He's Serious, Damn It.

In his column today David Brooks writes

But surely this is Franzen’s point. At a few major moments, he compares his characters to the ones in “War and Peace.” Franzen is obviously trying to make us see the tremendous difference in scope between the two sets of characters.


Tolstoy’s characters are spiritually ambitious — ferociously seeking some universal truth that can withstand the tough scrutiny of their own intelligence. Franzen’s modern characters are distracted and semi-helpless. It’s easy to admire Pierre and Prince Andrei. It’s impossible to look upon Walter and Richard with admiration, though it is possible to feel empathy for them.

In the first instance, I'm most likely not going to read Franzen because I didn't like The Corrections, or whatever it was called.  In the second instance, a large number of Tolstoy's characters weren't particularly spiritually ambitious. Why?  At least in part because Tolstoy wasn't David Brooks, which is to say not an idiot.  Lots of people in the world as it actually exists aren't spiritually ambitious. Some of them are horrid little men and women who might think they are spiritually ambitious, Tolstoy argues, but they are, in fact, horrid little men and women. Others, Tolstoy suggests, are just ordinary men and women with no particular claims on spiritual ambitiousness and who aren't horrid but who might be superior to both the horrid little men and women who assume a mantle of spiritual ambition and those who are invested in the search for authentic spiritual fulfillment.  All of them, Tolstoy points out, are part of the actually existing world. This is why the world would be a better place if we all read Tolstoy, or -- for that matter -- Trollope, and paid less attention to Mad Men, David Brooks, Ross Douthat, Ygelsias, etc.

If it is the case that some of Tolstoy's characters aren't as Brooks insists all of them are, and if it is the case that Franzen wants us to compare and contrast the present to Tolstoy's past in way that makes the present look as crappy as David Brooks thinks  it is, then isn't it the case that both Brooks and Franzen are dunderheads?  Or is the more likely explanation that Brooks is, once again, just plain wrong because he is a dunderhead or a liar?  And if he is a dunderhead or a liar, as I think we must all admit that he is one or the other, than isn't the more interesting question why is a dunderhead or a liar is blathering about things he only just barely understands when he could be studying hand dancing and really adding some value to the world.