“Display of superior knowledge is as great a vulgarity as display of superior wealth — greater indeed, inasmuch as knowledge should tend more definitely than wealth towards discretion and good manners.”
Henry Fowler, the lexicographer best known for A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. David Foster Wallace, in his evidently quite-flawed essay “Tense Present,” described Fowler thusly:
If Samuel Johnson is the Shakespeare of English usage, think of Henry Watson Fowler as the Eliot or Joyce. His 1926 A Dictionary of Modern English Usage is the granddaddy of modern usage guides, and its dust-dry wit and blushless imperiousness have been models for every subsequent classic in the field…
What interests me about Fowler’s claim is that I am often amused by the veneration of intelligence in the same communities that deplore the veneration of beauty or wealth, since intelligence is no less arbitrary in allotment, constructed in classification, and happenstance in appearance than those attributes. Indeed, it involves as many attendant flaws as they do, too: often, wit entails derision; brilliance, arrogance; knowledge, pedantic elitism.
(via mills)
It’s likely that the zeitgeist of self-improvement that’s arisen with modernity (the technologicalization of human-ness, say) may color my impression of the topic, but I think that fairly great levels of intelligence—no less than than beauty and athleticism and wealth—are attainable with (some degree of) work. Lebron James and John von Neumann (two of my great personal heros) were endowed with the gift of genius by means of being born (not to say that didn’t work hard to develop their gifts), but their genius is simply having a somewhat (OK, much much) higher ceiling than most people who live on the upward/downward slope of the bell curve of standard distribution.
People who gaze at models or mathematicians and rue and shake their fists at God’s graceless forsaking them lack the moral and determinedly American (now) characteristic of believing in the up-pullable bootstrap method of advancement that’s espoused in the great American novels like Auggie March and Absalom, Absalom! It’s a receding dream that’s always present in reality.
That determined self-improvement is often represented in art as the downfall of the protagonist represents, I don’t know, the artist’s over-dramatic self-constitution. I always thought Scott Fitzgeral was some poor, love-sick sap. It turns out that by the time he was 23 years old (TWENTY FUCKING THREE YEARS OLD) he was a successful enough writer to be in the top 2%, wage-wise, of Americans (TOP TWO PERCENT). And later in life, as well, when he was sucking down Coca-Cola by the case to try to stay sober. Compare him with Faulkner (his superior in every way but pure prose beauty):
Fitzgerald, from the beginning, was recognized as a major American writer. During the Hollywood years, he was never paid less than $1,000 a week. Warner Bros., in the 1940s, paid William Faulkner $300 a week. From June 1937 to December 1938, Fitzgerald earned $85,000 at mgm—more than $1,100 per week.
I mean, I’m sure Great Gatsby came from a source of great sadness and a notion of something lost before it was ever truly gained, but he was a rich motherfucker when he wrote it. American dream, indeed.
I think the main emphasis on ‘by means of superior intelligence’ as an acceptable form of violence comes mainly from the fact that ‘by means of fisticuffs/cutlass/9mm’ is no longer an acceptable form. Of course, being vilely mean should not be tolerated (sorry Glenn Beck!), but if it’s funny and not so seemingly offensive (hello, Jon Stewart!) then we don’t mind it so much. Which, I suppose, is acceptable if it means I get to be made fun of rather than shot to death.
