Home		Dinty W. Moore “Curtis Knows Best”: A Television Docu-Drama Exploring the Towering and Permanent Dangers of the Middle Mind
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		Skyscraper gunman commits suicide 11 March, 2002, BBC News A mentally-ill gunman apparently unhappy with widescreen televisions has shot himself dead in an Amsterdam office building after a seven-hour siege. Early in the day the Dutch state broadcaster, NOS, said it had received a faxed statement from the gunman, who said he was “demonstrating against the manipulative sellers of widescreen television.” A spokesman, quoting the fax, said he was angry that new television screens were being promoted as “better looking than normal screens.” In the March 2002 issue of Harper’s, novelist Curtis White asserts that cultural conservatives like William Bennett, Lynn Cheney, and Dinesh D’Souza don’t much matter anymore. Neither, he adds, do liberal stalwarts like Stanley Fish and Michael Berube. While Ivy-educated intellectuals on both sides battle back and forth like pit bulls with a rubber dog toy, it turns out the future of American culture is controlled by insidious forces smack in the center, a treacherous band of “pragmatic, plainspoken, populist” villains that White labels “The Middle Mind.” The current Culture Wars, if you’ve been lucky enough to miss them, date back to a particularly insipid moment in our history when commentator, candidate, and crackpot Pat Buchanan began spreading the notion that malevolent entities such as the National Endowment for the Arts, liberal college professors, and all manner of secular humanists were destroying traditional American values, and in the process, destroying traditional America. Not to be outdone, various left-leaning voices asserted that, instead, it was folks like Buchanan, Bennett, and Cheney who were trampling the constitutional protection of free speech and trying to redefine our multicultural gumbo-state into a white Christian patriarchy. Back and forth, back and forth, the Sunday morning talk show debate raged through the 1990s until we all sort of tuned them out. White tuned them out, too, until he was suddenly knocked off his horse by a disturbing thought. White envisioned this other “cultural politics in our midst…moving, making its way, accumulating its forces, winning while putative conservatives and tenured radicals beat the bloody hell out of each other to no end at all. This third force I call our Middle Mind. It is a vast mind, my friends, and I fear it is already something towering and permanent on our national horizon.” You know, I read that part and I got a little frightened. Towering and permanent don’t mean much, really, at least when used to describe a cultural trend rather than a building, but they sure sound menacing. And towering. And permanent. Worse, apparently, this Middle Mind is sometimes indiscernible. “It’s not always easy to know when one is in the presence of the Middle Mind,” White writes. “It generally flies below critique’s radar because it has the advantage of not being associated with a particular political camp. It feels ‘natural,’ which is how we can be pretty sure it’s winning. It has its effect without being noticed.” At this point, White had me fairly white-knuckled, so to speak. Below the radar, feeling natural, working beyond our notice—this new danger sounded increasingly like some fresh form of chemical weapon, anthrax for the intellect. Had White named Saddam Hussein as the culprit responsible for this danger, I would not have been much surprised. But instead he singled out Terry Gross. Terry Gross? “(O)ur collective nose is rubbed in it on Terry Gross’s Fresh Air,” White continues. “Fresh Air is not merely a promotional vehicle for the Middle Mind, it is itself a prime example of the Middle Mind in all its charm and banality…(A)nyone who much listens to the show knows…1) Terry rarely interviews an artist or intellectual that real-deal artists and intellectuals would recognize. 2) She has no capacity for even the grossest distinctions between artists and utter poseurs…3) The show is a pornographic farce.” My faith in White’s argument went into significant retreat at this juncture. Terry Gross presents a pretty good radio show. Airing night after night, week after week, year after year, she has probably asked an insipid question or two, and has certainly had a few questionable guests, but in the end she interviews a wide array of literary authors, she reads their books, and she primarily talks about the ideas in the books, not just the sales figures. Gross should be commended for this. I have always thought she was one of the good guys. I also started to smell a bit of a rat nestled within White’s diatribe. What does he mean when he throws out the term “real deal” artists and intellectuals? Aren’t we being a tad elitist here? Who decides which among us qualifies as the real deal? Does Curtis decide? White fails to actually name those he considers to be “real deal’ intellects in his essay, but he does flesh out his hypothesis with a few additional examples of the “pragmatic, plainspoken, populist” peril. He mentions humor writer Joe Queenan for writing a book that too-simplistically criticizes boomers. He savages National Book Award nominee Louise Erdrich for her latest novel The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, a work that “cozens its readers with the content of pulp romance” and which he says is not “a work of art.” He rails against PBS’s Antiques Roadshow series, which has “turned arts and antiquities into crude commodity fetishism.” He finds significant fault with the writer Dinty W. Moore. Wait a minute! I had to read White’s essay twice, and then read it aloud to my wife, before I could believe my weary, overly word-processed eyes. I know this Dinty W. Moore guy better than most people know him, and if he represents a grave cultural danger, then we are in pretty good shape. The guy is a pussycat. Absolutely harmless. Throw pillows pose a much greater risk. White denounces my recent book, The Accidental Buddhist: Mindfulness, Enlightenment, and Sitting Still, a work of narrative nonfiction that (I hope) is far more accessible than the inscrutable philosophy textbooks I struggled through back in 1975 when my interest in Eastern spirituality first began. White flatters me by calling my book one of the “hottest” of recent books that attempt to “introduce (Buddhism) to North Americans,” but he also slaps me around a bit. My three sins, White claims, are that I wrote the book assuming my readers “wouldn’t know anything about Buddhism,” wrote it in a prose style that “works in novels written with Hollywood in mind,” and failed to offer a sufficient amount of “intellectual content.” Let me defend myself here. Or better yet, maybe not. There’s little point in defending my book because I know that White’s attack isn’t really about that. It is about something else. Here is what really happened, the unvarnished truth of why Curtis White singled me out: I bought a widescreen TV. I have no idea how White could have known this, but he did. In fact, I purchased the 36-inch techno-goodie on the very day that White’s attack came out in Harper’s. He not only saw it, he saw it coming. The man is psychic, maybe. I sweated my widescreen decision, put it off for months. My god, I thought, I am the shallowest of consumers, a mindless drone. But as I mentioned above, my eyes aren’t what they used to be, and in our living room the TV is placed a good ten feet from the couch. I want to see my DVDs clearly, and yes, some football, and yes, even Antiques Roadshow on the rare occasion when nothing else is on. Dammit, you’ve forced me to say this: I drive an SUV. And then, not three days later, I read about the skyscraper guy. Somewhere in Amsterdam a lone gunman is holding hostages in a tower, telling police he is angry that the “manipulative” sellers of widescreen televisions are making false claims about their quality. He is mad as hell. He’s not going to take it anymore. I begin to suspect there is more to all of these events than meets the eye. First, I buy a monster television. Second, White lists me as a towering and permanent danger. Third, some disgruntled soul grabs hostages to protest giant-screen TVs. The world is one big ironic morality play sometimes, isn’t it? Then it occurs to me that old cranky Curtis might very well be the gunman up in the tower, and I begin to worry for him. I mean, the guy brought me a little publicity, called my book one of the “hottest,” and conceded, amidst his criticisms, that it was “certainly not a horrible book.” He was obviously distressed, or he wouldn’t have written his article in the first place. Maybe, I thought, he was really, really distressed. On the pages immediately following White’s essay, Harper’s reprints a partial transcript of Terry Gross’s Fresh Air interview with musician Gene Simmons. Simmons, a founding member of the rock group KISS, was born with the name Chaim Witz, but later changed it. Perhaps his unfortunate naming (I should talk, right?) explains his lifelong obsession with proving what a super stud he has become. Perhaps it explains why he is so rude to Gross in the interview, bragging about the number of his sexual conquests, insisting that Ms. Gross should put aside her books and get naked with a rock star in order to discover the true meaning of life. This decision by the editors at Harper’s to run the Gross/Simmons interview just after White’s essay can be taken numerous ways. Either 1) They agree that Gross is an imbecile and the fact that she let Simmons on her show in the first place just proves it, 2) They feel guilty for letting White trash Gross so they show a moment where she is clearly fighting against shallowness, and one where she is a bit of a martyr, or 3) They are too enamored of irony to have any reason at all. Despite reading and re-reading his essay, I continued to not fully understand White’s argument, and the Simmons interview merely confused me more. Sure, I saw the difference between my book and a book with bigger words and more difficult sentences, but I didn’t see where my sincere effort to explain the inscrutable in simple terms posed any threat. Yes, I understood that Terry Gross never had Curtis White on Fresh Air to talk about his couple of novels, but that doesn’t make her evil. None of it made a smidgen of sense. Plus I had a cold, and was taking cold medicine. Plus there was this story about the madman in the tower. At one point in his extended essay, White summarizes the Middle Mind with this motto: “Promise him culture but give him TV.” Maybe it was just the Robitussin coursing through my system, but I had this idea that I might understand White’s Middle Mind Problem better by writing my own television show. I envisioned a literary exploration of sorts, an attempt to comprehend something by writing about it myself. I wanted Curtis White to like me, and this struck me as an intellectual thing to do. Maybe postmodern, even. What follows is the result. I started with the BBC story on the tower gunman and imagined Curtis in that role. I let Terry and Gene portray the hostages. I added a part for myself, because I want someday to see what I look like on a widescreen. Though I took some liberties in arrangement, all that you read below is 100% accurate quotation. White’s words come directly from an interview he gave to an intern at the magazine he edits (Context), and every line attributed to Gross or Simmons comes directly from the NPR interview. My words are made up, but since I made them up, I guess they are real, too. Here we go: Curtis Knows Best: A Made-for-TV Docu-Drama The Characters: CURTIS WHITE: The thin, bespectacled skyscraper gunman. Recently described by columnist Molly Ivins as “a splendidly cranky academic.” GENE SIMMONS: A large man with kinky black hair, he wears clownish make-up, a leather codpiece, and likes to stick out his tongue. TERRY GROSS: A slender, bookish woman with short blonde hair and glasses. Very inquisitive. DINTY W. MOORE: Hostage rescue negotiator. In his spare time, he writes shallow little books that appeal to the unwashed masses. He is tall. ACT ONE FADE IN AMSTERDAM—AFTERNOON—ESTABLISHING SHOT EXT. REMBRANDT TOWERS INT. OFFICE CURTIS is holding a rifle in one hand and a television remote control in the other. He appears to be highly agitated. Hostages GENE and TERRY are huddled in a corner, near the bookcase. GENE is crying; his white and black face make-up is tear-streaked. TERRY reads a book. CLOSE-UP on book: Louise Erdrich’s The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse CURTIS This is so sad to me. CUT TO: Hostage Negotiator DINTY enters, wearing a t-shirt that reads “I (LOVE) Middle Mind.” CURTIS, GENE, and TERRY react with surprise. DINTY Okay everyone, remain calm. We have a difficult situation here, but I think we can find our way out of it. CURTIS The only way that we are going to get out of this situation that we’re in is to get smarter, to know more. DINTY Fine. If that’s what it takes, that’s what we’ll do. CUT TO: Hostages TERRY and GENE whispering in the corner of the room. GENE has his hand on his crotch. TERRY Let’s get to the studded codpiece—Do you have a sense of humor about that? GENE No it holds in my manhood, otherwise it would be too much for you to take. You’d have to put the book down and confront life. The notion is if you’re going to welcome me with open arms you also have to welcome me with open legs. TERRY That’s a really obnoxious thing to say. CUT BACK TO: DINTY, confused, looking from TERRY to GENE. CURTIS raises his rifle in a threatening manner. DINTY (to Curtis) Listen, you’ll have to help me out here. I can see that there is a lot of tension in this room. Now is the problem something having to do with sex? Is that what’s going on? CURTIS The anxiety of the sex act itself leads to a general starving of the rest of life’s erotic capacities. To me, this includes architecture, landscape, an attention to pleasure, beauty, and creativity in every aspect. Look at the way we build buildings. They’re just pieces of shit—purely functional. DINTY Okay, now I don’t actually understand a lot of what you just said, but do you mean that this…situation…is about the building? CUT TO: DINTY walking to a window and looking out at the exterior face of the Rembrandt Tower. In the background, CURTIS fingers the safety on his rifle. DINTY Whoa, Curtis, you’re right. It is an ugly building. But is violence the answer? CURTIS There is no best way. CUT TO: Hostages TERRY and GENE, still huddled on the floor. Gene is running a finger through his tear-stained face makeup and subsequently using the finger to write “Gene loves Terry” on the wall behind him. GENE (to Terry) I was going to suggest you get outside of the musty place where you can count the dust particles falling around you and get out into the world and see what everybody else is doing. TERRY Having sex with you? GENE Well, if you chose, but you’d have to stand in line. TERRY That’s a really obnoxious thing to say. CUT TO: CURTIS walks towards TERRY, crouches down beside her, and offers a comforting gesture. He is careful to insure that the rifle remains pointed toward GENE. CURTIS (over his shoulder, to Dinty) For some reason, Americans seem to be terrified of sex. DINTY Well I’m not so sure she’s terrified. Maybe she just isn’t attracted to Gene. I mean, he is…peculiar looking. But Curtis, right now what we need to focus on is resolving this situation. There are snipers outside, sharpshooters, and I don’t want it to come to that. Now I think you may be a reasonable man, so tell me…about that fax you sent out a few hours ago. You said you were angry because the new widescreen television screens were being promoted as “better looking than normal screens.” Is that the issue here? You don’t like these big screens? CURTIS There’s a strong correlation between television and depression and we’re not quite sure why that is. That’s why I don’t have a television anymore. DINTY So you’re depressed? Well we all feel a little low sometimes…but holding hostages… CURTIS The problem is really suicide. DINTY Oh, that is serious. But we can find you some help. Why don’t you put down that gun and we’ll all walk out of here… CURTIS (interrupting) My experience with antidepressants is that they work. I don’t care why they work, they just work and they have helped me in many periods of my life when I needed help. DINTY Antidepressants? Okay. Listen, Curtis, I happen to be on Zoloft myself. Hey, really, lots of people take antidepressants. That’s nothing to be ashamed of. (Turning his attention toward the hostages in a clever hostage negotiator ploy aimed at creating a sense of commonality and defusing the tensions:) Gene, are you taking anything? GENE Of course, don’t I sound like a happy guy? DINTY Terry? TERRY Not really to be honest with you CURTIS (to Terry) You can’t really claim to be a serious or deep person unless you’re taking Prozac. DINTY Now Curtis, aren’t you being a little judgmental here? If Terry doesn’t want to take an anti-depressant, maybe she just isn’t depressed. You said yourself that television causes depression. Well maybe Terry doesn’t watch television—I mean she has to read all of those books for her radio show, where would she find the time? So you see, you and Terry do have that in common—no TV! CURTIS The stories are very much connected to each other. DINTY Exactly! Your story, Terry’s story, even poor Gene down there. We all have so much in common. I think we can agree that no one is going to shoot anyone in this room, right? I think we can forget our differences, whether they be about sex, architecture, or the size of television screens. I think we have come to a meeting of the minds, and we have found that we have a lot more in common than we thought. Right, Curtis? CUT TO: CURTIS lays down his rifle and embraces TERRY. GENE begins bawling and sticking out his tongue at CURTIS. CURTIS (To Terry) The problem is that part of the system has always been to make being smart uncool. Anti-intellectualism in this culture is as strong as it ever has been. In the same way, there’s the fear of sex. So, you can see how powerful the oppression is in this culture. It’s so powerful that it has made us terrified not only of sex, but of the idea of eroticizing our life, of making our life beautiful, of making our lives creative, of making our lives important. Oppression is so powerful it makes us afraid of the potential of intelligence, and that’s the only thing that can make us understand where we are and whether or not we want to be there. TERRY (Incredulous) Has it come to this? Is this the only way you can talk to a woman, with that schtick. CURTIS It’s all sound bites. DINTY I’m beginning to understand, Curtis. And I’m very glad that you’ve put down your gun. (He walks slowly in Curtis’s direction.) You are upset by what you see as anti-intellectualism, right? People are mean to you. They call you a nerd. Mr. Brainiac-head. IQ-boy. So you felt like you had to take a stand, make a statement. That’s why you sent the faxes. And that’s why we’re all here in this room. Right? CURTIS If you’re understanding it in a literary context, it’s one thing. If you’re understanding it in a pop-cultural context, it means something else. DINTY (still slowly moving toward Curtis) What I’m thinking is that this action you have taken is actually more performance art than literature, right? Is that it? You hate what television has done to our minds and our culture, and yet you know at this very moment that Dutch television is beaming us live all over the planet, so there is an irony…and where there is irony… CURTIS We are postmodern, like it or not. DINTY Right? Very postmodern. I’m postmodern you’re postmodern. Even Gene and Terry are postmodern. We’re really making progress here. I think we really have come to some common ground. But here is what I don’t get. Why here? Why Amsterdam? CURTIS I basically never have identified with America. There are aspects of American life that I like, that I find interesting, but basically I have never been very comfortable being an American. And now I live in Normal, Illinois. Is that supposed to be funny? DINTY (retrieving the rifle that Curtis has set aside) Frankly, Curtis, I don’t give a damn. CUT TO WIDE SHOT: DINTY uses a walkie-talkie to report that the suspect has been disarmed. Six Dutch SWAT team members burst though the office door and put CURTIS under arrest. TERRY goes for the phone. GENE cries. ~~The End~~ There, that just about clears it up: White hates television. He is generally uncomfortable with American culture. He is upset about anti-intellectualism. Plus he probably has a crush on Terry Gross. I don’t know that crush part for a fact, but Gross does appear as a character in White’s recent novel, Requiem. In the book, the hero, an unsung novelist, is interviewed on Fresh Air. The book includes some discussion of bestiality, and some business concerning a porn website called teenslut.com. “White is deliberately trying to shock the reader with his misogyny, his hatred of children and his Manichean view of copulation,” Publisher’s Weekly explains. But Gross won’t have him on the air to talk about it. Somehow, working through all of this, I did finally arrive at an understanding of what I believe White is arguing in his Harper’s essay: Books should be difficult, full of hard-to-penetrate concepts and language, not at all easy on the reader. In this way, the High Priests of Intellectualism can maintain control over which ideas end up in books. And who writes them. And who reads them. Or, as my friend Jane Armstrong suggested, “I guess we are supposed to hold complicated ideas away from the smelly and unworthy masses, keeping our brilliant thoughts as the keys to our secret kingdom. What bullshit.” The flipside of White’s argument is that authors (or radio interviewers) who take some of the more complicated smatterings of knowledge out there and bring these smatterings to a wider audience are doing a disservice to the educated elite. Only “real deal” artists and intellectuals should be allowed to muck around in the quagmire of ideas. And White has the guest list. It is an old argument. Intellectual elitism. White’s magazine, Context, is linked to Dalkey Archive Press (his publisher), and all are part of an organization known as The Center for Book Culture. But if White is indeed dedicated to a culture based on reading and books, he has it exactly backwards. I would love to live in a world where people, all sorts of people, passed their evenings wrestling with vast spiritual and intellectual questions, their ideas and minds fueled by the most articulate sorts of readings. But I don’t. That is a simple fact. None of us do, unless we limit ourselves to the smallest of inner academic circles. My students, by and large, don’t read books. Most of my neighbors don’t read books. The majority of Americans don’t read books. And if White has his way, they never will. Is there a place for writings based on intricate theory or philosophy? Yes. Is there a place for novels that deconstruct conventional narrative to such an extent that the story line itself disappears? Sure. Is there a place for those who prefer “working through a text” rather than “relaxing with a good book”? Of course. But if these latter sorts of book are the only ones “permissible” in White’s world, then those who have turned their backs on literature and print will turn further, and others will join them. That would be a real loss.
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