{"id":616,"date":"2011-07-08T20:51:38","date_gmt":"2011-07-08T20:51:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/diaryofawimpycatholic\/?p=616"},"modified":"2015-03-13T15:04:42","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T21:04:42","slug":"scolding-the-scolds-cuddling-the-curmudgeons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/diaryofawimpycatholic\/2011\/07\/scolding-the-scolds-cuddling-the-curmudgeons\/","title":{"rendered":"Scolding the Scolds, Cuddling the Curmudgeons"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Yesterday, a friend and I were talking about a columnist whose work she esteems to a point, but which I find insufferable. If I\u2019m being fair, I have to admit that this person has a lot to recommend him. He oozes integrity and wears diligence and passion like a set of (tastefully understated) cufflinks. If it served his ideology, he\u2019d lock his ego in a chastity belt \u2014 on that I would bet my very space bar. <\/p>\n

Someone once said that when the gods want to be cruel, they punish us for our virtues. Well, this writer I\u2019m thinking of does something far crueler: he insists on punishing me for his virtues. All those good points of his, rare though they are, have served only to pervert his talents and make him into a common scold. <\/p>\n

To scold, dictionary.com tells us, means: \u201c to find fault (with) angrily.\u201d A scold is \u201ca person who is constantly scolding.\u201d And that is pretty much that. Keeping life as simple as possible, the scold divides creation into the praiseworthy and the blameworthy. Then he labels them both, spitting modifiers like a belt-fed machine gun. <\/p>\n

They say everyone\u2019s a critic \u2014 well, not scolds. Or rather, scolds aren\u2019t very enlightening critics, at least not according to Ben Yagoda.<\/strong><\/a> Explaining why he finds Times<\/i> book critic Michiko Kakutani\u2019s reviews \u201cprofoundly uninteresting,\u201d he pinpoints her \u201cevaluation fixation.\u201d The verdict \u2014 whether a book is good or bad \u2014 though only one part of better-rounded critics\u2019 jobs, is \u201ceverything\u201d for Kakutani. \u201cOne has the sense,\u201d Yagoda writes, \u201cof her deciding roughly at Page 2 whether or not a book is worthy; reading the rest of it to gather evidence for her case; spending some quality time with the Thesaurus; and then taking a large blunt hammer and pounding the message home.\u201d <\/p>\n

Kakutani\u2019s reviews, like the judgment of all scolds, are most memorable and most definitive when negative. Praise from a scold looks as awkward as the left-handed signature of a right-handed person. But negativity itself doesn\u2019t make the scold. The curmudgeon is an even more intensely negative type, but paradoxically, a much more endearing one. Each \u2014 scold and curmudgeon \u2014 is best understood in comparison to the other, so the two deserve a side-by-side examination. <\/p>\n

According to Mr. Dictionary, a curmudgeon is \u201ca bad-tempered, difficult, cantankerous person.\u201d Scolds do; curmudgeons are. That basic distinction goes a long way toward explaining the word\u2018s connotative meanings. Something about naturally occurring qualities makes them intriguing and attractive. It\u2018s easy to believe scolds become scolds because they were bullied in high school or drink too much coffee as adults. Curmudgeons? Well, they just rank among God\u2019s wonders, like Arizona sunsets. <\/p>\n

In its ease of operation, a curmudgeonly disposition has a lot in common with that other mysterious quality, coolness. An oft-repeated story finds W.C. Fields on his deathbed. Looking pensively out the window, he says to a visiting friend, \u201cI feel bad for those newsies out there in the cold. I\u2019d like to do something for them.\u201d After giving his visitor just enough time to gape at his last-minute conversion, he amends: \u201cAh, fuck \u2018em.\u201d <\/p>\n

Not bad for a man with one foot in Hades. A scold would probably have ranted about child labor laws until his friend euthanized him with the nearest pillow. (Given enough time to reverse himself, he\u2019d probably shout that kids today are spoiled and lazy.) No wonder there are books titled The Portable Curmudgeon,<\/i> but none titled The Portable Scold.<\/i> <\/p>\n

Not all curmudgeons are so unflappable as W.C. Fields. Many have been deeply, and notoriously, dysfunctional. Dorothy Parker \u2014 whose review of A.A. Milne\u2019s poetry, \u201cTonstant Weader fwowwed up,\u201d was nastier than anything Michiko Kakutani could concoct after stubbing a toe \u2013was an alcoholic and depressive. Paul Fussell suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, which he\u2019d picked up leading an infantry platoon in Alsace during the Second World War. But curmudgeons\u2019 cynicism insulates them \u2014 both from Utopian dreams and from crippling disillusionment. Though they may be politically engaged and socially aware, curmudgeons do not politicize the personal or personalize the political. When Sarah Palin demanded that Rahm Emmanuel resign, to expiate his having used the word \u201cretarded\u201d as a term of abuse, she blackballed herself from the curmudgeon club forever. At the same time, she proved herself a first-class scold. <\/p>\n

Though hardness of heart is among the curmdgeon\u2019s signature traits \u2014 John Derbyshire broke new records here by recommending that Chelsea Clinton be put to death<\/strong><\/a> \u2014 their comfort with human imperfection sometimes leads them to identify with dopes and scoundrels. In Madame Bovary, Flaubert serves up a banquet of characters whom we should find repulsive or ridiculous: a ditzy, spoiled housewife; her supine husband; a blowhard of a neighbor He invests them all with just enough gruff, curmudgeonly sympathy to make them readable without being, in the way of a dark sitcom, laughable. A contemporary caricaturist drew Flaubert in a dissection room, standing over Emma Bovary\u2019s body, hoisting her heart on a scalpel. He\u2019s a scientist, we\u2019re meant to understand, not a sadist. No hard feelings. <\/p>\n

In Corrections, Jonathan Franzen offers a scold\u2019s view of family life. Read it. No, better yet, don\u2019t. <\/p>\n

The line separating the scolds from the curmudgeons can be porous. Joe Queenan, formerly of Spy Magazine,<\/i> now a film reviewer for the U.K. Guardian,<\/i> has a curmudgeon\u2019s natural crankiness, but is capable of the scold\u2019s indignation. Reading him can feel like watching a tipsy man undergo a field sobriety test \u2014 can he walk that straight line, or not? Equipped with both a gimlet eye and Utopian visions, G.K. Chesterton could have been either a scold or a curmudgeon. It was his dogged pursuit of joy \u2014 his determination to find poetry in floods and train stations, and in names like \u201cSmith\u201d \u2014 that prevented his becoming either. <\/p>\n

It would be interesting to see what would have happened if Oscar Wilde had emerged from prison a hardened curmudgeon, but he didn\u2019t. When he wrote Bosie Douglas that he had no choice but to forgive him, he thought he was acting for the sake of his psychic survival. Nevertheless, through that promise \u2014 in fact, through all of De Profundis<\/i> \u2013 runs a bright thread of scoldish self-congratulation. It continues, sad to say, through \u201cBallad of Reading Gaol\u201d and the call for prison reform Wilde published just before his death. Both advertise his compassion to a degree any curmudgeon could find shameful. <\/p>\n

You\u2019d expect scolds to crowd into spiritual writing like moths attacking a flame. There\u2019s no getting around it \u2014 they do. Religion and spirituality are all about striving for perfection. That requires the sort of strenuous engagement that lends itself to military metaphors, the furthest thing in the world from curmudgeonly detachment. (Whenever a spiritual writer adopts the first-person plural, as in, \u201cWe should all endeavor to\u2026\u201d, it\u2019s time to put on your scold-retardant pajamas.) Nevertheless, because curmudgeons are born, not made, one occasionally turns up at the prayer circle, pen in hand. <\/p>\n

The likeliest candidate for curmudgeonhood in Christ is Flannery O\u2019Connor. No surprise there, right? Well, the great ones always make it look easy, but in her case, it can\u2019t have been. Her stories are nakedly didactic \u2014 a scold\u2019s trait \u2014 and she made no effort to make her characters anything but repulsive. But at least she makes them awful across the board, unlike Ayn Rand, who could be counted on to make some characters beautiful and eloquent, just so\u2019s the reader would know whom to root for. Also, O\u2019Connor employs irony rather than invective. Whether they\u2019re saying or doing something wise or stupid, her characters truly know not what they do. And that\u2019s a very curmudgeonly way of looking at them. <\/p>\n

As for me, I\u2019m afraid I\u2019m a scold in curmudgeon\u2019s clothing. What I try to sell as cynicism, too often, is a deep-seated sense of grievance, which marks a scold as surely as a Mongolian fold. Really, there ought to be a law. As soon as I post this, I\u2019m going to scold hell out of myself for that.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, a friend and I were talking about a columnist whose work she esteems to a point, but which I find insufferable. If I\u2019m being fair, I have to admit that this person has a lot to recommend him. He oozes integrity and wears diligence and passion like a set of (tastefully understated) cufflinks. If […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":192,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[141],"class_list":["post-616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-literature"],"yoast_head":"\nScolding the Scolds, Cuddling the Curmudgeons<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Yesterday, a friend and I were talking about a columnist whose work she esteems to a point, but which I find insufferable. 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