Boom Boxes: Boom Babies
Irvine, William
BOOM BABIES I love children-especially when they cry, for then someone takes them away. -Nancy Mitford five minutes. I feel this is a generous allotment. Your baby is not some kind of a joke....
...But Vigilante and Gallagher are wrong to imply that earlier generations of intellectuals earned as much money or had access to housing remotely as good as today's...
...Susan Vigilante provides a splendid discussion of the twelve-step movement of Alcoholics Anonymous, with its spiritual thrust, and in the process explains "why so many Boomers are jerks...
...And by all means, no screaming babies in church...
...Walter Olson mars an otherwise astute piece by making an implicit claim to the contrary: that each generation can recover civilization by the unaided use of reason...
...But like Allan Bloom's offering of Straussian political theory as a means of redemption, Kimball's notions of critical rigor and "seriousness" provide no source for the cultural revitalization that he seeks...
...While this decision will reveal itself naturally over time, it is customary to share the happy news with family and friends...
...Like many of us, her friends made the fateful choice of avoiding the graduate studies and hard unselfish work that their parents performed in business and the professions...
...With Beyond the Boom, he fulfills the incredible dream of getting his name on the cover of a book above Tom Wolfe's...
...Saratoga and Devon, while interesting options for a new bottled water, are probably less than suitable as choices for your daughter...
...But writing is not religion...
...So you're going to have a baby...
...M ost of the essays, however, avoid such economic and political issues in favor of meditations on culture...
...I mention this solely for the sake of the child, who must be mortified, and would certainly retreat to a private place if he could walk...
...Please resist a natural impulse to divulge the minutiae of conception...
...In all societies, choosing an intellectual career means a real risk of poverty...
...To avoid being mugged, people will readily accept a standard of living at least fifty percent lower than they could obtain by resorting to the ample cheap housing within high-crime zones...
...If you are compelled to bring your little daughter to the matinee of I Vitelloni, keep in mind that answering her incessant questions about what the subtitles say, in baby talk, does not make either of you prized patrons...
...He's off to write a major biography of Mencken, while producing regular editorials in the Daily News and apparently weekly articles for any other Vile publication in reach...
...the problem is that it's in communities dominated by criminals...
...The socialism and secularism of that earlier generation which he cherishes paved the way for the current decline...
...For this obvious choice, they are called racists by liberals in City Hall, who chase them down and hound them out of the city by putting homelessness centers and drug clinics in their arduously reclaimed neighborhoods...
...You would be shocked to know your neighbors' unanswered prayers...
...There are a number of superb essays in the book, including Richard Vigilante's trenchant defense of the yuppies and Maggie Gallagher's essay on "house lust...
...David Brooks gives a piquant portrait of one of them, a Washington "policy wonk...
...He got away with that (I didn't even get any government money), and now there's no stopping him...
...Post does not even address the subject of manners for the extremely young is no oversight...
...By all means bring the baby to show everyone at the office...
...Those little Elvis and Carmen Miranda outfits aren't fooling anyone...
...By all means forgo passing the sonogram around the dinner table, please...
...Taking your baby into a public place necessitates your exercising vigorous control over his behavior...
...But reason is impotent to inculcate moral values, to induce girls to say no in the heat of sexual excitement, to foster the commitments and sacrifices of child-rearing, and to propagate the disciplines and long-time horizons of a civilized and productive society...
...Take this Teachout guy, for example...
...Tip: there is probably a reason why Lycra bicycle shorts and dinner jackets are so tough to find in infant sizes...
...Although the numbers do not support their claim that this generation as a whole faces an acute economic or housing problem, they offer much evidence of the dire social predicament of middle-class families in New York...
...Why Tom encourages this kind of impertinence I have no idea...
...Donna Rifkind suggests writing itself as a kind of religious calling...
...That's why so much of the work of intellectuals consists of special gripes and class grievances of little interest or worth to the rest of the society...
...But I am still far behind him on the slopes and in no position to put up with it...
...While an impulse to conceal evidence is well intentioned, stuffing tidy bundles under your host's bed is considered bad form...
...Remember that Jack Daniel's and apple juice is an excellent pick-me-up for children on those flights from Miami to Lima...
...Like many of the writers in this volume, and like Teachout himself, Kimball is pursuing order and tradition-the values of a civilized society-without any recognition that those values cannot be summoned in themselves but must be passed on to new generations of children, chiefly through religious teaching and worship...
...Roger Kimball presents a stirring critique of the collapse of intellectual rigor and seriousness in the arts and offers a nostalgic revel from an earlier day when titans such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Lionel Trilling walked the pages of the Hudson Review...
...The tyke now needs constant attention until he is toilet-trained...
...Well, the baby has arrived...
...now you've hit the bull's eye so just keep quiet...
...For your child is your little ambassador to the world, an emblem of your own good manners, or lack thereof...
...Instead they can enjoy the mental luxuries and expressive freedoms of the intellectual life...
...Or in the empty train seat across the aisle...
...To the extent that the Vile Body wants secular humanism without social chaos, it is part of the problem rather than the solution...
...Schiffren's contrarian (continued on page 40) 38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1991...
...at its best it serves the religious sensibility by touching on the divine world, on Gerard Manley Hopkins's "dearest freshness deep down things...
...Not only are all the schools and housing programs run by the most inept and malignant socialist bureaucracies this side of the Gulag, but the streets and subways are beset by criminals and thugs...
...All else is finally stale and futile...
...Once...
...Children at lunchtime should not be at the Four Seasons having spa cuisine...
...French restaurants, for instance...
...Only the Vigilantes, George Sim Johnston, and Lisa Schiffren point beyond the shallow concerns of most of these essays...
...Because the intellectual life usually gives no economic cushion, however, many regret this choice, which is fostered by parents who swoon over every poem or drawing offered by their precious children without telling them that the arts are mostly an avocation, not a means of support...
...William Irvine (Mr Irvine is a writer living in New York City...
...I know it's tough, but you can't let the baby run the show...
...Believe it or not, yours is not the first generation to experience the wonders of parenthood, and discussions about new jogger-stroller designs and Baby's funniest expressions of the day should be limited to twenty is also the clear implication that despite all his labors on the slopes of Parnassus, even Tom will not live forever and these kids of the Baby Boom are going to take over one of these days...
...This is most unpleasant for all concerned...
...This, I'm afraid, means diapers...
...Because the babysitter is now going the way of the dodo, and because working parents are (mistakenly) racked with guilt about not spending that extra hour or two with their child, they routinely bring it along into territories previously uncharted by the young...
...Stealing other people's family names is beyond the pale...
...I have been following his career, waiting for him to stumble, ever since, writing in Commentary well before the Serrano breakthrough, he tested the urine treatment on one of my own books...
...they should be home having a peanut-butter sandwich...
...It takes religion to convey such goals to new generations...
...Only a select coterie will relish the opportunity to see the videotape your husband made in the delivery room...
...A name is something you inflict for life on your unsuspecting offspring...
...Bruce Bawer and John Podhoretz offer two penetrating views of the problems of current film...
...No sunglasses of any kind...
...When thinking about names, be advised that no one has ever thought children named Robert or Elizabeth were anything less than special...
...There are no rules for manners in the street and in public for very little children," wrote Emily Post in Children Are People (1940), "because they are always in the care of someone who is expected to look after their behavior...
...What the Vile Body calls a housing crisis is actually a crime-and-schooling crisis...
...The intact families all necessarily throng to the few communities where their children might be safe...
...It is unreasonable, therefore, to expect that putting your child in the center of the room will provide enough conversational ballast for a group of adults for more than a few minutes...
...I don't care if you tried ten times a day...
...That Mrs...
...There is ample cheap housing in New York...
...That's why so many people cripple their minds in law school...
...When Gallagher talks about the Boomers living worse than their parents, she is comparing writers and artists with professionals...
...And remember, Lamaze is of interest largely to its participants...
...How lovely for you...
...Some places are not so fabulous for changing your baby...
...If you are rich, be advised that it is in questionable taste to arrive with your uniformed housekeeper in tow, particularly if the child can walk...
...Please suppress your famous wry sense of camp when dressing the child...
Vol. 24 • January 1991 • No. 1
