THAT'LL BE THE DAY!

New Zealand Listener, Volume 11, Issue 285, 8 December 1944, Page 9

THAT'LL BE THE DAY!

When A High-brow | Is Proud To | Admit It

| (Written for "The }

Listener"

by

KAY

the hardihood the other day to confess himself a lowbrow. His courage arrested me at the time, but what I am now wondering is if I have ever heard anyone claim to be a high-brow. O NE of your contributors had When did people first begin to be conscious of their brows? Were there any in, say, Elizabethan times, or do they belong specifically to the industrial era? Apparently their Victorian equivalent was the blue-stocking with such an astonishing erudition as to put the wind up most people, especially males who felt themselves threatened by this dangerous new specimen. The high-brow is still mostly feminine gender but no longer feared; in fact, rather a gay girl who likes a cocktail and has a quiver full of quips and limericks and an answer for every question. Even a question for every answer -that’s where the cubic inches of the brow come in. She acquires her knowledge, not by solitude, by reading, or by thought, but by rapidly skimming the cream of the most select periodicals. Then she goes to parties and listens to the «chit-chat that sometimes rises to great heights and adds her ‘own adroit skimmings. Be Candid About Sex Sex must be candidly thrashed out, with its dark complexes and phallic symbols, which reveal themselves in the most unsuspected places. Everything is Freudian. The more knowingly you can talk about the implications of sex, the less you know about baby’s napkins. As a general rule high-brows don’t go in for families, which would dim their brows too much, Imagine the havoc in such circles if someone started to talk of infants’ teething troubles. The first pre-requisite of the highbrow is that she will lollop around in slacks in her leisure hours. The male of the species prefers corduroy velvet pants and suede shoes. But don’t imagine that all women who wear slacks are prospective or fully-arrived high-brows, Some wear them because of comfort or perhaps because they think slacks give the figure more sales talk. Nor must the slacks wearer be confused with the "women who wear the trousers"; that is, women who browbeat -and even beat-their husbands. Oddly enough, these real militants of their sex usually wear skirts and scorn those bogus usurpers, the slacks addicts,

The Cezanne prints pinned askew on the wall, earthenware mugs for tea or beer, cushions to sit on, unmade beds, everything orderly dismissed as being suburban-these ate some of the attributes_ of high-browism, which is younger sister to bohemianism. I have never met the high-brow yet who owned he or she was one, It is always the other fellow. But one day a super H-H-B. will rise up and say, I’m a high-brow and I’m proud of it! Then will follow instantly a change from derision to pride; because high-brows are, if nothing else, good echoes and they have often quite a nice discernment in picking the authentic echo. ey,

We have the "arty" who dismiss politics and assert that art must remain uncontaminated by platform; the L.W. highbrows who maintain ‘that their propaganda will go over big if cleverly dressed up with a pinch of art. But I must distinguish the L.W.H.B. from the

real social workers who would be on the right side of the barricades if the fight came. The others are what I call the hammer-and-sickle intelligentsia who freely quote Lenin and bring every topic back to the workers. It is noticeable that these exponents of the working class, these progressives as they call themselves, consort mostly with the higher-ups. But, as a rule, high-brows have few social snobberies. They are only intellectual snobs. One of the great unwashed, with the right pass in his hand, may find himself admitted. A Sense of Adventure They have certain haunts and are to be found at lunch hour eating rice with chopsticks in the Chinese quarter; and also at a small dark Inn off the main road. The Inn of course caters for a bigger clientele than the high-hats, but no horny-handed sons of toil are ever to be found in its Rembrandtian halfdarkness. It gives these people a sense of adventure to chat in a matey way with tramdrivers and fish-shop servers. The socially negligible, they’re the ones to cultivate; they yield a richer crop; their cliches are most refreshing! At highlight gatherings some names are never mentioned. Upton Sinclair, say, or Douglas Reed, or van Paasen. Dos Passos, well yes. Hemingway is slumping, Steinbeck is shrugged away.

Joyce of course, especially Finnegan’s Wake, but Henry Miller and Eudora Welty are newer names. Get Your Names Right One name must always be whispered — the sacred name of Kafka. The supreme test is: do you know Kafka (Holderlin is also a maybe). If you don’t, go and swat it up. No pasaran till you do. Marx and Freud are de rigueur, although there are faint signs that both Mames are on the wane. Dash it, when one’s greengrocer starts talking of "this Frood" it’s time to substitute another name, Jung sounds so much fresher — like saying chartreuse for green. It is most important to get your names right. Never confuse van Dyck, and you must pronounce Van Gogh as if you wore a kilt (but never mention his Sunflowers — it’s like mentioning Beethoven’s Moonlight). The Steins must be known by heart: Ein, Ep, and-most important of all-Gertrude., ‘Picasso is a name that is getting round quite too much; better names to mention are Dali, or the queer paintings of that retired dress designer, Hirshfield, When discussing films, the director must alwdys be mentioned. Instead of saying, "Are you coming to A.B.? Grable’s in it," you must say, "Coming to A.B.P-a Hitchcock." Words like montage, Welles, fade-outs, shots, and Pudovkin must be used freely. Never say, "The photography was good." That denotes a Primer One high-brow. There are right ways of listening to music. With an intense absorption, with eyes shut ‘tight (N.B.-this is crucial). You may sway, but never must you tap your feet. You must follow the music with the little caption from T. S. Eliot that fits the case. "Defunctive music under the Sea" to follow Debussy’s" Buried Cathedral; or the neat phrase thrown off carelessly to denote how much you are in the know about Opus 79A, that of course being late middle period before the composer became metaphysical. Bach could suitably be termed mathematical and Beethoven romantic, To have one’s ticket punched for admittance to these select little coteries in lounges, by the seaside, or in cone verted attics you’ve got to know a thing . or two, but the main rule is: fever talk about ordinary matters. Remember a few catchwords: Freudian, Apocryphal, Surrealist. They might do to go on with. And remember, grass is not green to a high-brow. Call it puce, a handkerchief of the Lord, anything you like but never, never call it green.