"Whims of Iron" By Richard Sale

These remarks are follow-on to my essay about Chatterers. The responses on Pat’s site were so intelligent and pointed that they inspired me to think about minds I had learned the most from growing up. French writers had often acted as ideals for achieving mental integrity, and one writer I treasured was Jean Bruyer who died in the 17 century. 

I loved the masterpieces of the French literature because they were lucid, piercing, ingenious, clever and straightforward. The French never resorted to using awkward or ostentatious phases unlike their English contemporaries.  Bruyer’s book was called, “Characters,” and in reading it, I discovered that Bruyer was a wonderful philosopher and aphorist. I read his book so often in the Penguin paperback that it finally fell to pieces. But the radiant light of Bruyere never dimmed, never faded, and never became usual. 

His essays are free on the web. 

Bruyer is unique because he sees the personalities that he studies steadily, accurately, and in detail. Many annoy him, some outrage him, but all were of interest to him. He can be scornful, but not venomous.  He dislikes, but he doesn’t hate. He disdains, but he doesn’t damage. He has none of the vitriolic bitterness of Swift, for example.

  My love of French literature carried ne to unusual places. In 1967, I read a history of the French novel beginning with the Princess of Cleves and ending with six volumes of Proust, and it took more than a year to do and it led me to an interesting character. I once got an interview with a French man, Paul Mus who was in exile and teaching at Yale. It was only my third day at LIFE Magazine, and I had to take a tour in the Text Department, and a writer from, the Text Department kept grumbling about being forced to do an interview with “some god dam Frenchman.” He had to take train on a Friday night to interview him, and he was out of sorts, and he grumbled so much that I finally volunteered. I had just been hired as the Entertainment Reporter, even though I had applied to be a war correspondent. 

Paul Mus was “the goddam Frenchman and he was the first man of genius I had ever met.  He was squat, block faced silver haired, and with a presence that smote you like a physical force. He boasted that during World War II, while riding on the Metro, he had razored off the gold buttons of the German officers, an offense punishable by death. 

It was clear to me that no one had stood up to him for a number of years; by habit, he was used intimidating and being obeyed and admired. But I was there to get a story, and when he told me he wouldn’t talk to me because he hated Life Magazine’s publisher, Henry Luce, I worked up my courage and told him that Henry Luce had been death 18 months, and while I didn’t mean to be rude, but I thought his remark obtuse. 

Silence fell. He eyed me coldly.  He asked me what I knew about France, and I briefly told him. He then said, out of all the French literature you’ve read what did you like best? I replied, Baudelaire’s notebooks.  That was not entirely true, but we were in duel of wits, and he said “What about them?” and I said that Baudelaire hated the Belgians because he thought they were a people born to think in unison.  I said I feared that the Americans would end up very much like the Belgians. He stared at me as I had been an elephant who had just sung a soprano aria in an opera.

 

 But suddenly he started talking, and he talked for three and a half hours. He talked about how underhanded the French had been dealing with Ho Chi Minh, and he outlined three assassination plots and coup attempts made against him. That was in January of 1968. In March there was a front page story done by frank McCullough an ex marine who was Life’s foreign correspond in Saigon.  Much of the story was based on my notes. And the photo of Ho was taken by a friend of mine, Charles Bonet. 

So what is the point of all this?  Reading good literature is nutrition for the mind. It remains alive in your soul. And the knowledge of it can come in handy.

 Chatterers again.

 Yesterday, I suddenly remembered that the French philosopher Jean Bruyer had written a wonderful essay on “Society and Conversation,” and I looked it up and found it delight.  It is usual, as you grow old, to begin to think that the world is going downhill, and our best efforts have been wasted or spent in vain. However, this turns out to be a delusion. The problems of human nature have changed little as the decades have passed. 

So I thought I would share some of Bruyer’s brilliance with you since your views and insights on Pat’s site are very similar to his.  About loud-mouths at a social gathering, Bruyer writes, 

“Theodectes is heard in the anteroom; the nearer he comes the more he raises his voice; he enters, he laughs, he shouts, he vociferates; everybody stops his ears; he is a mere thunderer, and no less to be dreaded for what he says as for the loud tone in which he speaks. He becomes quiet and less boisterous only to stammer out some idle talk and some nonsense. So little regard has he for time, individuals, or decency, that he offends every one without intending it; before he has taken a seat he has already insulted the whole company. When dinner is served, he is the first to sit down, and always in the place of honour; the ladies are to the right and left of him, but he eats, drinks, talks, banters, and interrupts every one at the same time; he has no respect for any one, neither for master nor guests, and takes advantage of the foolish way they look up to him. Is it he or Euthydemes who is the host? He assumes all authority while at dinner; and it is better to give way to him than to quarrel with him about it. Neither eating nor drinking improve his temper. If some gambling is going on, and if he wins, he banters his antagonist and insults him; the laughers are on his side, and there is no sort of folly they do not overlook in him. At last I leave him and go away, unable to bear any longer with Theodectes and those who bear with him.” 

That is beautifully done, and Theodectes turns out to be precisely the character I was attempting to describe in my earlier remarks. A certain humility is the basic foundation of conversing with others. A decent human being takes a back seat at the outset of any encounter. The desire to please, to draw out, to engage someone with respect, lies at the base of all genuine conversations, as your replies on the site have made very clear. A conversation is not a stage for anyone to dominate, to preen, or to demonstrate one’s powers at the expense or the comfort of everyone else. You need time to measure, to assess, to compare, and to carefully craft your responses and your approach to those who are strangers to you. You are there to learn, not teach. You are there to listen, not brainlessly bray. One of your real aims is to make people pleased with themselves because of what you have said to them, you’re your remarks have to steer clear of flattery or puffery or the exaggerated and hyperbolic. If people become pleased with themselves, they are far more likely to be pleased with you.  

Another Bruyer portrait: 

(11.)   Any one, who is infatuated with himself and quite convinced he is very clever, only shows that he has but very little intelligence or none at all. It is a misfortune for a man to listen to the conversation of such a person. What a great many affected phrases he has to endure! How many of those fanciful words which appear of a sudden, live for a short time, and then are never heard again! If such a person relates some trifling event, it is not so much to give some information to his hearers, as merely for the honour of telling it and of telling it cleverly. He amplifies it till it becomes a romance; he makes the people connected with it think as he does; he puts his own trivial expressions in their mouths, and renders them, like himself, very talkative; he falls then into some parentheses which may pass for episodes, and by which speaker and hearers forget what the story really was about. It is difficult to say what might have become of them, had not somebody fortunately come in to break up the company and put an end to the narrative.” 

This is a description of extreme self conceit. Nothing distorts what we have to say than some coiled egotism lying in wait like a snake; nothing disfigures a conversation so much as the urge to be conspicuous, the desire to be the center of attention, to override and glibly ignore the desires and feelings of your listeners. A false or inflated idea of yourself may seem like a permission to hold forth about your merits, but in the meantime, your chafing listeners suffer in quiet agony. Such a vulgar grandstander exalts and glories in his own ideas, and never gives the least deference for other men’s arguments because it is their habit to either underrate or ignore the companions. Such people have the manners of a pig. 

(13) Troilus is useful to those who have too much wealth; he eases them of their onerous superfluity, and saves them the trouble of hoarding up money, of making contracts, locking trunks, carrying keys about, and of dreading to be robbed by servants. He assists them in their pleasures, and afterwards is able to serve them in their passions; in a short time he regulates and dictates their conduct; he is the oracle of the house, whose decisions are anxiously expected, nay, even anticipated and surmised; he orders a slave to be punished, and he is flogged; another to be freed, and he is set at liberty. If a parasite does not make him laugh, he perhaps does not please him, and therefore must be dismissed…

          “If at table he declares that a certain dish is excellent, the  

         master and the guests, who did not pay much attention to   

         it, find it also excellent, and cannot eat enough of it; if, on

          the contrary, he says of some other dish that it is insipid,

         those who were just beginning to enjoy it dare not swallow

         the piece they had in their mouths, but throw it on the

         floor; every eye is on him, and every one observes his     

         looks and his countenance before giving an opinion on the  

         wine or the dishes before them. The master of the house

         may consider himself lucky if Troïlus leaves him his wife

         and children. Do not look for him anywhere else but in   

         the house of an opulent man, whose adviser he is; there he

        eats, sleeps, digests his food, quarrels with his servant,

        gives audience to those whom he employs, and puts off his

        creditors; he lays down the law in the drawing-room, and

        receives there the adulation and homage of those persons,

        who, more cunning than the rest, only wish to curry favour

        with the master through Troïlus’ intercession. If any one

         enters who is unfortunate enough to have a countenance

         which Troïlus does not like, he frowns and turns away his

        head; if a stranger accosts him, he sits still, and if the latter

        sits down close to him, he leaves his seat; if he talks to

         him, he does not reply, and if he continues to speak,

        Troïlus stalks away into another chamber; if the stranger

        follows him, he makes for the stairs, and would rather  

        climb from one storey to another or throw himself out of a

       window, than encounter a man whose face and voice he

       dislikes. Both are very charming in Troïlus, and he has

        turned them to good  account to insinuate himself or to

        overcome a difficulty. At last he considers everything

        unworthy of his attention, and he scorns to keep his

        position or to continue to please by exercising any of those

        talents by which he first brought himself into notice. It is a

        condescension if sometimes he leaves off his musings and

        his taciturnity to contradict, and deigns once a day to show

        his wit, though only to criticize. Do not expect him to listen

        to what you may have to say, to be courteous, or to

        commend you, for you are not even sure that he will permit

        you to approve him, or allow you to be polite.” 

This is another masterpiece. Bruyer deals effectively and efficiently with a brutal, preemptory, headlong, dictatorial, and predatory mind. Bruyer is clearly the enemy of anything socially despotic. He hates anything that displays an egotism that is devoid of any hesitation, any delicacy, any reluctance or limitations, and he detest those who, in their headlong rush to treat people as if merely tools of their will, ignores the damage and disfigurement they cause. 

I would ask, how many of us have lived in a household where the shutting of the back door made you raise your head, stop what you were doing, to wait in dread and anxiety? A child waits in anxiety because he or she are not free citizens, they are subjects.  A child is not the one who decides things, a child is not the one who chooses, and a child is not the one who introduces. In my house, my mother was the source of all decisions, plans and designs, and we, her children, were the ones who had obey or face painful punishment. As children, we were always under interrogation. What did you go when I was gone? Who told you to watch TV? I thought I told you to clean up your room? Oh really? Do it again. How many times have I told you not to listen to the damn radio! 

My mother was a short, flabby woman with a pot belly, big ugly thighs and an extremely beautiful face. She coaxed people in believing that she was a saint, but in fact, she was a sinister figure who exercised cruel, tightfisted control over her two children. She thought herself a “good” woman who believed in her self-righteousness, her outstanding virtue, and she thought herself passionately noble, In reality, she was a woman who was spiritually derelict, domineering, and narrow-minded. 

A divorced wife in her thirties with two children, a woman with no friends, and no position in the world, she appointed herself as the spiritual head our tiny family. She was a devout Christian Scientist. After the divorce, I was 8 and my sister was 11, but my mother declared that she was the one who was closest to God; she was the one whose advice, whose interpretation of events and happenings, her estimates of other people’s character were not to be questioned by anyone, certainly not by us. 

Why did my mother have such unique and unquestioned authority? Because my mother’s power wasn’t personal, it came from God. My mother was expert at clothing herself in God’s power.  She clothed herself in the Truth. My mother was closer to God than we were, for we were weak, mistaken and sinning, and she was perfect and strong, and what she said and did to us was simply what God required for our good. Not her good, but our good. To have spiritual power backed by God made her unchallengeable, for next to her, all our meager and pitiful gifts were unworthy. 

When she was about to say something painful and annihilating, animated by the desire to wound, she would lock her eyes in mine and say, “Let me give it to you straight!” And she would disparage me, criticize and belittle me, sometimes for hours on end. Apparently, God required this. She woke me in middle of the night when I was eleven, and I was made to sit at the end of her bed while she harangued me for hours.  I had not stolen anything, but apparently, I had said something she didn’t like and apparently, God required that this be put right. As she talked bitterly, her face contorted by dislike, I would stare at her face for so long, her face would grow large, then grow small, then grow large again.  She finally grew tired and told me to go back to bed, saying that she had said what she had because she cared for me and wanted me to be a better boy. Her educational aims soon came clear, however. My sister and myself were simply to be replicas of the kids in our neighborhood. The sense of bold adventure, the belief that on our own, we could produce results that were important – that was denied us. There was no freedom of action, no soaring, cloud-borne dreams, no chance to try and be the best you could. 

Motherhood for her meant complete thralldom for her two children. We were like the Israelites in Egypt. There is nothing so damping and deadening to initiative  than to have a carefully thought out project vetoed by a central authority that knows nothing about it, but that was our lot. As a result of being a person with unlimited coercion and unbridled authority, my mother was soon exercising supreme control in every sphere of our little lives. She had an incessant desire to meddle, to intervene, to supervise and instruct. If I was doing something correctly,  my mother would soon interrupt and began instructing me to do the things I was already doing. After I grew up, I remembered the remarks of a naval colleague of Admiral Nelson who said, “I wish Nelson would stop signaling. We all know what to do.” 

There was always an underlying tone of intolerance verging in exasperation when Mother undertook a thing, her ambition to display her unbecoming assumption of superiority. Her plans and only hers always had the highest priority. Her egotism was so comprehensive that there was no field in which she would tolerate the possibility of anyone but herself being in control. She had no grasp of anything beyond her own narrow sphere and perimeter. Her focus was always an unpredictable, and she was given to changing her instructions about how and what was to be done. She had whims of iron, and any suggestions of her children were rudely brushed aside. My mother was all passion, but her headlong drive to be master lacked any degree of carefully discernment. She lacked the insight to understand the nature of her efforts. As we know, passion must be mated with clever, original and useful perceptions or else passion forges ahead completely blind. My mother learned by colliding into things. Every whim of my mother quickly became a matter of all or nothing. How can a family be happy when a member of it has nothing but contempt for the efforts of anyone else? 

This is a brief portrait of the woman who enslaved and beat her children. We were slapped across the face, our hair was pulled, treasured toys were broken, tin kitchen pots gave us bruises on our thighs, hairbrushes were broken over us. The inner damage incurred in a household is a very shameful and intimate damage. Yet we outgrew her and thrived. 

But enough.  It is fair enough to say that Bruyere is a fixed star and he gives us a feast of perceptions and ideas that we never tire of. 

Comments

[Kunuri]

I am overwhelmed, I guess I have not even grazed world literature.

[mistah charley, ph.d.]

To Richard Sale

Another of your very interesting and insightful essays. Someone has written a book on the spiritual uses of adversity, and more people than we realize may be examples of it.

I am grateful for your pointing out Bruyere's book. I use the Firefox browser with the EPUBReader add-on, which makes accessing and reading Project Gutenberg and other free classic books very convenient.

[Haralambos]

Thank you once again, Mr Sale, for this piece. I read your piece on Chit-Chat with great interest, and this is even more provocative since it has provoked me to try to discover Bruyere. I knew the name, but I have never read anything by him I believe. Several years ago, a friend gave me a book, _Conversation: A History of a Declining Art_ by Stephen Miller. It is interesting since it ranges over the subject for about 2400 years and traces it into the present with iPods and cell phones. It needs an update for iPhones, iPads, and the proliferation of social media as well as their attraction for just about everyone.

I have lost count of all the dolts I have met in social gatherings over the years. I think it is a dated concept, but Col. Lang's Committee of Correspondence offers a venue.

[Croesus]

I had just finished War and Peace for the second time. I'm captivated by the Russian authors -- can't get enough. But a well-rounded autodidact needs Proust, so I started "Remembrance of Things Past." I did not get very far at all. Tolstoy's eye surveyed a very broad landscape, and perceived and delighted in personalities of every different quirk and quality. Proust's eye looked only inward, or at best, in Narcissis's pond. It seemed cramped and self-absorbed.

Sorry about your growing-up years with a mother with a damaged personality.

As a parent, my biggest regret is not having been a better one, and when I am feeling especially sorry for myself about failures as a parent, I doubly regret not having known -- not having learned-- how to be a better parent. College degrees do not transmit this essential skill. Ours (the American) culture is one that does not pass on from generation to generation instruction on how to be a good parent. It may be our greatest failing as a nation.

[William R. Cumminh]

Recommend Francois Dion'd Poetry!

[richard sale]

I think your comment is extremely insightful and dead on.

When I labored over my novel, Virtue's Fool, I was always reading War and Peace.
Tolstoy's eye surveyed a very broad landscape, and perceived and delighted in personalities of every different quirk and quality.

I wanted to do a really good book about the Chicago Convention of 1968 which would include a large variety of scenes, characters, clashes, sub plots with War and Peace always before my eyes as I wrote.

I have finished the book, but it took me ten years because I was working all the time.

Thanks again for your insight.

C

[herb]

There is something to be said for "Terroir" in literature. If you were born and raised in rainy, dreary, depressed England, rather than France, you might be bitter too.

[richard sale]

I am not bitter. I wish it happened, but I stopped hating her when I reversed roles - what if I were a parent and she were my offspring?

I would do better than she did. Apparently she couldn't. She died covered in cancer, but long after I was told that, I prayed for her.

[herb]

I apologize for being unclear. I meant the reference to Jonathan Swift as bitter.

[herb]

If one were born in dreary, rainy, depressed England rather than gay Paris, they might be bitter, too.

[c webb]

Swift was born in rainy, depressing, Dublin, Ireland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Swift

[Babak Makkinejad]

Richard Sale:

In the novel "The Loved One", Evelyn Waugh observed that Americans talk for themselves, one (an Englishman) should never consider their utterances to require serious engagement.

[MRW]

I'm traveling now, driving, and read this piece yesterday morning before I started out on a stretch of road that rose and fell in various swaths of dull valley and head-turning beauty.

But I found myself thinking about it. Oddly, I grew up with Jean de la Bruyère's namesake and great-great-great-great-great-whatever. [http://tinyurl.com/delabr1 and http://tinyurl.com/delabr2] But it was the section on your mother that knocked my hair back.

As I rode the crest of a sunny nondescript section of road with no one around me, I realized you made me privy to the scars under the samurai's robe. A powerful description.

[Croesus]

Thank you, Richard Sales, for your reflection on Bruyer.

---
In a trip to Iran I got in trouble with my group leader because I was determined to spend more than 2 minutes in a shrine in Mashad, so I left my group & leader & stayed in shrine (having spent 26 hours in travel etc etc). I wanted to know what all those mirrors were about -- a really weird interior design decision? a way to create light without windows that would admit the very hot sun?

Neither. The mirrors in a shrine give access to the universe, to all of its refractions and perspectives. To sit -- or kneel in a shrine is to position oneself to touch the universe/universal god.

Bruyer is one more perspective in a multifaceted mirror.

[richard sale]

Thank you for your very generous remarks. They meant a lot.