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Pif Magazine
Pif Magazine |
On Sentimentality : Page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 And then this final bit of information: "That was all I packed a bag and turned off the icebox [even here, the marvelous precision of domesticity] and drove all night. We've been happy ever since . . . Everyone here is well." Oh? Are they really? Or has he been able to refashion his veneer of emotional surety? We ask these questions, and continue to, as all great stories insist we do. We ask them in the case of "The Cure" because that veneer has been so convincingly conveyed, because the quality of sentiment has been braided precisely and with restraint through a dispatch from the heart of one of Cheever's inimitable principalities.
It seems to me that there are two influential moods running parallel in the culture these days. There's first of all the prevailing noise of social incivility. Ours is a time in which sarcasm is understood to be wit. We hear the tenor of this attitude everywhere. The insulting putdown that has become the staple of TV sitcom dialogue. The single note of mean glee in the rant of talk radio America. And all this symptomatic of a general cynicism whose passive stance is resignation, whose aggressive one is irony. Contrasting with that, and surely in response to it to some degree, our aesthetic safe houses, our films and literature, to which we've always retreated in order to gain perspective or regain equilibrium, have gotten — invoking Joy Williams' list once more — mindlessly soothing and comforting without standards. The tales we're now often asked to read, desperate to qualify as brave and happy ones, require a back story of safe sadness that can be cleanly overcome. Whether this consciousness is presently so ingrained that it resides undetected in us, or whether it's cynically offered — as in the case of political discourse, where it's forever morning in America again and all those who run for office must publicly narrate a tear-jerking family tragedy — in either instance we live in a culture that mistakes sentimentality for sincerity. What has gone so far unsaid is the obvious truth that the spirit of a culture and its aesthetic tastes evolve. The insistent final optimism, for example, in the work of Dickens, reads to us now as extremely sentimental, for all there is to admire in him. Similarly, the insistent final fatalism of Hardy. As well, our moral perspectives alter over time. The narrow polemic of Sinclair's The Jungle, the high melodrama of Uncle Tom's Cabin, sends the siren screech of propaganda ringing in our ears. (Propaganda is always sentimental and has to be.) Maybe, with these shifts of sensibility in mind, part of the problem is that sentimentality is similar to pornography — the perception of it differing from person to person. Or, as the judge said, though you can't define it, you know it when you see — or read — it. If this is so, then it might be helpful to think of it this way: Sentiment is to sentimentality as artful eroticism is to artless pornography. In each case, in the former both the mind and the senses are aroused. Consequently, an impact is created that is earned and which lingers intricately, thoughts and urges intermingling. In the latter, the senses alone are touched and the sensation disappears when the source is removed.
Sentiment is emotion that serves the scene. Sentimentality is emotion that dominates the scene. Sentiment is selfless. Sentimentality is egomaniacal. Sentiment explodes. Sentimentality thickly oozes. Sentiment charms. Sentimentality deceives. Sentiment defines the dramatic instant. It adds to its dimension and refines its details. Sentimentality inflates the dramatic instant. All dimension and detail, like a painted face on an overblown balloon, become distorted beyond recognition and finally disappear. So, if we have individual tolerances for how much feeling is too much, if our personal capacities for and indulgences in emotion vary considerably, one from another, we can each nevertheless monitor our work continuously as we compile and revise our personal list, one like the one I've just offered above. We can define for ourselves what distinguishes these two qualities, sentiment as opposed to sentimentality, one of them vital, the other ruinous. We not only can do this, but if we wish to be serious about writing, we must. Tell us what you think. Email talkback@pifmagazine.com
Douglas Bauer's novels include The Book of Famous Iowans, The Very Air, and Dexterity. He teaches in the Bennington College MFA Program. His latest book, The Stuff of Fiction: Thoughts and Advice on Aspects of Craft, will be published by the University of Michigan Press in November, 2000. It includes an expanded version of this essay and "Endings," an essay published in Pif's March, 2000 issue.
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