Stanley Kurtz provides a humdinger of a review of Peter Wood's new book A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America today. Kurtz, following Wood, distinguishes between the "new anger" and the "old anger."
Wood says we’re living in an era of “New Anger,” and regardless of who becomes our next president, New Anger isn’t going away anytime soon.
What exactly is New Anger? Let’s find out by first having a look at Old Anger. Before we lionized all those angry anti-heroes — from Jack Nicholson in the movies, to John McEnroe on the tennis court — Americans admired the strong silent type: slow to boil, reluctant to fight unless sorely provoked, and disinclined to show anger even then. Gary Cooper in Sargent York comes to mind. Old Anger was held in check by ideals of self-mastery and reserve. As Wood puts it, “Dignity, manliness, and wisdom called for self-control and coolness of temper.” The angry man, Wood reminds us,
was once thought a weak-minded zealot, bereft of good judgment and prey to false clarity. Above all, Americans (especially women) kept anger at bay “lest it overwhelm the relations on which family life depends.”
On behalf of this ideal of reserve, anger was not merely checked, but was even partially defeated (today we’d say “repressed”). There was a time when Americans strove to train themselves away from actually being angry — a time when even the private, inner experience of rage felt shameful and was shunned. Yet in compensation for the inner sacrifice and discipline demanded by the art of self-mastery, Americans experienced a mature pride in “character” achieved. In what Wood calls that “now largely invisible culture” of Old Anger, refusal to be provoked was its own reward.
That was then. America’s New Anger exchanges the modest heroism of Gary Cooper’s Sargent York for something much closer to the Incredible Hulk. New Anger is everything that Old Anger was not: flamboyant, self-righteous, and proud. As a way to “empowerment” for ethnic groups, women, political parties, and children, New Anger serves as a mark of identity and a badge of authenticity. The Civil War, and America’s past political campaigns, may have witnessed plenty of anger, yet not until recently, says Wood, have Americans actually congratulated themselves for getting angry. Anger has turned into a coping mechanism, something to get in touch with, a prize to exhibit in public, and a proof of righteous sincerity.
. . . “For the first time in our political history, declaring absolute hatred for one’s opponent has become a sign not of sad excess but of good character.”. . . The decline of our old ideals of self-mastery and reserve both caused and flowed from the unraveling of the family. What remained was a vast new realm of restlessness. According to Wood, the effect was strongest, not in the baby boomers who first broke with the old emotional restraints, but in their children. The boomers, after all, for all their rebellion, were raised in the shadow of traditional emotional norms. Yet the children of the boomers have grown up with still less restraint, and this, says Wood, has produced a personality type that both lacks and craves self-definition.
Restlessly seeking some restraint against which to define or prove ourselves, Americans must now imagine and oppose oppressive authorities or hateful enemies, even where none exist. The newly unbounded American self, says Wood, is a ghostlike figure, perpetually in search of “something solid against which it can prove its own existence.” New Anger, Wood concludes, “is the desperately intense effort of these ghosts to feel real.”
Kurtz says, "If you want independent confirmation of just how good A Bee in the Mouth is, check out Stephen Miller’s recent review in the Wall Street Journal."
But before you do that, be sure to read Stanley Kurtz's own entire review of which the above is a sampling.
UPDATE 1/4/07 - Today Stanley Kurtz added the following:
Today, in “The Liberalitarian Dust-Up” Wood extends his cultural analysis of our anger-filled politics to a new development. Wood uses the “liberalitarian” controversy to make a couple of points. First, while “New Anger” is found at all points on the political spectrum, it is not symmetrical. New Anger’s home-base is on the left. Here, for example, in a dispute that gives conservatives, and perhaps some libertarians, reason to be mad, only the left (which is offered a benefit) goes for “performance anger.” The liberalitarian case also shows that angry politics can’t be explained as a mere response to President Bush or the war in Iraq. Instead, it’s part of a new cultural style.
UPDATE 1/8/07 - Stanley Kurtz updates the argument further:
Yesterday, in “Oh, now the right wants to talk nice,” Chait answered Wood. And today, in “A Model of Modesty,” Wood replies to Chait. It’s a fascinating controversy.
Also well worth a look are two comments, “Thymos in America” and “Thymos in America II” by Kevin Walker, at the “Many Things” blog. Walker argues that the deepest reason for our anger is our growing secularism. When belief is ungrounded, Walker says, the only reason for holding it is the strength of our convictions. Anger in these circumstances becomes a substitute for lost foundations.
As we see in Wood’s exchange with Chait, it’s important to actually read A Bee in the Mouth. Wood does not claim that anger never had a place in American politics. Even “New Anger” has old precedents. But that doesn’t mean nothing’s changed. Short pieces, my own included, can only convey the outlines of Wood’s argument. For the case in full, try the book. It’s a fun read, too.