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LIFE LESSONS
Falling Down
Just the ordinary trials and tribulations of your not-so-friendly neighborhood narcissist
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I deactivated my Facebook account — again.
It’s simply too easy for me to feel self-righteous and smug and then lord it over everyone with my endless diatribes full of poignant insight and caustic wit. In the past century, this might have qualified me for a newspaper column or position of standing in the literati, where my snark would be on full display and celebrated for its biting satire, but on 21st-century social media, I just look like a dick.
I’m not saying those puffers and paper-stainers of old were in any way emotionally healthy. Most of them soaked themselves in booze as a way to alleviate their many demons. All those esteemed writers and social critics who used their wit as weapons of social warfare: rascals such as Truman Capote, Oscar Wilde, Dorothy Parker, and Alexander Woollcott. I think they all died early, angry, and drunk, and as delightful as that sounds, I think I’d like to find a better way. Calvin Trillin, caustic as he was, always seemed rather normal and domesticated, but he was born in Missouri, so maybe he had that midwestern thing. Nothing bothers those guys.
