The New Criterion

Diana West
The Death of the Grown-up.
St. Martin's Press, 272 pages, $23.95

It’s impossible for me, not being a lexicographer, to say exactly when “applesauce” was replaced by another substance as the popular synonym for “nonsense.” I can, however, say that the word ought to make a comeback as soon as possible. Generally speaking, adults don’t eat applesauce. They shouldn’t accept the infantilizing effects of figurative applesauce, either, least of all in an age when “here comes the plane” reminds us of something altogether different from the approach of a rubber-coated spoon.

That’s Diana West’s argument: Fork over your applesauce for the meat and potatoes of adult thought, behavior, and responsibility, though they may be harder to digest. “Once upon a time,” she writes, “childhood was a phase, adolescence did not exist, and adulthood was the fulfillment of youth’s promise. No more. Why not?” She indicts the music industry, the laissez-faire or even actively deleterious parenting style of the Baby Boomers, and the fact that the young are now regarded as sophisticated when they are merely knowing. She blames multiculturalism and political correctness. She complains about misnomers like “adult bookstore” and “mature audience.” And, as William Grimes wrote in The New York Times (I thought he was joking), she even tackles “declining standards of shame among Rotary Club members.”

So why don’t I find it all funny, as Grimes clearly does? He’s correct to say that West’s book is “part argument, part rant,” and to conclude that it’s heavy on anecdotal material, the sort of horror stories one forwards hither and thither on slow work days. (It’s also pretty heavy on research and argumentation, but let’s not allow that to get in the way of the sneering.) I’d object that there’s a good reason we have the word “jeremiad.” West believes that society and culture are being demolished piece by piece. If a mother sees her tantrum-throwing child smashing up his Lego spaceships, does she break out the statistics and pie charts, or does she raise her voice?

I think it’s time we identified and warned against what I’ll call the Grimes Defense: If an argument has been exaggerated a little bit for effect, we can throw it out—baby, bathwater, and even the soap scum of lingering doubt.

West may get hysterical at times, but the most significant aspects of her argument are all but undeniable. Values have indeed replaced virtues. The former are malleable; the latter have been case-hardened by the centuries. Virtues teach us how to be an “us” in opposition to a “them,” whereas values encourage us to be a tertium quid, above the ruck and morally protean. We imagine that our feelings are too fine and our minds too subtle for us to take a firm stance on anything, but that is the childish hope of having one’s cupcake and eating it, too.

Half the high school classrooms in America (that’s not a hard and fast statistic, Mr. Grimes) display on an inspirational poster the words of John F. Kennedy: “Dante once said that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality.” Seeking out things to laugh at in West’s book without finding much to discredit in it: If that isn’t neutrality, what is? Grimes employs the increasingly popular stalling tactic of saying, Listen, everybody, it’s just not that simple, but, to borrow from a favorite children’s book, Daniel Pinkwater’s Alan Mendelssohn, the Boy from Mars: “Think before you act before you think before you act.” You may have time for nuance, but nuance may not have time for you.

I’ve focused on Grimes’s anti-argument because it handily proves West’s point. She envisions not a clash of civilizations but a lopsided struggle between “clash” and “mush.” “Clash” is for adults. It is George W. Bush referring to a “crusade” against terrorism, with adult disregard for whether his chosen term is strictly “appropriate” to the climate of self-doubt and sensitivity we inhabit today. “Mush” is the member of the press corps who scolded then-press secretary Ari Fleischer.

I just love that question—Does he regret having used that word, Ari, and will he not use it again in the context of talking about this effort? Thousands are dead, America is reeling, and a White House correspondent is playing preschool teacher, coaching an erring toddler—the president of the United States—about a naughty word.

One of childhood’s pleasures is the illusion of security, the belief that someone will always be there to clean up your mess. Today’s adults have a security blanket of their own: The easy joke at the expense of those who point out the encroaching danger. But to reduce West’s argument to “Dress Like Your Child, and the Terrorists Win” is to feast on applesauce. West hasn’t said anything of the kind. She has laid out a very articulate defense of her belief that the American public can no longer be bothered to think about things outside its immediate pleasure and safety. One of the book’s most horrifying eureka moments—and Grimes should love this one, since it involves numbers—demonstrates the precipitous drop in anti-Vietnam War activity in the years between the end of the draft and the end of American involvement. Remove the dangers and the ideals follow suit.

The most painful irony of all is that the ones who really understand what’s at stake, the ones partaking of the clash, tend to be much younger than the mushmouths. They dine on desert grit and MREs someplace far away. We can only hope that the thing sustaining them is still around when they come home.