So what do I mean by "the Oscar Diggs problem"? Right near the beginning of the movie, Oscar (still in Kansas) is talking to a beautiful young woman who is apparently a sweetheart of his, about his future and prospects. She has come to tell him that another mutual acquaintance, a man named John Gale, has proposed marriage to her; and to her clear disappointment Oscar tells her that John Gale is a good man and should make her a fine husband. She suggests that Oscar, too, is a good man, and he replies, "No, I’m not. I’m many things, but a good man is not one of them." When she then goes on to say, "But you could be, if you wanted to," his reply shows that he has really thought this question through in a serious way:
Well, that’s just it. I don’t want to. See Kansas is full of good men, churchgoing men that get married and raise families, men like John Gale. Men like my father, who spent his whole life plowing the dirt, just to die face down in it. I don’t want that, Annie. I don’t want to be a good man, I want to be great one. I want to be Harry Houdini and Thomas Edison all rolled into one.I give Oscar Diggs credit for seriousness even though in many ways he presents as a very unserious man, because he is clear-headed enough to see that this is a choice and that (mostly) you can't have both. The things you do to be good are not the things you do to be great; and he is willing to lie, deceive, seduce, use others, and walk out on his commitments — all without a second thought — in order to get closer to being great.
The first two years after we married, Wife and I were both in graduate school. At the time I wanted to be a great scholar, and I believed (based on having been patted on the head so nicely all the way through school) that I had the raw talent to get there. We fought a lot during that time, because we both had unstated agendas that we never bothered to articulate for the other (let alone discuss, negotiate ... anything like that). And after two years, Wife announced she was leaving. OK, it was more complicated than that. She had interrupted a burglary and was the only witness to it; the accused was another graduate student, but Wife is white and he was black; the University (mostly white or immigrant) had a deplorable history of arrogant and entitled racism with respect to the surrounding Town (mostly black), stretching back for decades, so when criminal charges were brought against a black student by a white one it became a political hot potato overnight. There were threats against Wife, and the local police suggested she might find it easiest just to leave town. She finished out the semester but then did exactly that. And she told me I could come with her, or I could stay in school, but I had to pick. I had one summer to make up my mind.
Oh, that was also around the time she met Boyfriend 1, started fucking him within the same week, and admitted it to me a week later. He lived in our home state, so if I followed her back she wasn't going to promise that it would save the marriage because she might decide for him instead of me. But if I stayed at the University she would for sure divorce me.
What a "might-have-been" .... Wow.
So I spent the summer thinking about it. I figured that if I left graduate school, I would never go back. (This turned out to be true, although Wife went back to graduate school -- a different one! -- after three years of teaching high school.) I had no idea what I would do instead. The only thing I had ever done in my life was to go to school; so while I knew I was pretty good at it, I had no idea what else there was out there I could do. On the other hand, with the absolutism of youth, I also interpreted this as a make-or-break moment for me as a married man. That is to say, of course it was critical for this marriage; but I also felt that if I failed at this marriage, it would be careless or reckless for me ever to enter another one. I had entered this marriage partly in a spirit of desperation, because I knew that my social development was weak and I was shy-to-the-point-of-aphasia around personal questions or relationships or sex. I knew I didn't want to spend the rest of my life like that, and I oversimplified the question to myself to the point where I assumed I had to stay in the marriage to get any better.
In fact the way I framed the question to myself was this: Is it better to be good, or is it better to be great? Exactly the Oscar Diggs question. I figured that staying in school meant greatness as a scholar (though of course nobody ever promises us anything). And I defined goodness to mean the ordinary life of a householder: job, children, house in the suburbs, dog (though I've never really been a big fan of pets).
I also realized that the problem -- as phrased -- is a loaded question, not a fair one. Which is better? But better means "more good" by definition. Suppose I had asked, "Which is bluer, blue or purple?" What would that question even mean? And how could anyone possibly answer anything but "blue"? Of course blue is bluer than purple. So likewise if the question is, "Which is more good, goodness or greatness?" how can the answer possibly be anything other than "Goodness, of course." It's a glib, sophomoric answer to the question, but strictly speaking it's correct.
At the same time I also spent a lot of time thinking about Doctor Faustus -- and especially about Thomas Mann's version of the story. What I find truly distinctive in Mann's version is the Pact with Mephistopheles. Unlike every other version of the Pact scene, in which Faust conjures up the devil and asks for his service in exchange for Faust's soul, Mann has Mephistopheles initiate the meeting and his message to Faust is, in essence: You and I have already signed a pact years ago, and it is implicit in the very way you live. But it is time that we clarified the terms. If you don't like those terms you can always reject the offer, but it means giving up a way of life to which you have already become accustomed, giving up the productive genius that you are already starting to exhibit and which you can already see carrying you forward to great things in the future. If you don't like the terms of the pact you can always turn your back on your genius; you can walk away from the greatness that already stretches out in front of you. Having tasted that greatness, you can choose to be poor and simple and mediocre. Having ventured onto the high seas, you can piss away the rest of your life chugging back and forth in the shallows. But if you continue in the way that you have already started, and in the way that you are already well confirmed on -- then you are mine.
That's not the only sense in which I identified with the story of Faust (see also here) ... but it was certainly one of them.
As I write this now, I realize that the "choice between goodness and greatness" isn't really a loaded question. It's just badly worded. Because the first alternative isn't really "goodness". "Goodness" is just whatever is good. Really the choice means, "What is good? Is it found in victory and acclaim and glory? Is it found in what Homer calls κλέος ἄφθιτον -- undying fame? Or is it found in the quieter life of daily duty, kindness, honesty, and consideration for others? Is it found in the mundane disciplines of marriage, parenthood, and holding a job? (Mundane, but no less demanding for all that!)"
That's the real question.
I still think I made the right choice, even if I made it on the basis of a sophomoric argument. Partly I guess my opinion is based on my deep ambivalence about academic life: at the same time that I am convinced of my own potential for scholarly greatness, I also still harbor the reservations that I spell out at some length here. And I do think that there is a huge value in the "mundane disciplines." To be sure, scholarship also requires its own disciplines; but I mean that there is a value to the kind of discipline that doesn't simultaneously pander to the ego: that while there is some value in hearing, "In order to grasp the greatness which is rightfully yours, you have to submit to this and that first," there is far more value in hearing, "You are nobody special, and you have to submit to this and that anyway ... just because!"
Also, if I had taken that fork in the road I would always have wondered what would have happened had I only taken this fork. No matter what choice a person makes, it is possible to regret the loss of the other one.
And while I recognize now the foolishness of believing (as I did back then) that this was the only chance I had to learn how to be with other people, to learn how to be intimate, to learn how to face my feelings, ... nonetheless if I had abandoned my marriage there's a level at which it would have made it just a little easier to do the same thing the next time things got tough. And so, while nothing would have been foreordained, I would have made it a little easier to reach old age without ever growing up. Some people do exactly that. (I think my Father was one of them, although exploring that topic would take a whole post on its own.)
In the end it all works out for Oscar Diggs. He gets to be great and good, both at once. But of course the implication of that outcome is that being good doesn't have to mean falling down dead behind your plow. Somehow you can be good by using what you've got. If you are a con man, be a con man in a good cause. If you are a philosopher-manqué, write a blog. It's a nice idea. Does it work? Well it worked for Oscar, and I suppose I'm not especially discontent with where I find myself these days either.
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