PAUL FUSSELL
He Cries at the Indy 500

PAUL FUSSELL (pronounced fus әl) was born in Pasadena, California, in 1924. He received a B.A. from Pomona College in 1947, and an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1949 and 1952. He has taught at Connecticut College, the University of Heidelberg, Rutgers University, and the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of numerous books on a wide range of subjects, including Abroad: British Literary Traveling Between the Wars; The Great War and Modern Memory, which received the National Book Award in 1976; and Class, an insouciant indictment of the American class system.

JW: Are you a curmudgeon?

PF: I don’t like the word curmudgeon. It implies that there’s something wrong with social and cultural criticism, which is the obligation of every educated person. If every educated person is to be a curmudgeon, fine. Certain people have to notice things. There’s a great essay by George Orwell called “Why I Write,” in which he says that every writer who is honest is motivated by two things: one, the desire to show off; and two, the habit of noticing unpleasant facts. Anybody who notices unpleasant facts in the have-a-nice-day world we live in is going to be designated a curmudgeon.

JW: You see the curmudgeon as a reformer?

PF: Yes, he wants things to be better. Instead of running for Congress he works through public presentation. He annoys and amuses people in order to bring about social change. The so-called curmudgeon is really an idealist, perhaps even a romantic, sentimental idealist.

JW: I hear a lot about the cynicism and materialism of students these days.

PF: They’re the same as they always were. I’ve been in this trade for thirty-five years, and I don’t see much difference. Almost none of them are going to the university for the right reasons, but gradually the best of them wake up. Nobody eighteen has any shape yet, men or women. You’re trying to help them see, and you don’t know whether you’ve succeeded until they’re thirty-five.

JW: You’ve said that this is “the worst time since the thirteenth century . . . the terrorism, the brutality, the contempt for human life, a very vicious place to live, this century.” What else do you find contemptible about it?

PF: I think the moment is notable for a general lack of attention to human dignity, which is as bad as it’s been since the Renaissance. What I dislike most about the contemporary scene is the way people are treated like animals, which I think we owe to the Second World War—not just the Holocaust but the army too. Living today is like being in the army: You line up for everything, you queue.

What I hate about contemporary life is a deep, unimaginative contempt for human beings disguised as friendly concern. If it weren’t for this fraud, this pretense of friendliness, I could tolerate it easier. I would much rather have people say, “Look, you shit, line up there, we don’t give a fuck about you and your mean bank account.” There’s no reason to be uncomfortable just because those people want you to be uncomfortable. There’s too little opposition to this.

JW: Why?

PF: I think most people secretly like being treated badly, perhaps because it makes them feel like part of a great big industrial enterprise, that they’re somehow contributing to the modern world.

Another thing that disturbs me is what I call “technological pretension.” Every day I spend half an hour to an hour clearing up the mistakes of people I have business relations with—the telephone company, the bank, everybody. I moved recently, and half the people who received the change-of-address card got it wrong because they’re so technologically pretentious with their little computer keyboards.

JW: Are you against machines per se?

PF: No, but I’m getting a little bit off them because I don’t think they’re opening up the good life at all. They’re making slaves of people. I got rid of my car, for example. What I’m against is a certain attitude about people that makes machines inevitable. Machines have no sense of humor, and I can’t stand to live in a world with no sense of humor, no sense of irony, where everything is literal. That’s hell.

JW: In that context you’ve written that by the next century there will be no difference between the United States and the Soviet Union.

PF: Yes, we’re getting closer all the time. I call it “prole drift.” It’s probably a result of the world population problem—the population of the world has doubled since I was a boy. But intelligence hasn’t doubled; sensitivity hasn’t doubled; everything that matters hasn’t doubled. It’s an immense overcrowding. Hence lines and identification numbers are on the increase everywhere, and I think that’s worth objecting to. And the two societies are becoming identical in terms of athleticism, the idea of finding national identity in athletic victory. to take advantage of the garrulity of the politician and the politician of the credulity of the journalist. The Soviets happen to be good at chess and weight lifting and we’re good at football, but it’s the same kind of stupid, mind-blowing imbecility on both sides which is projected as national policy. Two great big, muscle-bound giants with little pea brains on top.

JW: What else disturbs you about contemporary American life?

PF: First-naming by people who have no right to do it. People phone me from Dallas and Houston—they always mispronounce my last name as “few-sell,” and that tips me off immediately—and they’ll say, “Paul, I’m selling some wonderful oil shares out here and—” Click.

JW: Is the process of having your work published an adversarial relationship?

PF: Very much, and I get angry when editors and publishers try to be my friends. It indicates that they’re about to swindle you.

JW: You’ve written extensively about class. For example, you’ve said that chess is rarely found above the upper middle class.

PF: I have never known an upper-class person to play chess. Backgammon’s their game. Another thing: We’ve had a young relative staying with us for the past few days which required me to cede her my bathroom and use another one. I was uncomfortable for the entire time, and it reminded me that the upper class never allows itself to be uncomfortable, except on a yacht.

JW: You did a piece for Harper’s about the Indianapolis 500 in which you confessed that you cried when they played “Back Home in Indiana.”

PF: I do it at weddings too. I think it has to do with my long relation with young people as an observer of their hopes and their beliefs. Seeing someone who really believes in something makes me cry, I don’t know why. Out of curiosity, I’ve visited great Catholic religious centers like Fatima in Portugal and Lourdes in France, although I’m a total religious skeptic myself, as a sort of sociologist of that pathology. It always makes me cry to see the pathos of people who actually believe that drinking holy water is going to cure their polio.

JW: You’ve done a lot of traveling and travel writing, from which I gather you didn’t like Tel Aviv.

PF: I think Tel Aviv is an awful place. It apes the worst things about the United States. It’s full of fast food, piped music, and fraudulent friendliness. Everything I hate about the United States, Tel Aviv has in spades. But it’s not just Tel Aviv; I could point to many other places in the world that have done this to themselves.

JW: In your book, Abroad, you say that “Anyone who has hotel reservations and speaks no French is a tourist.” How do you feel about the French?

PF: I adore them because they’re very honest in their snot. They don’t pretend to like anybody but themselves. I love that. I love the French restaurant and the French shop where everyone is addressed as Monsieur or Madame, regardless of their social class. They erect an iron curtain of formality between themselves and other people. I find that I’m happier in an environment like that than in a pseudo-friendly one like the United States. I’ve never had a French taxi driver try to become my friend.

JW: Whereas here . . .

PF: Sometimes when I’m in a cruel mood and I’m being driven back from the airport by a taxi driver and he says, “How about those Eagles?” I’ll say something like, “What the fuck is this Eagles stuff?” He assumes that because he has me in his cab I have the same interests as he does. I don’t demand that he know all about Samson Agonistes, yet he demands that I know all about the Eagles.

JW: Aside from that, how do you like living in Philadelphia?

PF: The most accurate thing I can say about Philadelphia, from the point of view of somebody who knows New York and London, is that it’s sweet. When I want excitement, I go to New York for a heavy day or evening and then I come back to the dormitory. This is Quietville.