From the WSJ Opinion Archives
DE GUSTIBUS
Two Kinds of Oddity
Americans make better exhibitionists; Britons, better eccentrics.
The word eccentric was much abused in obituaries earlier this week on the departure from our midst of one Abe Hirschfeld. He was a very rich New Yorker who, before he acquired a dollop of notoriety as the geezer who offered Paula Jones $1 million to drop her sexual harassment suit against Bill Clinton, was best known for acquiring control of a bankrupt New York Post for two weeks in 1993. In the course of that eventful fortnight, he sacked the editor, Pete Hamill, only to reinstate him (with a very public Big Wet Kiss) just days after mutinous staffers ran a story about Mr. Hirschfeld, titled "Who Is This Nut?"
These shenanigans aside, there were numerous other things that Mr. Hirschfeld did in his lifetime that caught the eye--things he did, in fact, to catch the eye. Hence my objection to the use of the word "eccentric" (for which mot not-quite-juste the New York Daily News, the New York Times and many others opted). The man was no such thing: He was, instead, an attention-grabber, an exhibitionist, which is a quite different species altogether. Proper eccentrics are more likely to shrink from the limelight than to slaver at its prospect, as Mr. Hirschfeld did.
That said, and with readers' permission, I will progress to a broad but defensible generalization. Americans (and though born in prewar Poland, Mr. Hirschfeld was thoroughly American) tend to make very good exhibitionists. By contrast, and famously, the British make much the better eccentrics. Americans, in fact, are not very good at eccentricity, just as Brits are clumsy at exhibitionism. (This is not to suggest that no Britons attempt public display. Some--mainly professional soccer players--do, but they seldom manage to pull it off with style.)
What is the wellspring of American exhibitionism? Life in this country--large and competitive--is largely about calling attention to oneself, it matters not in how vulgar (and noisy) a way. Ours is a loud culture: This is perhaps because, at the subsistence or immigrant level (or at the level of folk memory), most start in crowded rooms and one has to shout to be heard, or to get fed. In a society of immigrants, "outsiders" find that they can become "insiders" by extra oomph. The struggle for integration is an especially American drama and the immigrant knows that he may need braggadocio. (This may, in part, explain Mr. Hirschfeld.)
America also has exhibitionists because the culture of showbiz and TV is learned so early, so that even the very young are adept at theatrical gestures--they roll their eyes, for instance, at 4. (I can attest, from parental experience, to this precocious dismissiveness.) But the truest reason that Americans are exhibitionist is that the U.S. has always been a democracy or has, at any rate, purported to be classless. That was how it was founded. Jack is just as good as his employer and so has no need for inhibition. Britain, by contrast, has had until recently an almost insuperable class system: the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate. Everybody knew his place and didn't need to show off about it.
At the same time, the long and bloody history of Britain, not to mention the climate, encouraged the citizenry to cultivate their own eccentric gardens (literally and metaphorically). The Brits invented hobbies, and only the Brits go in for such muffled pastimes as trainspotting and collecting beer mats. Americans need to get noticed if they are to stand out from the throng. For the Briton, standing out has always been anathema.
The British enjoy eccentricity. Americans do not, because it is a quieter state, and to be quiet is to set oneself on the road to anonymity--arguably the condition from which Americans shrink most sharply. A good place to note this difference is in literature. I can think of no memorable eccentric character in American literature; yet from Ahab to Huck Finn, from the Cat in the Hat to Tom Wolfe's Rev. Bacon, there is no dearth of exhibitionists.
Think of the long line of eccentrics in British literature. The Canterbury pilgrims are nearly all so. Shakespeare is full of memorable eccentrics: Their captain is Falstaff, Shakespeare's favorite character. The most memorable characters in Dickens tend to be eccentrics--Miss Havisham, Miss Flite (in "Bleak House"), Mr. Dick (in "David Copperfield"), Mr. Pickwick and his friends. And then there's Wodehouse, whose dramatis personae are eccentricity unbound.
In Britain it is a compliment to be considered an eccentric. It is not so in America. But a theory holds that Brits follow in the footsteps of Americans 10 years behind. So they, too, shall all be exhibitionists soon. And Abe Hirschfeld will chuckle about it when the time comes, wherever he may be.
Mr. Varadarajan is editorial features editor of The Wall Street Journal.
