Exposition { Lines of evidence
It was one of those jaw-dropping moments: she'd never heard of the Met. I was innocently kibitzing about a table of friends and strangers playing Trivial Pursuit when I discovered this small factoid. A classmate's college-educated finacee haplessly admitted she couldn't answer the question, especially since she'd never even heard of "what was that thing again?"
This is when it all became clear to me. I am a snob. I've suspected as much for awhile, but this was the confirmation. It isn't as though I have spent any time at the Met, and I'm certainly no musical cognoscenti, but please. Even my southern-born, stubbornly Midwestern soul was shocked. Doesn't everyone know this sort of thing? How do you live without this most basic knowledge?
What's more, I am an aging snob (the worst kind?). Suddenly, Philip Roth seems less needlessly pretentious. Camus can't speak to my heart anymore, but instead feels adolescent. My friends no longer drink up my beer, but help themselves to fine wine and liquers at my house (yet another reason to never stock chambord- I'd go broke). I don't understand the music/noise of younger labmates. I never even used to read the paper, but now find arguing politics with my beloved can be hot. I'm terrified that any day now I might start to find Prarie Home Companion funny and insightful. Let's not even talk about my new bifocals in their designer frames, or my incipient McSweeney's obsession.
My only consolation- scant comfort though it be- is that this transformation seems more or less universal among my acquaintances. What is it about years, or income, that makes us less tolerant of the hoi polloi? Are we all this much of a cultural stereotype?
3 comments:
Love to all...
kibitzing
factoid
cognoscenti
scant
hoi polloi
These are the words of the literati. We have a tendency to become snobs. I think of three things when I read your question:
1) It was proposed at one time, and I don't remember who said it, that "As you get older, you simply become more like yourself, with less and less desire to put on a false front meant to fit in with others."
2) That Sturgeon's Law really is correct, and that the mark of smart people is to go after the other 10%, often with a critical wit about the remainder.
3) That our tastes, needs, desires, and passions change over time. This is not regrettable; This is growth. The mature mind has had longer to refine itself. To quote J.K. Rowling: "Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young."
I share your fear that you might someday consider A Prairie Home Companion insightful, but there are worse things.
I don't think it is about income, although that can be a limiting factor in some of the more refined tastes. With years comes a depth of experience, the mature mind has a thicker weave of patterns. I find nothing at all wrong with developing a connoisseur's approach, although it can mean that you have to have a lock on the wine cabinet. If this is the price of a life of excellence, then I would suggest you pay the price of admission happily. Seek the cream that rises to the top and do not feel discourteous for choosing not to swill whatever dregs are being pushed this week. There is nothing wrong with high culture. Slumming in seas of kitsch and fad can be fun, but I wouldn't want to waste too much time doing it, because there is more really good stuff out there than one mere lifetime can experience.
In short, being a bit of a snob can be a good thing. This world could use all the well honed elite it can handle, because there certainly is no shortage of common mediocrity.
Arguing politics can be VERY hot.
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