Blues in the night

LITTLE ROCK — Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

The thing he feared most about being an intellectual was having to think. Then he might notice the emptiness, and have that terrible sensation again: that something was wrong, definitely wrong, that something was missing.

That there was a hole in the center of his being. And for a moment he felt he was skating on the edge of despair.

Or was it hope? Either way, he would keep it at bay, in a box, locked up. He would write another article instead, or maybe give another lecture. He could do that without thinking by now.

Thinking was hard work, at least if you took it seriously and tried to say something, not just write a think piece. It was so much easier to churn out the catch phrases, and meet his readers’ expectations without having to break a sweat. Always give ’em what they want, or at least are used to.

Okay, maybe it was cheating, or even appearing under false pretenses, but at least his fans would have their expectations met. It was not meeting them that could be dangerous. People didn’t like surprises. No matter how much they praised independent thought in the abstract, just present them with one and . . . you’d better be prepared to duck.

Confront them with a whole slew of independent, even provocative thoughts, and people were only irritated, annoyed, or just disbelieving. (“He said what?”) It was as if one day the sun had decided to rise in the West, or the New York Times had drifted from the party line. Or the New Yorker’s fashions, in politics and everything else, had suddenly turned unfashionable. Can’t be.

He understood that reaction, even sympathized with it.

People-that is, consumers-ought to be able to count on some things. Some uniform, reliable quality in a product. As much as he might pretend otherwise, especially to himself, he was just a link in the knowledge industry, part of the ever-rolling assembly line of mass-produced notions. A jobber, a wholesaler of ideas-the middle man. He just delivered the package, like the FedEx man. Complete with label and expiration date. And fast, too. Never missed a deadline. He told himself he never actually cheated anybody. This is what they asked for, this is what they got.

He figured he owed customers that much. It wasn’t his prerogative to switch places with the originators of thought. Suppose he was spotted as a ringer the first time he tried thinking solo. What he’d imagined to be true and original might strike his usual fans as just plain nuts. And how could he tell the difference by now, he’d been grinding out the same finished product for so long, taking no chances, sticking with the predictable. Try something new and he might be exposed, left naked to his enemies, and worse, to his friends, who would suddenly be former friends. That’s what thinking got you. It wasn’t worth it. He never pretended to be some kind of Mencken. His specialty was the conventional, the inoffensive.

Why upset people?

No one seemed to appreciate the risks involved in thinking. It always got you in trouble, and cost you once-loyal friends. And other people’s good opinion was what he most desired-the approbation of the smart set, the right-thinking set. Or the left-thinking set if that’s what fashion called for. It was little enough for readers to ask, a little thoughtless consistency. And little enough for him to supply. So long as he didn’t risk much, he was safe. No one need know his inner doubts.

Better to just choose a side-left or right, up or down, well-done or medium-rare-and cheer for the team. Then, whatever happened, his response to it was reflexive by now, almost automatic, like a knee jerking. That way nobody was disappointed, nobody had to think, and nobody got upset.

Start thinking with the higher centers of the brain, exploring the cerebral cortex, and you were asking for trouble. A man could get lost in all those nooks and crannies. Soon he’d be hearing voices, or thinking them, as if thought were independent of the thinker.

A dangerous delusion. Risky business, thinking. Somebody important might object.

Who knew what fantasies he might be prey to. He could imagine himself born again, seeing all things new. A new heaven and a new earth. Talk about disorienting.

What could be more dizzying?

And how could he be sure it wasn’t all just an illusion, an intoxication with ideas? Follow them, and you’d soon be off the best-seller lists, and lost in terra incognita. There, there be dragons.

Much madness is divinest sense To a discerning eye Much sense-the starkest

madness ’Tis the Majority In this, as all, prevail Assent-and you are sane Demur-you’re straightway

dangerous And handled with a chain.

Look at what happened to poor David Mamet, the prolific playwright who long has turned out dialogue like a virtuoso. You couldn’t stop listening once his characters had caught you in their ever-fascinating despair. He had a talent for painting us just as we fear we are. His plays were a fine superstructure of words resting on the same subtext: We were all perfectible, good at heart. If only we could sweep away this web of bourgeois conventions, the corrupted institutions and emotions that hold us in thrall . . . and that he was so good at describing in everyday detail.

David Mamet could have gone on forever, just as we would have listened forever. There is something addictive about picking at our psychic sores.

And then one day the talented Mr. Mamet announced/confessed at essay length: “Why I am no longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal’ ”- and from then on, you couldn’t watch/hear/feel any of his plays in quite the same way. From then on, you were always aware, if only peripherally, that he had become an ideological convert-or heretic, depending on your own automatic reflexes. You could no longer watch his plays the same way, anymore than you could read David Foster Wallace without thinking of suicide. No, it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t forgiving, it wasn’t even sensible, but there it was. Everything had changed.

It was as if William F. Buckley had up and announced one day that he’d had an epiphany and joined the ranks of the left-and the agnostic, dull, unoriginal, utterly mediocre left at that. As if he had changed not just politics but personalities.

How could that be? It was like going to your favorite French restaurant and finding a pizza joint in its place. Were you lost or was the restaurateur?

Imagine picking up a review by the reliably acerbic John Simon and finding him . . . nice.

The world would be out of joint.

Magnetic north would somehow have traded places with south.

How disorienting. And damned inconvenient, to say the least.

Compasses would have to be reset.

We would have to think. And the thing our intellectual feared most was having to think.

Paul Greenberg is editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. E-mail him at: [email protected]