| who the heck is Russel Baker? |
[Oct. 18th, 2014|02:42 pm] |
The two best places for a writer to live are America and Russia. Both are dynamic imperial powers prone to making mistakes. I should not like to live in Switzerland. Switzerland does not make mistakes, and therefore deprives a writer of grievances. For a writer, that society is best which is most burdensome. The favor is returned: for a society, that writer is best who is most burdensome.
It is true enough that in Russia writers with serious grievances are arrested, while in America they are merely featured on television talk shows where all that is arrested is their development. This is an important difference, but it does nothing to change the fact that grievance is the source of all interesting prose. Without grievance, a writer tends to become a celebrant, which is an agreeable but repetitious state. After you have sung two choruses of God Bless America, what else is there to say?
I must hasten to add that though grievance is a necessary condition for good prose, it is far from sufficient. There are, after all, differences between a writer and a wimp. The differences are easier to notice than to describe, but we may at least say this: a good writer is a wimp who has found a unique and prudent form in which to say “No.” I use the word “unique” to mean that the form is well suited to the nature of the writer, assuming the writer is sane. I use the word “prudent” to mean that the form is well suited to the nature of the grievance, assuming the grievance is sane. According to these definitions, there is no better complaint ever written than the Declaration of Independence or a worse one than Mein Kampf. Among writers whose exposition, by my lights, has achieved triumphs of nay-saying are George Orwell, who found his form in a humorless, crystalline understatement; H. L. Mencken, who found his in a brassy, mean-spirited, but imaginative sarcasm; and Russell Baker, who finds his in detached whimsy. My impression is that today Orwell is read very little, and then only in school, Mencken not at all. This is a sorrowful condition, with ominous overtones for the well-being of the Republic. Fortunately, Baker is available and inexhaustible. I imagine him to be like some fourth-century citizen of Rome who is amused and intrigued by the Empire’s collapse but who still cares enough to mock the stupidities that are hastening its end. He is, in my opinion, a precious national resource, and as long as he does not get his own television show, America will remain stronger than Russia. |
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