Not actually smart

I recall a teaching sister telling my girlfriend in high school that I “wasn’t actually smart,” that I was just well read. It was true that I read a lot and remembered much of it. I wasn’t all that glad for her to share this diagnosis. But I’ve always taken it that she didn’t want this boy and that girl to get too fast and tight too soon, if ever, and this could hold the horses, and I didn’t take it too badly.  I know it sent my paramour to noodling.

This old vignette surfaces amid the flotsam of the day as I pick through one of those NYT “The Lives they lived” Obits – this for Clifton Fadiman (well after the fact, you see, I found The New York Times Magazine for Jan. 2, 2000, as we rummaged through my brother’s car on its way to junking).

Fadiman was moderator of “Information Please”, editor for Book of Month Club, Britannica,  and so on back in the old days. They said he read all the time. And he honed a precise memory too.  This was the kind of king of erudition who stood for what was being smart when I was coming up.

Fadiman’s obiter, Louis Menard, goes all-in on the deep meaning of “a ‘50s culture icon,” and short shrifts Clifton himself. The question Menard asks – this is 2000, remember – is whether this type of knowledge stands for ‘intelligence’ any more, this being the dawn of the Internet Age. The piece is entitled: The Lives They Lived:Clifton Fadiman, b. 1904; A)Smart B).Brainy or C) Knowledgeable?

Menard intones: “An information stuffed head is no longer quite anyone’s idea of an educated head.”

He goes on. Even in Fadiman’s day, the guy full of info was somewhat suspect. What you could do with information was the thing. Little matter - Fadiman certainly was my father’s idea of erudition. Dad filled the house with Fadiman’s kind of books. Subscribed to the Saturday Evening Review and Time – the latter of which I read cover to cover for each issue in 1968 just to be , smart. And, sometimes, in class discussions, my erudition held the sway. That was then. Being able to remember what you read is not a big deal today, that is for sure.

What have I done with the information I’ve amassed? I know I have been looking at analysis as a methodology much in the last year. The haphazard results are on my occasional Epitomigm blog which will be even more occasional in 2019. Thinking about blogs: I am inclined to put the 2019 effort into rolling up 20 years of blogging into some more coherent buckets. So other than an end of the year look back, this may indicate a 1-year virtual sojourn for Moon Traveller Herald.  Time will tell. -  Jack Vaughan

To finish the original story. The same teacher wrote on one of my papers that it was interesting but she wondered if it represented “Sound and Fury” and I guess I should thank her for setting me to the library and turning me on to that bit of Shakespeare. Speaking of Shakespeare, I recall a librarian telling my high school girl friend she was like Ophelia, which set her to looking it up too. These folks in those days sure did seem to want to send intellectualized message to the young ‘uns, me thinks.