The Portable Veblen

22 THE MAN-SQUIRREL DEBATE

Once in her readings of William James, Veblen had come across an anecdote that greatly irritated her. Professor James had gone on a camping trip with a cohort of his brainy friends, and upon returning from a solitary hike found them all in heated conversation around the campfire. It seemed there was a squirrel clinging to the trunk of the large sheltering tree at their site, but no matter how fast one of them went around the tree to catch a glimpse, the squirrel moved too, always keeping the tree between himself and the nuisance.

“Does the man go round the squirrel or not?” was the heavy metaphysical question in dispute.

Some of the geniuses said that of course the man went around the squirrel. The tree was fixed. The man went around it. Period.

But the rest of the experts said that as long as the squirrel rotated on the trunk, keeping its belly pointed at the man, then the man never did go “round” him.

James, ever the reasonable one, the humanist supreme, settled everyone down by pointing out that the key to the dispute lay in what “go round” meant in the most practical fashion. And on this they all agreed. The agreement laid the groundwork for pragmatism and ordinary language philosophy and future camping trips, this strange accord from the “unlimited leisure of the wilderness.”

Yet Thorstein Veblen, an admirer of James who would have read this essay published in 1907, might well have wondered what James meant by the unlimited leisure of the wilderness, and might have asked for no shuffling evasion about explaining it.

The Brahmins were splitting hairs about the words “go round” while a squirrel was taking care not to be roasted on a spit for dinner. Since when is this unlimited leisure?

Even James, the great empathist, had his blind spots.

William Morris, her mother’s hero, had blind spots. He was seen as effete and ridiculous by Professor Veblen after he paid Morris a visit in England. Veblen came home and blasted Morris’s Kelmscott Press and the whole Arts and Crafts movement for producing overly precious items for the wealthy, the only ones who could afford them—decadent aestheticism, he called it.

Veblen himself was flawed. By god, he could breathe only from one nostril! He must have snored terribly. And he didn’t like dogs. How could he not like dogs? And he did his dishes in a bathtub with a hose!

Yes, everybody had blind spots and flaws, and she knew how to ignore others’ blind spots and flaws. While she was by temperament very forgiving to others, she was not inclined to be generous to herself. Nothing offended her more than her own faults, which seemed to be revealing themselves lately with alarming frequency. She was muted and superstitious, stunted and weak, and if she spent much more time thinking about it, she’d have a list that rolled out the door on a scroll. There was no perfect being out there, accepting, intelligent, kind, creative, full of life and appetite. Muckraker, carouser, sweet-toothed, lion-hearted.

Or was there?