PT: So you didn't leave all of "Boy Fussell" in Europe. There are
things from your childhood that you brought back with you. Yet you feel
that you were transformed totally.
PF: Yes. It made me serious for the first time. I was a joker
before I knew Europe well. And, of course, knowing Europe began with my
experience in France during the war.
PT: You draw on other people's experiences throughout the book. Is
literature something you turn to as a way of understanding your own
experiences?
PF: Absolutely. And as a way of understanding the world in general.
Because the world has more people in it than are alive at the moment. It
has all the people constituting what used to be called the dead majority:
fictional characters, wisdom people, authors, artists, musicians,
painters. To ignore their continued presence is to blind oneself to all
the dimensions of human life. That's what education ought to be about -- to
enlarge one's awareness. That's why I'm so opposed to business education.
It enlarges nothing.
PT: What did you learn in the war that you didn't know
before?
PF: I learned that life, in essence, was not benign, which is what
Disney and Pasadena had taught me it was. War has nothing to do with
justice. The whole operation of the war was madly irrational, no matter
how necessary.
This is a motif that runs through everything I've written about
war, including Thank God for the Atom Bomb. That was designed to shake
people up, and it has. Dropping a bomb and killing 180,000 men, women,
and children is certainly irrational. That's the sort of thing you do in
a war; it reverberates through history. Presumably it is less offensive
than the alternative. You have to keep choosing unpleasant
alternatives.
PT: You make the point that often the people in the infantry, who
did the fighting, were not the articulate, educated people who could
bring that story back.
PF: That's why we know so little about it. Because the people who
engaged in it are hot autobiographers. Their ideas are dissipated in
narratives over the dinner table. Most of them don't like to talk about
it at all. It's just a bad moment in their lives and they hope to move
on. Most have.
PT: Did your interest in social class grow out of being in the
war?
PF: My social interest began years ago when I used to watch the
Indy 500 auto race. It came to my mind that nobody at Princeton was in
that stadium. I began to wonder why. Why does a certain class of people
love anything connected with motor cars driven at very high speeds and
dangerously? I decided to go to Indianapolis and see these people and
talk to them. I spent a week there. In Indianapolis I began to notice
flower beds outlined in dead lightbulbs, little tricks that would never
take place in Princeton or Pasadena, distinctly uppermiddle-class places.
And I got interested in differences in clothing and speech, even floral
arrangements. I got the sense that as long as we are playing an act for
an audience, which means being alive, we are playing it in such a way
that involves social class, and it's fun to know the signals. I began
inquiring into some of the signals.
PT: That's another thing Americans don't like to think or talk
about: the existence of class.
PF: Yes. They can't bear it. Once you show them it's not dangerous,
it's fun to talk about. I've had wonderful letters in response to my book
Class: A Guide Though the American Social System, from people saying,
"Thank God, you've relieved me. For years I've been worried about being
workingclass, and you have shown that it is the best class of all to be
in this country. You don't pay any income tax; you get to drink beer all
the time; you get to go to baseball games; you're never troubled with a
serious thought."
PT: Did you ever worry that your academic colleagues wouldn't take
you seriously because of a book like that?
PF: No. I was saying things like that for years.
PT: You have a reputation as a curmudgeon. Do you enjoy
that?
PF: It doesn't bother me. A long time ago I got over any kind of
anxiety or even interest in what other people think of me. The only way
to pursue your own career as a writer, as a thinker, is not to worry
about the effect of what you're doing or what people think about it. Just
do it. Do it as well as it requires and forget it. The alternative seems
too self-conscious and utterly inhibits production.
PT: So you have to become the judge of the quality of your own
work.
PF: Otherwise it's worthless. It's only the author who knows the
worth of what he's doing, and he's frequently deceived by vanity But
other people can't do it at all.
PT: What do you think about young people today, after teaching for
years?
PF: They're the same as young people always are.
PT: But they will probably not have the transforming experience
that you had.
PF: It doesn't bother me in the least. I think the way to lead a
happy life is not to think about what's going on inside you. You have to
learn the habit of paying attention to what's going on out there. That's
the important thing. And a book is out there. The Iliad and The Odyssey
are not you; you have to adjust yourself to fit their
requirements.
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