“Pretentious? Moi?”
Obligatory disclaimer: I have actually met Ezra Klein, and he’s a sweetie. Intelligent, likeable, witty, no apparent meannesses or temper, knows his subject. But very young. Being as old as I am and the parent of two sons of similar age I feel quite maternal towards his fresh-faced boyishness.
But sometimes young men get altogether too pleased with themselves.
I know that Lee Seigel (of Sockpuppet fame) very publicly had a go at Ezra recently about pretentiousness, suckuppery and neologisms and although Seigel was childishly offensive, there was a tiny kernel of truth to it and it must’ve stung. So I’m loth to rub salt into the wound.
But I read this recent paragraph of Ezra’s and immediately wanted to give him a clip round the ear and tell him to come off it. I expect I won’t be alone in that after you read it too, especially if, like me, you’re of a certain age.
In DC, I run with a community of writers, political thinkers, and sundry other intellectual types. The circle is large, sprawling, and relatively incestuous: We go to each other’s parties, attend each other’s events, go to each other’s happy hours, etc and so on. What that means is that there are an awful lot of Evites floating around at any given time. This one to a barbecue, that one to a birthday, the third to a going away bash. And because a heavy portion of this crowd is comprised of professional prose stylists, there’s ever-increasing pressure to make the invites funnier, the responses, wittier. It was rather fun at the beginning, but now the pressure is too intense, with each successive invitation demanding sharper wit and more innovative approaches. The meta comments (“Enthusiastic response!”) have been tapped out, the dark humor analogies to foreign conflicts largely used up. I’ve taken to visiting wikipedia and pegging my invitations to some absurd anniversary or holiday falling on the date (my last party fell on international pi day — 7/22). It’s exhausting stuff.
Such ennui, such weltschmertz, in in one so young! Oh I know, it’s so draining being the witty young literary man about town – the whole scene sounds positively Bloomsburyian, my dear. The pressure must be tremendous.
It’s just so hard being a man of letters. I don’t know how he copes without fainting from sheer fatigue. If I were able I’d prescribe a couple of days at a spa, or even better, 6 months manning a checkout at an Asda in Swindon. That would cure those Algonquian grandiose delusions. But this is the best I can do.
I thought I was Dorothy Parker when I was 25, but I grew out of it.
