Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock
Monday, January 10, 2005. Just thought of another way to explain my confusion with a certain kind of column. Or blog now.
The discomfort is partly from the frustration of not being able to explain, but mainly because their writers are some of my favorite people.
The genre: Anecdotal essays about their families and also the writers themselves, who are women except for a few sensitive dads. Always — exceptions exist (Bruce Cameron), but as I tend to be a generalist, this is a generalization complete with blanket statements — these pieces all end with a reflective conclusion. Very nearly always that “reflective conclusion” is a moral, making the previous wry, bittersweet or matter-of-fact tale a parable.
As a former child, I hate parables.
(My wife’s consistent criticism of my essays is that they lack such conclusions. She’s consistent because I don’t follow this advice, although I heed almost everything else. She was taught that all writing has lessons. Her writing and speeches have them, and she prefers movies and TV shows, both fictional and Oprah, that have them.)
Variety is what I would ask of my friends, but I won’t because what they do, obviously, sells.
Yet, I don’t even want fable disguised by being such a terrifically told story then hours or days realize: Oh, “Always do right,” “Live the moment.”
Outside of sports and political commentary, family is the biggest newspaper column topic. Whither its best practitioner, Erma Bombeck?
Only rarely and even then just in her last years did Erma write or imply life lessons. Go to the library and prove me wrong.
My friends and our nationally syndicated contemporaries, who also can’t write funny without skewing if not skewering the punch line with some warning, will never be as popular.
Did Erma wreck it for family writers? In a long career she likely did cover every subject first.
It might be more accurate to note that times have changed and we adults are too confused and apprehensive to let our guard down for ourselves and our families.
Not even the attacks of 9/11/01 or the Asian tsunami of 12/26/04 should persuade anyone that today is worse than yesterday. The main differences from, oh, 30 years ago isn’t Osama bin Laden and, what, global warming but the increase of multiple careers and of information, not just facts, not just sermons, but all sorts of data, raw or balanced, and opinion, impulsive or considered.
Murder and disaster have been around longer than 30 years.
I do not ask for my colleagues to be jesters like Erma. Don’t change anything on my account. All I want is that no reader count on wisdom from me.
When I write anecdotally, it just is not in my nature to presume to know better than anyone else. I am surprised that I learn something from a success or a failure and am delighted when I remember it in enough time to help on the next episode.
Some have told me this makes me a profound egotist — “it’s always about you, Ben” — but isn’t this rather less arrogant than telling others: “I” know what’s best for you, albeit under the occasional frame of self-deprecation, from wisdom “I” have received or earned?
What’s wrong with arrogance, anyway? It’s pride to be wary of. Or is it the other way around? -30-
