Originally published on Facebook 22 July 2014.
Novelist Bel Kaufman has died. She was 103. She wrote UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE, which, for those of you who haven’t read it, was a powerful tragicomedy about a teacher’s first year in an inner-city school; better than the movie, in that it was a trendsetter in style as well as plot, and told much of its story using the found media of student’s essays, bulletin board notices, and bafflingly illogical administration memos. It is likely incredibly dated today, but is almost certainly still worth reading as a period piece and as an exercise in sheer storytelling bravado. Seriously. Check it out. At its best, the book is the Catch-22 of American Education. She was the grand-daughter of the great Yiddish writer Sholom Aleichem and spent many of her years paying tribute to his legacy.
I read her obituary on Crooks and Liars and made the mistake of allowing my gaze to drift down to the comments, where I spotted and got sucked into reading an exchange like this: (X) is the troll, all other comments are people reacting to him.
This is a paraphrase.
(X): “I’ve heard of UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS, but not this. It amazes me how people create their own reality, talking themselves into believing this woman was famous.”
“Dude, she had the number one best selling novel in the country for sixty-four weeks.”
(X): “Shrug. I never heard of her. She wasn’t anybody important.”
“You’re defining what’s important by whether you heard of it?”
(X): “I see no indication that she was famous.”
“Idiot. She had a major critically acclaimed **number one ** best-seller for wll over a year. It was made into a hit movie. It remained in print for decades. It influenced generations. The title is still a phrase in the English language. What does it take if not that for you to acknowledge her impact?”
(X): “All I say is that you people are making your own reality. If it makes you feel better to say she was famous, then go ahead. All I’m saying is, I am not fooled…”
This sort of reminds me of the time I wandered into a Fort Lauderdale bookstore during a Carl Hiassen appearance. The place was packed. To put images to that word, the entire first floor of the building was wall-to-wall people; folks were stacked four-deep behind the shelving, jostling for a glimpse of the man as he spoke. There were hundreds, simply hundreds. A couple of dozen by the magazines, looking over the shelves at the table where he sat speaking. A guy standing next to me snarled, “Who does this guy think he is? Am I supposed to think he’s famous?” Well, I said, yeah. If all these people are here to see him. “Well, I never heard of him.” That’s not his fault. Maybe all these hundreds of other people paid better attention. “All I’m saying is, it’s a bit of a rip- off to call a guy famous if he’s not.” But, he IS…”So you say. I’m not fooled.”
Circular.
“Well, *I* never heard of him” as expression of the totally closed mind, the worldview trumping fact, ignorance trumping the easily observable reality of a, you know, TOTALLY PACKED ROOM. I almost think this guy was surprised the store didn’t empty out, all the Hiassen fans declaring, “Oh, well, if *this guy over here* never heard of him…”
It’s the declaration that what’s perceived in your own little world is more important than what’s perceived by the world outside you, and it is the trumpet that your ignorance trumps everybody else’s knowledge.
See, what you could have done, Mr. (X), is just acknowledge, “Well, I never heard of her; this is a phenomenon I never encountered; I may or may not choose to investigate it myself, at some later point, but I will refrain from taking a bowel movement on everybody who has heard of her. In the meantime, I will just listen and maybe I will learn.” Too bad that requires you to be something other from a totally self-perpetuating, self-generating ego monster.
As for me, I will do my best to continue avoiding comment sections.
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