Most curmudgeons squint one eye and snarl, I'll tell you one damn thing! I know now what I am. A curmudgeon! I loved W. C. Fields' encounter with Ray Bradbury. If this be (fair & balanced) self-revelation, so be it!
[x AARP Magazine]
A Few Good Grumps
Cranky, rude, indispensable. Our group of grumpy know-it-alls
By Jon Winokur
Curmudgeons keep the rest of us cockeyed optimists honest. That's why we need them more than ever. (If you don't like it, lump it.)
When author Ray Bradbury was 13, he saw W. C. Fields standing on a Hollywood street corner. Excitedly, the boy approached Fields with a sheet of paper for an autograph.
Fields signed his name, handed back the paper, and said, "There you are, you little son of a bitch."
Fields was something of a twisted patron saint of curmudgeonry. He didn't like children, and he made no pretense otherwise. Like all good curmudgeons, Fields attacked false sentiment—because it devalues the real thing.
We call curmudgeons "irascible," "grouchy," "grumpy"—even "mean." But the world needs curmudgeons. They refuse to see life through the filter of wishful thinking and are outspoken in their devotion to the harsh realities of life. They protect the rest of us, stumbling about blindly behind our rose-colored glasses, from ourselves.
Still, these are tough times for curmudgeons. In an age of fast-food intellect, when crudity is mistaken for cleverness, the articulate, witty curmudgeon seems out of place. Try imagining such saber-tongued cynics as Mark Twain, James Thurber, and H. L. Mencken grousing about America in 2003. Can you imagine Mencken, a man who once called the American people the most "sniveling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goose-steppers ever gathered under one flag in Christendom since the end of the Middle Ages," adapting to an era of Freedom Fries? (When Mencken was asked why he chose to live in the U.S. if he thought it was so horrible, he snapped back, "Why do men go to zoos?")
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, our nation is becoming curmudgeon intolerant. It's as though our American ears, like our American bellies, have gone soft. Look around and you'll see the triumph of the mindless happy. It began, perhaps, with the publication of I'm OK—You're OK and has culminated in more recent bookstore offerings such as You Can Be Happy No Matter What. On TV, upbeat Oprah rules, and, in their less-than-stellar 60 Minutes debates, Bill Clinton rejected one of Bob Dole's topics because it was too, well, cranky.
It's only in recent years that curmudgeons have gotten a bad rep, says author P. J. O'Rourke, the resident curmudgeon at Rolling Stone. "In Mencken's era, curmudgeons were role models," he says. "Robert Benchley, S. J. Perelman … even Will Rogers, for all his supposed friendliness, had a barbed tongue. The curmudgeon was above it all. He was a major player until the world was overwhelmed by the baby boom, and suddenly everyone had to be young forever."
Comedian Richard Lewis agrees that the domination of youth culture is at the heart of what's wrong with the world: "It's pathetic that people are trying to almost 'Frankenstein' themselves to stay young. I tell people my body is deteriorating as I'm standing there performing. And it's okay. Like the night I banged my knee slightly on the edge of a hotel bed, and the next morning it looked like I had Gorbachev's birthmark on my thigh."
O'Rourke and Lewis are unlikely curmudgeons. They're both barely old enough to have outgrown the label of "angry young man"—a temporary condition often confused with true curmudgeonhood. While curmudgeonry is not an inevitable part of aging (like wisdom, it doesn't automatically arrive at one's fifth decade, or even the seventh), a lifetime of experience does help nurture it. As Homer Simpson's father, Abe, says, "The good Lord lets us grow old for a reason: to gain the wisdom to find fault with everything he's made."
Curmudgeons aren't just funny or just mean. Part of what makes a curmudgeon is an almost allergic reaction to injustice. When confronted with it, he responds with two powerful weapons: disgust and sarcasm. In the early 1930s, after the success of the movie The Cocoanuts, Groucho Marx attempted to join a restricted swimming club near his new home in suburban Long Island. The manager told him that his application couldn't be accepted because the club didn't accept Jews. Groucho pondered this for a moment and asked, "Well, then, how about my son? He's only half Jewish. Can he go in the water up to his waist?"
The curmudgeon's excruciating sensitivity to life's countless insults—even those that may not be intentional—is both a curse and sustenance for his muse. A woman at a party once told James Thurber that she'd read a French translation of his My Life and Hard Times, adding, "You know, the book is even better in French!" To which Thurber replied, "Yes—my work tends to lose something in the original."
Curmudgeons are classic outsiders—they instinctively distrust conventional wisdom and challenge authority. They are proudly and aggressively out of touch with the pop culture. Curmudgeons don't read "relationship" books, they don't carry pagers, and they don't have TiVo. They don't do pilates, feng shui, or aromatherapy. Curmudgeons never watch "Must See TV"—and they know the very term is a contradiction.
"Popular culture has always been moronic," says O'Rourke. "It has to be, by mathematics. I mean, one-half of the population is by definition below median intelligence."
Curmudgeons are disillusioned, but only in the strictest sense of the word. That is, they harbor no illusions—something that allows them to think clearly. They howl against clichés because they prize originality. Take Dorothy Parker's response when a woman informed her, "I really can't come to your party. I can't bear fools." Answered Parker: "That's strange, your mother could."
Parker played a leading role in the golden age of curmudgeonry, the 1920s and '30s. At New York's Algonquin Hotel, she held court at the famous "Round Table" along with such acerbic wits as George S. Kaufman, Ring Lardner, Noel Coward, and Benchley. Groucho Marx described the scene as "an intellectual slaughterhouse."
If curmudgeons are occasionally testy, it's partly because they bear a terrific burden. Curmudgeons don't hate sinners, just sins. They don't hate humankind, just humankind's excesses—and they hold out secret hope for the improvement of the species.
"Curmudgeons are idealists at heart," insists 60 Minutes commentator Andy Rooney, who may qualify as America's Curmudgeon Laureate. "They're trying to straighten out the whole world. I think criticism is the best source of change." Rooney says of Mencken, his hero, "He was willing to inspect our whole world, using his brain without any sentiment—which most Americans are not willing to do.
"Still, I do have a very low boiling point, and I tend to get annoyed with a lot of things happening in the world. I can't stand how consistently people refuse to face the facts about issues. You know, they'll do anything to turn their head, hoping for something better, praying to win the lottery." (An issue echoed by famously testy writer Fran Lebowitz, who questioned the intelligence of those who played the lottery: "You have the same chance of winning whether you play or not.")
Most curmudgeons would probably insist that it's the world at large that brings out their delightfully dark side. But when pressed, many will fess up to—gasp!—a buried sentimental core.
"My guess is that curmudgeons have the same sensibility as comics," says Phyllis Diller, whose sardonic observations on married life made her a star. "They're both hypersensitive. We turn our emotional wounds into humor, and if we weren't laughing, we'd be crying. We're sad for the world."
Lewis confesses that his outlook is a result of parents who were so emotionally damaging. "I was my own baby, had to raise myself and become an adult."
"A curmudgeon tries desperately to have a sense of hope," he says, "but is surrounded by people who are trying to take the wind out of his sails."
While some are born curmudgeons, others have curmudgeonry thrust upon them. According to take-no-prisoners New York magazine critic John Simon, "In me it evolved gradually as a response to seeing so many bad plays and movies. It's not something that I profess with pride or joy, it's just an attitude that becomes less and less resistible under the circumstances."
Lifelong exposure to the hypocrisies of politics leaves curmudgeons united in their disdain for politicians of all stripes, as reflected in Ambrose Bierce's definition of a conservative: "a statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from a liberal, who wishes to replace them with others."
Curmudgeons thrive at both ends of the political spectrum. At the far left lurks Gore Vidal, who bears scorched-earth disdain for those who disagree with his views. "It is not enough to succeed," he wrote, "others must fail." At the far right is conservative columnist Ann Coulter, author of Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right. Steamed liberal critics—labeled in one recent Coulter column as "fanatical liars" and "traitorous"—have counter-labeled her "inflammatory," "sub-rational," and "snarky." But does she mind being called a curmudgeon?
"What an inane question," she answers. "Why, I ought to box your ears, you little urchin. Now get away from me before I sic the dogs on you. And stay off my lawn or I'll call the police—see if I don't!"
Political correctness—denying or softening obvious truths in the interest of good will and harmony—is an elephant-size target for any good curmudgeon. "I do not think everyone is created equal," writes Lebowitz. "In fact, I know they're not. [The Constitution] means that everyone should have the same laws as everyone else. It doesn't mean that everyone's as smart or as cute or as lucky as everyone else."
As they get older, some curmudgeons actually mellow. Ed Asner is a curmudgeon, and he also played one on TV, as Lou Grant, Mary Richards' boss at WJM-TV on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Reminded of his famous line to Mary in the series pilot, "You've got spunk… I hate spunk!" he confesses to having second thoughts about it: "No one could hate spunk, not even a curmudgeon. I should have said, 'You know what? You're pretty goddam perky. I hate perky!' "
Does this mean Asner is losing his edge? "In some ways I think I'm more patient," he says. "I've learned not to shoot my wad, decrying injustice at the first glaring headline I come across. It behooves me to wait before I saddle up."
So go on—find your inner curmudgeon. It can be positively therapeutic, and there are side benefits as well: Actor-writer-raconteur Orson Bean says one of the perks is Not Going. "My wife"—actress Alley Mills—"uses me as an excuse to get out of things," he says. "She tells them, 'Sorry, but you know Orson.'
"But," he adds, "that's only when she doesn't want to go."
The curmudgeon's sensibility is an oyster's pearl produced by the grit of existence. Curmudgeons maintain their balance in a universe gone mad. ("When I was younger I thought it was me, but now I know it's the world that needs fixing," one veteran curmudgeon told me on the eve of her 60th birthday.) The beauty of it is, they expect the worst, but they keep on playing. That's why curmudgeons are the ultimate adults.
Jon Winokur is the author of various books on curmudgeonry, including the bestselling Portable Curmudgeon (Penguin) and the recently published Traveling Curmudgeon (Sasquatch Books). He lives in California. Alone.
Hear the Prime Time Focus radio version of this story at www.aarp.org/radio.
Quiz: Are You a Crank?
Take this quiz to find out. See below for the results
By Ken Budd
1. Things were a lot better:
a. 20 years ago
b. 40 years ago
c. Things have never been very good
2. A grande mocha caffe latte is:
a. Delicious
b. Expensive
c. What the hell is a grande mocha caffe latte?
3. The government is:
a. Too big
b. Too slow
c. Out to get me
4. Some children are playing kickball in the street. As you watch from the window, the ball rolls into your yard. Your best course of action is to:
a. Ignore it
b. Delight in the sweet innocence of children
c. Keep the ball
5. Music today is:
a. Edgy
b. Loud
c. You call that music?
6. Read the following statement: "When I was a kid, you could get a full steak dinner, a slice of pie—with ice cream—and a cup of coffee for 20 cents. Twenty damn cents. And this was good coffee, too—not that crap they serve now." This is:
a. True
b. Odd
c. The smartest thing I've ever read in your lousy magazine
7. The problem with kids today is:
a. Why are you asking me all these questions?
b. I've had enough of this nonsense
c. Leave me alone
Results
If you refused to take this quiz because it's a damn fool waste of time—and then wrote a lengthy, self-righteous letter explaining precisely why it was a damn fool waste of time—congratulations: You are officially a curmudgeon.
Copyright © 2003, AARP
