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The Virtues of
Eccentricity
By T. Evan Schaeffer
In his recent Playboy
interview, novelist Saul Bellow leaps off the page as a
cantankerous old brute, a crotchety octogenarian. He sneers at
the state of American society, damns other big-name authors
with faint praise, grumbles and bellyaches about any number of
things.
You have to like
the guy. A survivor for decades, the winner of every major
literary award, Bellow has earned the right to be
bad-tempered. At a time when any number of forces are working
to create a homogenous American, it’s refreshing to stumble
across a true eccentric.
Eccentrics are
in short supply. Attempting to create a uniqueness of
personality is difficult when we feel compelled to choose our
identities from among the images served up by TV executives
and corporate advertisers, and when, as Bellow points out, we
learn how to conduct our lives from such banal handbooks as Esquire
and Cosmopolitan magazines. Although everyone possesses
the creative energy necessary to develop a unique personality,
this energy is often used not to offend, not to appear
different, to fit into the familiar mold of the late-20th-century
middle class American.
As applied to
personality, the term "eccentricity" echoes its
scientific use of describing a planetary orbit that is
slightly off-center. Although an eccentric’s off-centerness
can be expressed as a simple over-exuberance of personality,
it is always natural and unforced.
Excluded from
the ranks of the eccentrics are those whose quirks have been
consciously adopted as marketing ploys—Howard Stern, say, or
Dennis Rodham. Also excluded are those whose off-centerness
expresses itself in criminality—alleged wrong-doers Timothy
McVeigh or Theodore Kaczinski.
Sometimes
eccentrics turn up where you least expect them. For the past
six years, I worked as an associate at a large St. Louis law
firm that is frequently in the news. While being groomed for
partnership, the firm’s young lawyers had to suppress their
natural quirks of character. But once admitted into the
partnership and freed of the shackles that had confined them
to the role of kiss-up junior associates, these lawyers would
allow their quirks to blossom into bouquets of lunacy.
Among the rank
of partner, eccentricity was always the rule, never the
exception. There were partners who balked at the inconvenience
of wearing a suit and tie, and so went casual (or just plain
sloppy); partners whose giant brains needed so much
nourishment that they’d unthinkingly devour the
secretaries’ refrigerated lunches; partners who were simply
very loud.
Perhaps odd,
certainly different, but not inherently evil. Eccentricity,
after all, is a first cousin to originality; this being so,
the eccentricity present in the law firm’s partnership bred
new ways of thinking that allowed the firm to become one of
the largest and most successful in the region.
Ultimately,
however, even the eccentricity of my former bosses was
restricted by the basically conservative nature of the law
business. This illustrates another facet of true eccentricity.
It comprises not only a haphazard bundle of personal quirks
but also a unique and unfettered way of looking at the world.
It is at this
point that society stands opposed to eccentricity. To be
different is to threaten the status quo; thus eccentrics are a
barrier to any group that proselytizes a system of belief.
Some examples of such groups are obvious—the religious
right, political conservatives; others are not so
obvious—corporate advertisers, Hollywood movie producers.
Of course,
eccentrics are a quiet bunch, never openly seditious, and most
often go unnoticed. Society’s attitude towards its
eccentrics can be just as understated, expressed as a
generalized but unspoken disdain for anyone outside the group.
It is only when eccentrics happen into the limelight that the
fireworks begin. Congress rescinds its funding for
"subversive" artists; a group of isolationists is
burned at Waco; Kurt Cobain feels compelled to give it up.
John Stuart Mill
wrote that the amount of eccentricity in a society increases
in proportion to the amount of genius, mental vigor and moral
courage it contains. These days, when the chill winds of
conformity drive many eccentrics underground, Mill’s formula
must be revised to recognize that eccentricity also decreases
in proportion to the negative energy a society exerts to stomp
it out.
This is why the
Saul Bellow interview is so refreshing. The presence of
eccentrics in our midst is proof that our society is free. At
a time when there’s too much sameness in our corner of the
world, we should encourage our fellow eccentrics and nurture
the eccentricities in ourselves.
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