible to ask, as I now asked: “Do you happen to know Mr. Indleberg, who is connected with your firm?” “Certainly I know Mr. Indleberg, we are in different departments.” “So you know Mr. Indleberg, he happens to be my brother-in-law’s cousin.” “Would that be your wife’s brother, or your sister’s husband?” “My sister’s husband, of course.” “Do you know him very well?” “I’ve met him exactly twice, on family occasions.” “I don’t really know him, not only are we in different departments, but the departments have no connection with each other.” “I’d say that he’s about 5’8".” “That’s right, he’s rather stout, somewhat stooped.” “Obviously the same fellow.” This is a way of making a connection to destroy a pause. Ah, Indleberg, wherever you were at the time (and it would have been nice if you were at a party, enjoying yourself) you surely never understood that you were being used, as a pawn, as a pause-destroyer, between old friends newly met, to establish, for a brief moment (as compared to a lengthy moment) a connection.
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4. Surrounded by Sociologists
I yield to no man in my admiration for Thorstein Veblen, that genuine (as opposed to phony) eccentric, that hard-bitten Northwoods stylist, and I can read with pleasure many a page of Sumner, but I must say that my blood boils, my gorge rises (not necessarily in that order) when I see a pretty girl surrounded by sociologists. Seeing it now, it struck me as a kind of allegory, of the English language (why is a pretty girl like the English language?) in its purity, menaced by the killers of that language. By “purity” I mean the ability of the language to reach what is true and beautiful in experience, and to clothe that truth and beauty in appropriate images and ideas. By “killers” I mean those who smother the new-born truth and beauty (for truth and beauty are always new-born) by an apparatus, an effluvium, gobbledegook, words which have lost all relation to the object, to language itself. How to save her from the sociologists? I assume that she wanted to be saved from the sociologists (though she was chatting with them in a friendly enough way) because who would not want to be saved from the sociologists? Looking around the room (for support or for weapons) I noticed a set of the English Classic Poets. I picked one of the volumes from the bookshelf—the book was solidly constructed, weighed perhaps two pounds, and sharp edges. I determined to hurl at the heads of the sociologists these Classic volumes. What would be more fitting weapons, in this new Battle of the Books, with which to save this maiden, or in distress? I gripped the volume, got the feel of it, so to say, and then noticed that she had fled from the foul circle, and was wandering alone, in an aimless freedom. I regretfully put the volume back in its place.
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5. Responsibility
It suddenly occurred to me that I was an engaged man! My fiancée was wearing an engagement ring, my engagement ring, there had been an announcement in the metropolitan papers, if not her picture, and only the date had to be set. My fiancée was visiting her grandparents in Kansas City, she is very devoted to her family, and she has an extensive family, mostly in the Midwest and the Far West. I realized (also suddenly) the outlandish and irresponsible nature of my behavior. True, my connection with the girl I had just met at the party (I didn’t know her name, the introductions were slurred) had not even reached the flirtatious stage, we merely spoke to one another with a more considerable interest than you might statistically expect (equating interest with percentage of meetings over a given length of time), we merely looked at one another (the romantic mixing of the glances) in a manner which bespoke the possibility, circumstances allowing, that we might get into an involvement more personal than the next, though not necessarily very personal. Why, it was very possible, that on this very evening, at this very party, a number of people, meeting for the first time, were interested in one another in just the same way. And it was possible that my fiancée, off in Kansas City, if she were at a party, could easily become interested just so with a stranger whose name she had not quite heard. Nevertheless, it being a fundamental law of life that one thing leads to another, I thought that I ought to act more responsibly, for it is, if not a law of life, then a fact of it, that we can be carried away, and that would take me far from my fiancée, far from my engagement and prospective marriage (though no date had been set) down some turbulent river, into some unknown sea. In order to avoid this fascinating possibility (and responsible behavior, if it does not have to destroy fascination, can very easily chill or contract it) I determined to avoid this young woman, whose warm reassuring smile had carried me so quickly down turbulent rapids to unknown seas. I’ve only known her twenty minutes, I thought, and here I am engaged to my childhood sweetheart (I meant by that thought that I knew my childhood sweetheart ever so much longer). I was pleased with this truly responsible thought.
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6. Indleberg . . . the old Razzle-dazzle. . . Contact-continuation
“He’s married to a girl his own size.”
“Indleberg’s child once came to the office. He’s a boy.”
“When I last saw him,” I said, “we discussed Red China, the four-minute mile, and the soul’s immortality.”
“He used to be in my office,” she said, “that was before I was there, then he was moved into another office, then into another section, then into another division, and now I hear his name mentioned occasionally.”
“He told me,” I said, “that Red China would spill over into Soviet Russia before the 21st century, that the four-minute mile was in its infancy, and that he was working up evidence for the soul’s immortality.”
“He told me,” she said, “that he loved his work, but wanted to retire.”
“He drinks Bourbon on the rocks.”
“He used to write with a ball-point pen.”
“Did you know that he was married previously?”
“That’s incredible,” she said, “I mean, he doesn’t give that impression.”
“His previous wife,” I said, “is now married to a man in the diplomatic corps.”
“He eats tuna fish for lunch,” she said, “with a strawberry float.”
“He’s sort of nice,” I said, “he lets you say so many things about him.”
“I didn’t know we knew him so well,” she said.
“We know him very well,” I said, “and why shouldn’t we? He’s our oldest friend.”
“Who?”
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7. Kinds of Doing
To do for the sake of your living parents is filial gratitude.
To do for the sake of dead parents is ancestor worship; otherwise (if they be not parents) it is to honor the mighty dead.
To do for the sake of the work is dedication.
To do for the sake of dear ones is gratitude, for the sake of friends is love, for the sake of strangers is sacrifice.
To do for the sake of the future is alienation, and distrust of one’s powers.
To do for the doing’s sake is animal joy.
To do for truth’s sake is nobility.
To do for God’s sake is presumption.
To do for fame’s sake is neurosis.
To do for money’s sake is tragic
To do out of fear is degenerative.
To do out of duty is necessary.
To do for beauty’s sake is romance.
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8. Romance
I lifted a volume of the Classic Poets. If I hurled it at the head of an offending sociologist, and thereby saved a maiden not exactly in distress, would that get me into the arena of Romance? This style of Romance is quite out of fashion, particularly in the metropolitan society which I frequent. Of course there are girls in trouble, there will always be girls in trouble, but the help they need does not seem to require courage, it might require understanding, it might require the scientific knowledge of a psychoanalyst (plus understanding), or it might require just simple friendship (as compared to complex friendship). The growth of protective institutions—police department, fire department, etc.—makes the old kind of courage irrelevant. The emancipation of women has helped to destroy the old Romance. The point is to save someone weaker than you. But men are in trouble, and are saved by women psychoanalysts. Nevertheless I gripped the volume, I felt as though I had the feel of it now, thinking that the old Romance is not dead, that Beauty will yet be saved. Man needs woman, so woman is in trouble. Beauty is menaced in all sorts of ways, by the ogre of uniformity, by the resentment of the ugly in spirit, by the cold Hell of mediocrity. I heaved the volume of Blake at the head of a sociologist (for she was once more in that circle).
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9. The Fight
Angered by the unprovoked assault (for the man was unknown to me, so he mistakenly thought that it could not be personal) the sociologist retaliated, the struggle took the form of a fist fight. Neither one of us was particularly skilled in this form of struggle, but we fought fiercely, I for the reasons already disclosed, and he (not knowing the provocation) because of what he considered an unprovoked attack. It was the first fist fight I’d had in about ten years, but boxing is a skill which you do not easily lose. I began, as though this were an everyday occurrence, to use the old feints and combinations. Now the point about a fist fight is that in all probability no one is going to be killed or seriously injured, this is not a duel, not a struggle to the death. We both observed the Queensberry rules, did not hit under the belt, did not deliver the murderous rabbit punches, it was a clean bitter fight which we were both bound to survive. The overwhelming possibility of mutual survival naturally weakened the romantic conception. Nor was the spirit of Romance strengthened by the fact that the girl (whose name I had not caught) was unaware that she represented Beauty encircled as well as the purity of the majestic English language, likewise encircled and endangered. She may have thought that I was jealous, or more likely thought that I was drunk and irrationally combative, but I did succeed in breaking up the circle of sociologists. After some ten minutes of fighting, our host hurled himself in between us, cried that our behavior was absurd, and that any differences we had ought to be settled in a civilized way. “What’s it all about?” he asked. “He threw a book at me,” said the sociologist, “and for no reason.” I refused to discuss the matter, but the fight having stopped (by the intervention of our host) neither one of us was anxious to continue, the sociologist because he felt that he had retaliated sufficiently (my eye was cut) and I because I did not want to continue in a struggle which was bound to be inconclusive (for nobody would be killed, though his nose was bleeding). But the girl was once more freed from the circle of sociologists, and catching her glance, I recognized my error in thinking that she was unaware of my motive, for she smiled at me most graciously. “This is plain stupid,” said our host, and added, inconsequently: “You don’t even know one another.”
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10. Our Host
Our host was upset for two reasons. The first reason for his upset was that he felt concentrically trapped: by his difficult marriage (that is, by his marriage), by the constrictions of his social and professional life, by the apparently irreversible loss of contact with his old friends, by time’s tyranny, the slow erosion, body and soul. The second reason for his upset was the feeling that he had been too late to save the girl in distress. Feeling young in heart (the way dissatisfied people often do, having missed the great early experiences) he dreamed often (for Romance dies hard) of a woman who needed to be saved, dreamed of himself, strong, wise, wily, fighting his way to the heart of the maze, and taking her off to some place where life was forever real. That dream had died hard, but it had died, not altogether died, for he was young in heart, but for everyday purposes it had died. And he was upset (a third reason) because I had come to the aid of the girl in the grip of the sociologists. He was the only one in the room (with the possible exception of the girl herself) who understood that my act was neither erratic nor drunken, he understood that my hurling the book and the struggle not to the death which followed was an effort to save the girl, and our host was resentful that another had come to her aid, he bitter and unable to make the swift move (for it is the young hero who comes to the aid of beauty and the future).
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11. Outside
Standing at a window in the moment before the coming to the end of the party, and then the end of the party, I looked out the window. The apartment overlooked the river, though up to this moment I hadn’t at all felt that I was in an apartment overlooking the river. The river flowed silent and powerful towards the sea. Across the river the Palisades endured, in their ancient struggle with time and erosion. And in the obscure depths of the sky shone the steadfast stars. I indulged in the traditional melancholy reflection that we and all our chatter would soon disappear, but that this river and sea, these cliffs and stars, would go on and on. This is an absolutely inconsequential thought, I said to myself, because nothing follows from it. Thus I had apparently come to the conclusion that in order for a thought to be consequential, something should follow from it. These rather pointless reflections were interrupted by a remark addressed to me.
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12. The End
“That’s a glorious view,” she said, and she smiled reassuringly. “Except for the fact that we’re on the 15th floor,” she went on, “it’s the same view that the Indians saw 500 years ago.” “The rocks and river endure,” I said, but refrained from adding that we would disappear. The chatter in the room had died down. Most of the guests had gone. The host was wearily serving coffee to the hard core. The volume of Blake had been kicked into a corner. We heard someone tell the joke about the grandma, walking with her three grandchildren, who tells an admiring acquaintance :
This is Albert, nine years old, the doctor. This is Stanley, six years old, the lawyer. This is Gordon, two years old, the accountant.
and: “He is beautiful, but you should see the picture!”
“Thanks,” she said, looking at the book on the floor, in the corner. So she surely had understood my quixotic blow! for had I really meant business, I would have hurled the Wordsworth, a much heavier volume. “Your eye is cut,” she said, and passed her hand softly over the bruised area. “It’s only a superficial wound,” I said idiotically, for I had never expected that she would touch me. Had her touch not been so soft, I would have been angry at her for touching me, but since her touch was so soft, I was not angry at her for touching me. I have known many people for ten years and longer, and we have never touched one another. There was a pause before the departure. “Remember me to Indleberg,” I said. Her smile, following so closely to her touch, reassured me. The age of the Palisade cliffs was somehow not so impressive. “It will all be part of the Great Memory,” I said, thankful that she did not shake my hand, for she was leaving with a group (3 men, 2 women) and the other four were impatiently waiting. “It is a phrase of Yeats’s,” I said. “I know,” she said, “The last of the Romantics.” “That was a bit presumptuous of him,” I said, “there will always be a last romantic.” She smiled reassuringly. “Would you like some coffee?” asked our host. “I certainly would,” I replied, thinking of Kansas City, of doing for beauty’s sake, of the youthful Palisades. I picked up the volume of Blake and gravely replaced the book in its proper place.
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