Mania, page 1
Dedication
To Deb and Nick—generous, gregarious, hilarious lifelong friends. Please visit.
Epigraph
When there is no more hereditary wealth, privilege class, or prerogatives of birth, it becomes clear that the chief source of disparity between the fortunes of men lies in the mind.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
It is becoming more and more obvious that it is not starvation, not microbes, not cancer, but man himself who is mankind’s greatest danger, for the simple reason that there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, which are infinitely more devastating than the worst of natural catastrophes.
—Carl Jung
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Alt-2011 Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
1972–2010 Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Alt-2012 Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Alt-2013 Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Alt-2014 Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Alt-2015 Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Alt-2016 Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Alt-2023 Chapter 1
Alt-2027 Pearson Converse, Four Years On
About the Author
Also by Lionel Shriver
Copyright
About the Publisher
Alt-2011
Chapter 1
I was on the way to pick up a few things for dinner—as she did so often, my running buddy Emory was coming over that night—when my son’s school rang to inform me that he was being sent home for “bullying,” so would I please pick him up. Darwin is a contained, deliberate boy, hardly inclined to push other children around, so I wondered if there might have been a misunderstanding. He’d always performed at the top of his class, and—until recently—he’d been the apple of his teachers’ eyes. Sure enough, when I came to retrieve him from the front office, my slight, precocious oldest was sitting quietly, though his mouth was set, and he was staring fiercely into the middle distance, excluding the two adults in the room from his line of sight. At eleven, he was about the age at which I awakened from an indoctrination that Darwin had been spared. Yet his customary containment had a combustible quality reminiscent of my own demeanor when seething silently through Family Worship Evening.
“I’m afraid your son ridiculed one of his classmates,” the assistant principal informed me. “He employed language we consider unacceptable in a supportive environment, and which I will not repeat.” The official thrust her formidable breasts upward, dramatizing a haughty bearing in little need of emphasis.
“Well, most kids try bad language on for size—”
“Playground obscenities would be one thing. Slurs are quite another. This is a suspension-level offense. Any similar violation in the future could merit expulsion.”
If not the very best in Voltaire, Pennsylvania, Gertrude Stein Primary is (or was) a decent public school not overly far from our house. Two grades below, Darwin’s sister Zanzibar went here, too, while our youngest, six-year-old Lucy, had just started school here that September. Ergo, Wade and I couldn’t afford to alienate the administration. Even if our son was drifting toward the doghouse, we just had to ease Darwin through sixth grade and out the door, so I promised I’d speak sternly to him and remind him that certain terms are “out of bounds.”
The second-in-command didn’t let me go without adding a warning. “I do hope he isn’t picking up this kind of derogatory vocabulary because it’s commonplace at home.”
“I assure you we’re very civilized.”
“Any number of civilizations of times past held views we find abhorrent today. I think you know what I mean, Ms. Converse. This is a forward-looking institution.”
Back in the car, Darwin remained silent. Because, thanks to my older two kids’ anonymous test-tube father, his ethnic heritage is half Japanese, many people interpret his refined features and slight figure as signatures of a constitutional delicacy. But that slender frame is built on an armature of steel. Darwin is not delicate.
I let him stew on the drive back. Last fall, this leafy neighborhood had signs planted in nearly every yard, “Morons” welcome here!—the same sign that businesses in strip malls all taped hastily to their windows. But overt usage of such terms of opprobrium even in quotation marks rapidly morphed from declassé to crude to deadly, so the current crop of yard signs was more sedate: We support cognitive neutrality. The car up ahead sported one of those bumper stickers that had proliferated everywhere, Honk if you hate brainiacs. Because a plethora of other drivers also, it seemed, hated brainiacs, the trip home was loud.
Lest our woody, rambling five-bedroom give a misleading impression of my family’s circumstances, Wade’s and my fire-sale purchase of the comely and substantial property was made possible only by the foreclosures of 2008. In mid-October, it was too chilly to talk out Darwin’s sins on the commodious back deck, so I sat my son at the kitchen table while I surveyed our larder for what ingredients we had on hand. I hoped this cross-examination would be short, because Lucy’s school bus would arrive at our stop in less than two hours, and it seemed that I did still need to dash to the supermarket.
“It was about a T-shirt,” Darwin said sourly at last.
“And?”
“Stevie was wearing one that said, ‘If you’re so smart, why aren’t you smart?’”
I guffawed. “God, that’s lame! It doesn’t even make sense.”
“That’s what I said. Actually, all I said is it was stupid.”
“The S-word.”
“I didn’t call Stevie stupid. I said his T-shirt was.”
“Stupid Stevie” had a ring that in my day would have made it irresistible.
“Well . . .” I said. “When you wear a stupid shirt, that can’t help but suggest that you’re a little bit stupid yourself.”
“I don’t understand the rules anymore!” Darwin exploded. “Okay, so a person can’t be stupid. You’ve explained why, over and over, and no, I still don’t see how, like, as of, like, one day back around the beginning of fifth grade suddenly a fucking doofhead wasn’t a fucking doofhead anymore.” If I cursed occasionally on principle, I’d no place being prissy about my kids’ language at home. “But, okay, I get it. I don’t call anyone the S-word or a bunch of other words. But can a thing still be stupid, like a shirt? Can an idea be stupid? Can anything be stupid, or is everything intelligent now?”
I squinted. “I’m not sure. Calling everything intelligent might get you into trouble, too.”
“This junk is all anyone cares about anymore! But it’s not like we don’t all know which kids are total pea-brains. The teachers are always calling on them, and no matter what they say it’s always, ‘Ooh, Jennifer, that’s so wise!’ And then when one of the thickos claims five times seven is sixty-two, our math teacher says, ‘Excellent! That’s one answer, and a very good answer. So would anyone else like to contribute a different answer?’”
I suppose none of this was funny, really; still, I couldn’t help but laugh. I know I’m not objective, but mothers aren’t meant to be, and my son charmed the pants off me.
“I swear, the teachers are actually afraid of the class dummies,” Darwin continued. “The dimwits are never called out for talking during lessons or not turning in their homework. I guess now not doing your homework is just a different and totally wise way of doing your homework. Meanwhile, the dummies are becoming a pain in the butt. They walk around with their noses in the air like they’re so special, and they’re always on the lookout for something you said that they can jump on and take the wrong way. Like, Aaron told this girl Wendy that her new phone case was ‘super dope.’ He was just trying to be nice and also to sound cool, but she punched him in the arm and reported him to the new MPC—” At my quizzical look, he spelled out, “Mental Parity Champion. I think all the schools have them. Anyway, Aaron was forced to apologize in front of the class, because Wendy and the MPC were both too clueless to know that ‘dope’ means ‘great.’”
“I have a funny feeling that usage is on the way out,” I said. “Listen, you don’t say words like ‘thicko’ and ‘dummy’ at school, do you?”
“Of course not. That would make me a dummy and a thicko, wouldn’t it? But I don’t understand why we can’t stick up for what we think. You said there is, too, such a thing as being smarter than other people, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I don’t understand why we have to go along with this junk.”
I confess that I took pleasure in the cozy collusion of our heretical household. Yet I worried that my determination to preserve a sanctum of sanity behind closed doors put the kids in a parlous position. “There’s obviously something to be said for staying true to what we believe,” I said. “But we have to be prudent. Pick our spots. This new way of thinking about people is bigger than we are. If we stick up for what we believe in the wrong way, or at the wrong time, we won’t accomplish anything, aside from doing ourselves a great deal of damage.” In due course, I’d have been better off delivering this speech to myself.
“You mean we just have to go along with everyone else because we’re outnumbered, or because, if we don’t
“There’s no difference,” I said heavily. “Now, get your coat.”
Chapter 2
At the last minute, Emory called me on what I was no longer, apparently, supposed to describe as my “smartphone,” although I was baffled by how I was meant to refer to it instead. (I’d remarked earlier that week in our departmental offices, “What is it now, a mediocrityphone?” A colleague quipped tartly, “How about ‘phone’? Is that so hard, Pearson? Is employing a usage that’s actually more succinct still too great a sacrifice, the better to show a little respect, a little sensitivity? How about phone?”) Was our menu sufficiently elastic to include Roger, Emory asked, this new fellow she was seeing? I could hardly say no, though I was annoyed. After the vexing business of Darwin being sent home from school, I was in no mood to make a show of interest in some stranger. I’d sprung for barely enough costly tiger prawns for six, and another guest would be a stretch. Roger would change the nature of the occasion from my best friend casually dropping by to join us for supper again to a “dinner party.” Besides, we hadn’t seen each other since the fall term commenced, and I wanted Emory all to myself.
Sure enough, they arrived with a pricey bottle and flowers, whereas Emory commonly showed up with box wine that privileged alcoholic ambition over refinement. If I even bothered with olives, we’d usually pluck them from the deli container while standing in my dark-wood kitchen, and now I had to put them in an attractive bowl, with a separate dish for pits. Lest the kalamatas seem paltry, I’d also put out beet and parsnip chips, though the plain old salt-and-vinegar potato kind were better.
Leaving Wade to finish the prep, I issued our guests with reluctant formality into the living room. Emory’s gear—leggings with sleek black boots, a silk tunic in saffron accented with a red scarf perhaps purposefully reminiscent of her sixteenth birthday present to me—was simple but flash. Just as unsurprisingly, Roger was handsome. He was trim in that perfectly cornered way, reliably the result of vigilant dietary stinting and fearfully fanatic adherence to fitness rituals. The styling of his clothes was sporty, but their fabrics were high-end. He didn’t say much at first, but his reserve didn’t come across as shyness so much as an arch holding back to observe, assess, and judge. Immaculate grooming cultivated an air of sovereignty, perhaps the mutual quality that had drawn these two to each other to begin with. Yet he didn’t say anything overtly boastful or patronizing, so maybe I just had a bad attitude.
It can be best to say what’s really on your mind in these settings, or chitchat can feel pointless and diversionary. Skipping the specifics, I explained that I was still a bit upset because Darwin had been suspended for employing a “slur,” and he wasn’t used to being treated like a troublemaker. “He doesn’t understand what the rules are anymore,” I said. “I can’t blame him for feeling confused.”
“Well, have you heard about Obama’s expansion of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’?” Emory asked. I had, but I was hazy on the details. “I only bring it up because it’s a social template that’s bound to apply beyond the military. So tell Darwin that these are the rules from now on: Don’t ask where anyone went to school. Don’t tell anyone where you went to school, even if you went to Yale—well, especially if you went to Yale! And that includes secondary schools: Never drop casually in conversation that you graduated from Andover or Groton. Don’t ever mention, or fish for, IQ, obviously, but also SAT and ACT scores or grade point averages. You’re even meant to keep your trap shut about how well you did on newspaper quizzes on the major stories of the week. And forget asking or telling about a performance on Jeopardy!”
Emory delivered this lowdown with an admirable deadpan, but her intention was clearly mocking. “You know, they canceled that show last week,” I said.
“No kidding,” Emory said.
“Gone, finito. It’s discriminatory. And it’s been on since 1964.”
“Wow,” Emory said. “So much for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, then.”
“I caught part of that program while I was shelling the shrimp for dinner, just out of curiosity,” I said. “They’re trying to stay alive, and stay relevant, by asking unbelievably primitive questions. Like, ‘What—is—your—name?’”
“Phone a friend!” Emory exclaimed. “Oh, and I almost forgot: the army has also banned Rubik’s Cubes in the barracks.”
“Chess has to be next,” I groaned.
“No, it can’t be next,” Emory said, her deadpan still impeccable. “They already banned chess. It creates a divisive and prejudicial environment, and it’s antithetical to the spirit of unity in the corps.”
“Oh, God, pretty soon this could hit where it hurts,” I said. “Boggle and Scrabble are doomed.”
“As they should be,” Emory said primly. “They make any number of entirely equal people feel unjustly inadequate.”
We were leaving Roger out of the fun. After passing around the olives, I asked, unimaginatively, how they’d met.
“Roger was a guest on the show,” Emory said. “Though I’m not sure who was doing whom the favor. I had to warn him that no one, and I mean no one, listens to it.”
Emory was not given to self-deprecation to make herself more likable; she spoke from genuine frustration. From high school, she’d nursed a single-minded ambition to make it in television journalism (by contrast, my sole driving ambition from my teenage years was to be left alone), but for a decade she’d worked at WVPA, an NPR affiliate. For six of those years, she’d hosted a minor early-afternoon arts program that sponsored local up-and-comers and B-listers, and she felt stuck.
“How relaxing for you, then,” I told Roger. “If no one’s listening, you can say anything.”
“No, Pearson,” Emory said. “These days, you most certainly can’t say just anything.” I wondered if she was giving me a personal warning.
Roger, it seemed, was a playwright. I wanted to say, “Does anyone even go to plays anymore? Everyone I know hates them. It’s yesterday’s form, don’t you think? Who wouldn’t rather see a movie?” But I didn’t.
“It’s an interesting time to be working in the theater,” he said.
“Interesting?” I said. “I wouldn’t have thought that’s quite the word. Tricky, maybe. Or dangerous.”
“Great theater is always dangerous,” he said smoothly. “But I meant it’s exciting to work in the arts when the culture’s tectonic plates are shifting. The last couple of years have seen an utter upending of a hierarchy that goes back millennia. Back to forever, really.”
“Yes, I haven’t been living in a cave,” I said sweetly, nodding at the coffee table.
But then, I worried that Roger might misinterpret the tome on display as occupying pride of place, whereas this household’s exhibition of The Calumny of IQ: Why Discrimination Against “Dumb People” Is the Last Great Civil Rights Fight was pointedly ironic. As I’d felt the need to get in on the political ground floor in 2010, ours was a first-edition hardback, so the cover still pictured a little boy on a stool staring shamefacedly at his lap while wearing what no one would now dare call a “dunce cap.” Later editions eliminated the hat, the image too harsh a throwback to a barbaric past, while rendering the subtitle as Discrimination Against “D— People.” As “calumny” soon joined a host of vocabulary deemed ostentatiously “brain-vain,” the last paperback I’d glimpsed at a supermarket checkout had simplified the title to The Crime of IQ.
If I’d never finished Carswell Dreyfus-Boxford’s game-changing, era-defining magnum opus, that just made me like most people. It was one of those commonplace doorstops that everyone bought and nobody read. At best, the ambitious got through the set-piece introduction of forty pages, full of heartrending anecdotes of capable young people whose self-esteem was crushed by an early diagnosis of subpar intelligence. Once you digested the thesis that all perceived variation in human intelligence merely came down to “processing issues,” you could skip all the tedious twin studies, cohort graphs, and demonstrations of IQ scores being raised or lowered by fifteen to twenty points depending on whathaveyou. Initially, the “cerebral elite”—academics, doctors and lawyers, scientists—lampooned the notion that stupidity is a fiction as exceptionally stupid (whatever they say now). Yet as the drive for intellectual leveling gathered steam, it was the sharpest tacks among that elect who jumped on the fashionable bandwagon first.
