By the time in 1978 that I moved to New York to attend NYU -- not for scholastic purposes but because it was the most legitimate excuse I could muster for moving to Gotham -- I was not just a regular reader of Russell Baker, the NYTimes columnist, I wanted to
be Russell Baker.
My impression was of someone who had so much fun filling his 800-word space three times a week that he did so while jumping up and down in his chair.
He quickly disabused me of that notion when I interviewed him for a school newspaper. He had just won the first of his two Pulitzer prizes for commentary. When I asked him if writing were ever fun for him, he said, flatly, "No. My guess is that anyone for whom writing is fun is not a professional." He went on to say that his job was "like a surgeon who takes out so many gall bladders a week. It's a nice day and you want to sit in the park, but there's this space that you have to fill." He concluded by noting that at 54 he had already counted the number of columns he would have to write before retiring.
So maybe I wasn't destined to be Russell Baker after all. I still don't know if he was being genuinely cynical or theatrically so. But I do know that in a brief journalism career immediately following graduation from NYU, I got a taste of what he was talking about. "I have met the enemy and he is me" rang through my head on more than one occasion after not having made one keystroke in an expected 2500-word piece. I know I have a lot of company. I understood then why so many writers are alcoholics.
Having said all that, I retain a keen appreciation -- and memory -- for much of Russell Baker's work. One column I particularly liked was one called "Why Being Serious is Hard." You can find it below. And if you've never heard of Russell Baker, go ahead and Google him to read more.
Why Being Serious is Hard
by Russell Baker
Here is a letter of friendly advice. "Be serious," it says. What it means, of course, is, "Be solemn." The distinction between being serious and being solemn seems to be vanishing among Americans, just as surely as the distinction between "now" and "presently" and the distinction between liberty and making a mess.
Being solemn is easy. Being serious is hard. You probably have to be born serious, or at least go through a very interesting childhood. Children almost always begin by being serious, which is what makes them so entertaining when compared to adults as a class.
Adults, on the whole, are solemn. The transition from seriousness to solemnity occurs in adolescence, a period in which Nature, for reasons of her own, plunges people into foolish frivolity. During this period the organism struggles to regain dignity by recovering childhood's genius for seriousness. It is usually a hopeless cause.
As a result, you have to settle for solemnity. Being solemn has almost nothing to do with being serious, but on the other hand, you can't go on being adolescent forever, unless you are in the performing arts, and anyhow most people can't tell the difference. In fact, though Americans talk a great deal about the virtue of being serious, they generally prefer people who are solemn over people who are serious.
In politics, the rare candidate who is serious, like Adlai Stevenson, is easily overwhelmed by one who is solemn, like General Eisenhower. This is probably because it is hard for most people to recognize seriousness, which is rare, especially in politics, but comfortable to endorse solemnity, which is as commonplace as jogging.
Jogging is solemn. Poker is serious. Once you grasp that distinction, you are on your way to enlightenment. To promote the cause, I submit the following list from which the vital distinction should emerge more clearly.
(1) Shakespeare is serious. David Suskind is solemn.
(2)
Chicago is serious.
California is solemn.
(3) Blow-dry hair stylings on anchor men for local television shows are solemn. Henry James is serious.
(4) Falling in love, getting married, having children, getting divorced and fighting over who gets the car and the Wedgewood are all serious. The new sexual freedom is solemn.
(5) Playboy is solemn. The New Yorker is serious.
(6) S.J. Perelman is serious. Norman Mailer is solemn.
(7) The
Roman Empire was solemn. Periclean Athens was serious.
(8) Arguing about "structured programs" of anything is solemn. So are talking about "utilization," attending conferences on the future of anything, and group bathing when undertaken for the purpose of getting to know yourself better, or at the prescription of a swami. Taking a long walk by yourself during which you devise a foolproof scheme for robbing Cartiers is serious.
(9)
Washington is solemn.
New York is serious. So is
Las Vegas, but
Miami Beach is solemn.
(10) Humphrey Bogart movies about private eyes and Randolph Scott movies about gunslingers are serious. Modern movies that are sophisticated jokes about Humphrey Bogart movies and Randolph Scott movies are solemn.
Making lists, of course, is solemn, but this is permissible in newspaper columns, because newspaper columns are solemn. They strive, after all, to reach the mass audience, and the mass audience is solemn, which accounts for the absence of seriousness in television, paperback books found in airport bookracks, the public school systems of America, wholesale furniture outlets, shopping centers and American-made automobiles.
I make no apology for being solemn rather than serious. Nor should anyone else. It is the national attitude. It is perfectly understandable. It is hard to be Periclean Athens. It is hard to be Shakespeare. It is hard to be S.J. Perelman. It is hard to be serious.
And yet, one cannot go on toward eternity without some flimsy attempt at dignity. Adolescence will not do. One must at least make the effort to resume childhood's lost seriousness, and so, with the best of intentions, one tries his best, only to end up being vastly, uninterestingly solemn.
Writing sentences that use "One" as a pronoun is solemn. Making pronouncements on American society is solemn. Turning yourself off when pronouncements threaten to gush is not exactly serious, although it shows a shred of wisdom.
New York Times Magazine [April 30, 1978, p. 17]