Curmudgeon, Heal Thyself

 

By

Donald E Chatham

 

 

 

 

Presented at the joint meeting of

The Chicago Literary Club and The Fortnightly of Chicago

March 2, 2012

 

Theme: “Moving On”

 



[A cynic’s perspective on the ups and downs of “moving on.”]

© Copyright 2012 by Donald E Chatham


 

Curmudgeon – Heal Thyself

The idea of “moving” has a wide range of applications. Some uses of the word are specific and clear. When a policeman tells you to move along, there’s no wondering what to do. You may not do it if you’re Occupying Wall Street, but there’s no doubt about what that officer has in mind. Moving away pretty much always means leaving wherever you are – whether it be a city, a state, or a tedious distraction at an otherwise scintillating cocktail hour, reception or sports event. And in that vein, moving the chains, while specific to the sport of football, is also a rich metaphor and clear in its meaning in all contexts, except to someone who might find televised football a rather useless source for any respectable metaphor pertaining to human endeavor. A number of other uses of the word are also not especially nuanced. Moving up pretty much means good things are in store. No misunderstanding there.  Moving over is pretty clear, especially if you tend to hog the bed. Moving back is understood for what it is, although not necessarily what a parent wants to hear from an adult child.

The meaning of the phrase “moving on” though -- maybe not so much.

We move on from broken relationships. We move on from despair and disappointment. We move on from the loss of loved ones. So in the main, we’ve let it become a good thing – it’s largely meant to encourage us not to dwell on what we can’t change. This is supposed to be good.

So, what’s a curmudgeon to do with something as sweet as the idea of moving on – after all, isn’t it – really, and usually -- little more than a self-deceptive way of sugarcoating some miserable experience – the very stuff that gives curmudgeons a purpose in life? 

 

Consider too that moving on is not always such a good thing. Great literature, for example, presents a dilemma. What would our cultural heritage be like if Anna Karenina had moved on instead of catching the next train so to speak? Or, what would have been next for Madame Bovary if she had moved on – The Real Housewives of Rouen?

[Perhaps, but small consolation.]

Where would the blissfully high level of our modern neuroses be if Holden Caulfield had been able to live with the phoniness of adults? Or if Kurtz had moved on instead of establishing his neurotic, paranoid stronghold in the heart of darkness? Or if Portnoy had gotten a different “grip” on things if you will?  For that matter, if we are going to move on why wouldn’t we just as commonly consign ourselves to the more dismal fate of Billy Pilgrim’s now iconic response, “so it goes?”

Slaughterhouse Five, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Death of a Salesman -- all these great works put the myth of moving on to a test that warms the heart of our beloved curmudgeons.

As does the more comic side of the curmudgeons’ argument -- consider the paucity of our cultural heritage without the delicious folly of moving on represented by the likes of Don Quixote, Henderson the Rain King, or, most of all, the virtually buffo operatic peregrinations of the beloved Ignatius J. Reilly, in A Confederacy of Dunces -- a veritable apotheosis of the delusions that obtain in the absence of recognition.

Depression and delusion. Perfect.

Then too, there are times when moving on just doesn’t work; times when the world won’t let it work – won’t let it go, won’t move on. This usually applies to statements that otherwise bright, knowledgeable people wished they hadn’t made. Not you and I of course . . . , others. For example:

“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.”
 which was the advice of Decca Records executives on the potential of The Beatles.

“Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau,”
Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale, 1929. 
But then of course, Yale: what would one expect?

And who’s going to forget Jack Warner’s far-sighted, well-thought-out comment “Who the hell want to hear actors talk”

To be fair, however, except in the employment of a script, he may have been on to something.

Sometimes what sounds good can be bad and what sounds bad can be good. George Bernard Shaw once noted that affection had been showered upon him all his life and every step forward he ever made had been taken in spite of it. Einstein was well advised to give up plans for a career as a concert violinist. At other times, moving on is the better part of discretion (if not valor). As Mark Twain noted, “in our country we have three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.”

However, as Ambrose Bierce points out, there is one place where moving on is equitably applicable and that is in the ranks of the our political spectrum in that a conservative is a statesman who in enamored of existing evils, whereas a liberal is a statesman who wishes to replace them with others – thus representing a condition of the process that cuts both ways – moving on or not moving on brings us to the same place. A curmudgeon’s epiphany.

We see yet another variation on the theme in the form of the curmudgeon as critic, whereas if the objects of their contempt do move on it is as much for spite as for any more noble reason. Furthermore, curmudgeons are usually unimpressed that someone might move on in the wake of their observed calamities. They tend to pride themselves on the sufficiency of simply dwelling on the unfortunate. That alone is usually enough. They are glad simply to share their pain with those they believe deserve it. Even so, where does one find the fortitude to move on in the face of such classic dismissals as these:

George Jean Nathan on George Bernard Shaw: he writes his plays for the ages – the ages between five and twelve.

Peter De Vries: If it must be Thomas, let it be Mann, and if it must be Wolfe, let it be Nero, but never let it be Thomas Wolfe.

Gore Vidal on Alexander Solzhenitsyn and by extension the American reading public: He is a bad novelist and a fool. The combination usually makes for great popularity in the U.S.

Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac: That’s not writing, that’s typing.

Samuel Johnson on a contemporary novelist: Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

Oscar Wilde on Alexander Pope: There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it the other is to read Pope.

Dorothy Parker on Katharine Hepburn: She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.

Hot or cold, revenge is good. And yet, it is probably safe to assume these curmudgeons would derive a certain pleasure from supposing the reasons for any subsequent success.

In the main, our curmudgeons would have no faith in moving on, as it usually means something worse. As Sidney Harris put it, a cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, a [cynic] is [also] one who is prematurely disappointed in the future. Even something as simple as the moving on that a marriage represents comes to a halt in the mind of a Groucho Marx who once defined a bride, for instance, as a woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.

Our cynics also remind us that social class represents another plateau of rationalization and disengagement -- resulting in platitudes that can be applied in one’s defense or engaged in one’s retreat. So, Oscar Wilde laments, or glories in, the notion that each class preaches the importance of those virtues it need not exercise -- the rich harp on the value of thrift, the idle grow eloquent over the dignity of labor. And G K Chesterton reminds us that the classes that wash most are those that work least. Our altruistic nemesis might say, we are what we are; let’s move on.

In response, the cynic is likely to note in light of this that modern culture has moved on to the point that we can fast track the perception of art appreciation so as to move on to something as important, if not more important, such as, maybe, box seats at Wrigley. We now have encyclopedias of popular culture that substitute for developing a real or true cultural dimension. In effect, it is too often true that we might sit through Shakespeare, for instance, in order to recognize the quotations. If we don’t have time for the opera, not to worry, we can move on because we have the arias on our iPods.

Even if the curmudgeon realizes we must move on, there’s a tendency to dwell on what prompts it as opposed to what allows it. In its most rewarding aspect, however, it offers an opportunity to make room for what’s next. And yet, from the curmudgeon’s perspective, it also means getting the hook.

So in vaudeville, it literally meant someone getting a long hook around their neck and being pulled off the stage – a not so subtle way of saying your time is up. The introduction of music during acceptance speeches at the Oscars is more civilized but equivalent in its purpose – your time is up. Move on.

We also see the gentle hook as a device for exiting awkward situations. “Moving On” becomes a way of addressing a pregnant pause after someone has said or done something that makes absolutely no sense. The resonance and charm of the George Burns and Gracie Allen act of old basically turned on the famous last line of their typical sketch: Gracie says something oddly sensible in her own inimitable if not inscrutable way and a bemused George is left with nothing to add except the loving admonition to “Say Good Night Gracie,” Likewise after a ramble of non-sequiturs from his partner Dick Martin, a seemingly befuddled Dan Rowan would transition out on a note of resignation with the comment, “Say Good Night Dick,” whereby Martin says just that – “Good night Dick” – and the show moved on.

Overall, though, it seems, good or bad, optimistic or cynical, moving on remains the stuff of life. Images as well as words abound. Pages coming off a calendar in a ‘30’s movie signify the passage of time, moving on. We know what that white light means at the end of a celestial vista. We understand the meaning of that train going into a tunnel before we see our young lovers at breakfast the next day – life has moved on indeed. Best-selling books deal with all kinds of passages and transitions. Styles continually re-cycle. Kids grow up to be their parents. Life goes on; this too shall pass.

What’s a curmudgeon to do!  

Well, one thing is they can abide by the admonition provided here and attend to their own faults first; but what fun is that. While the curmudgeons might keep us grounded, they won’t keep yours truly from moving on -- and now, more precisely, from moving off.

Thank you.