A Craftsman Turned Booster
GEWEN, BARRY
A Craftsman Turned Booster_ Ambition: The Secret Passion By Joseph Epstein Dutton. 312pp. $13.95. Reviewed by Barry Gewen Writer/researcher, ILGWU Political Department In the world of small...
...He would have done well to ponder the Chekhov statement that serves as his epigraph but is otherwise neglected: "One would need to be a god to decide which are the failures and which are the successes in this life...
...To be ambitious is to be future-minded" (Are not conservatives and reactionaries like Ronald Reagan and Strom Thurmond ambitious, not to mention such backward-minded shrinking violets as Hitler, Mussolini and the Ayatollah Khomeini...
...And in that great wasteland, television, popular shows like Kojak present people week after week who are determined to touch the superlative...
...Epstein may even be right about some of the above, but sayin' it don't make it so...
...they are merely there, frustrating instances of a writer's attempt to persuade by substituting sermonizing for argument...
...it detracts from excelling in one's work, or In Coming Issues Phoebe Pettingell on Harry Levin's "Memories of the Moderns" and Louise Gluck's "Descending Figure" what Justice Holmes called "touching the superlative...
...Where once young men were congratulated for showing drive and purpose, these days to describe someone as ambitious is to suggest a scheming, manipulative careerist who rises to the top over his or her colleagues' dead bodies??Horatio Alger looking out for Number One...
...Thejobbist is alone with his joband with the ideal of touching the superlative??which in his grandfather Abiel Holmes' time would have been called being chosen for salvation...
...Occasionally his pronouncements are wrong on a grander scale...
...To say, as Epstein does, that "wealth and contentment tend to be the attributes of the virtuous in the Old Testament" is to ignore Ecclesiastes, the books of the Prophets, and perhaps the entire prophetic tradition...
...I think Epstein gets into trouble whenever he tries to generalize because the topic he has chosen is too broad...
...On the contrary, it seems at least arguable in the light of our mobbed professional schools, the hordes of aspiring filmmakers and rock musicians, the armies of hopeful authors, the legions of eager politicians, and the libraries bulging with "how to succeed" books...
...Evidence of the opposite is all around, even in the mass culture that distresses him...
...Among religious groups and cults, ideologues and idealists, fanatical movements and egalitarian movements of every stripe...
...The jobbist is one who works at his job without trying to improve the world or to make a public impression...
...he has little talent for the oracular style...
...Money and prestige and power have always and everywhere been viewed as ends in themselves as well as means to quite useful ends...
...To reinforce his main point he devotes chapters to such related topics as the idea of success, the fear of failure, the decline of high society, and the contradictory emotions money engenders in just about everybody...
...But the 20th century, the very era when ambition has lost its standing according to Epstein, has released more human energy than we know what to do with...
...the actors on Lou Grant report that, judging from their fan mail, they have become role models for many of their viewers...
...Much of what Epstein has to say is interesting or provocative...
...yet surely the world would be a better place if Hitler and Stalin had never dreamed their dreams...
...Here is Edmund Wilson on the judge: "In Holmes' effort to touch the superlative by practicing his juristic profession with all its drudgery and its hard limitations, he evolves the conception of the 'jobbist' and even forms a kind of jobbists' club, which, however, except by correspondence, may not involve personal contacts...
...Within the space of four pages of the first chapter Epstein tells us: " In most respects, though, it appears that the more educated a person is, the more hopeless life seems to him...
...If money, power and fame accompany this (as perhaps they would in the best of all possible worlds), that is confirmation of a kind, but not particularly relevant...
...This is odd, since from his previous writing Epstein would seem especially qualified to discuss ambition...
...And on and on and on...
...It is possible to achieve great deeds or great misdeeds...
...This shift in attitude, says Epstein, should be a matter of great concern, for ambition brings out the best in people...
...Indeed, Holmes' own life provides a model of real ambition...
...Epstein does not so much argue as proclaim...
...In an overwrought age, mere common sense may be enough to mark off a school...
...By focusing on outward manifestations??money, society, fame??Epstein neglects what is essential...
...National Advisory Council on Economic Opportunity and to the work of Dr...
...His thesis is that ambition is fast disappearing from our culture (hence the title also is something of a misnomer...
...This explains why obviously ambitious political figures like Jack Kemp, Bill Bradley, John Glenn, and Alexander Haig, to name but four, have been falling on their faces...
...Evidence, please...
...Too much attention to society's rewards is unseemly and vulgar...
...I refer Epstein to the annual reports of the U.S...
...Harvey Brenner of Johns Hopkins...
...Those periods of greater energy have been periods when ambition was a passion in good standing...
...That these all too easily overlooked or underpraised virtues are to be cherished becomes clear when one reflects on how few authors and critics possess them...
...Some of Epstein's declarations are simple misstatements of fact...
...Most of Epstein's assertions, however, are neither right nor wrong...
...He eschews flashiness and attention-getting for the care of the craftsman, and his writing is gratifyingly free of special pleading...
...Epstein acknowledges the problem of moral perspective early on, but he never deals with it...
...The ambition of the craftsman, his measure of success, is to do his job well...
...He calls it "the fuel of achievement," and warns that our society's current depreciation of ambition threatens to drain our energy and bring us to a stop...
...If Epstein were Italian, he would be talking about trains running on time...
...Epstein does not convince us that the drive to "touch the superlative" is dying in our country...
...His observation, for example, that the ticket of entry into society has shifted over the years from family to wealth to fame neatly captures in one sentence a profound transformation...
...Questionable assertions are stated as truths...
...Actually, there is a significant body of literature on this subject...
...He tries to accomplish this professional job as well as it can be accomplished, to give it everything of which he is capable...
...Genuine ambition is alive and well in America...
...His starting point might have been the dedication to craft, a quality he has himself displayed and clearly appreciates...
...He says: "No one, apart from a few American novelists, has written about the special psychological burden of being unemployed...
...if so, George Orwell is the school's modern master and Epstein one of its most dedicated adherents...
...It therefore comes as a surprise to find that Epstein's Ambition: The Secret Passion is in its presentation, argument and even its National Enquirer-like title, almost wholly at odds with the attentive, patient workmanship we have come to expect of him...
...In any case, "The fuel of achievement" is an inadequate definition for a serious discussion of ambition...
...Much of the continuing popularity of sports, I am certain, comes from the pleasure of watching skilled professionals perform to the best of their abilities in an unambiguous arena, touching the superlative in a setting where rules are clearly defined...
...Always and everywhere...
...Reviewed by Barry Gewen Writer/researcher, ILGWU Political Department In the world of small literary magazines and high ideas, Joseph Epstein, editor of the American Scholar and a former associate editor of The New Leader, has made a name for himself as a sane and skillful essayist on cultural affairs...
...Instilling a sense of purpose into the right sort of person is laudable...
...Ambition and its concomitant, success, are inward qualities, affairs of the spirit...
...Instead, he falls back on a qualified version of traditional American boost-erism, urging young people to strive for fame, power and wealth...
...They are subtle, private, hidden ??and not because, as Epstein suggests, people are ashamed of them...
...Although he is less blatant than such success-mongers as Robert J. Ringer and Michael Korda, whom he roundly condemns, his message is similar, and from time to time his book reads like a Chamber of Commerce pamphlet toned down for more catholic tastes: "Deplorable and self-centered though much of the conduct of the robber-baron generation was, ruthless and rueful though many of its leading figures have come to seem, after all that is bad has been said about them, it needs to be said yet again that they built up the country...
...There can be no blinking the fact that ambition is increasingly associated in the public mind chiefly with human characteristics held to be despicable...
...His stance is reliably temperate, his conclusions are thoughtful and well-balanced, his style is modest, crystalline and often graced with a dry wit...
...Generalizations fly, and too often the reader can do little more than duck...
...It seems unarguable, too, that ambition in the United States today is losing??if it has not already lost??its justification in the common culture...
...Yet Ambition: The Secret Passion is ultimately diffuse, unconvincing and, worst of all, irritating...
Vol. 64 • February 1981 • No. 3
