Self-Loathing for Beginners

The Spitzers appeared to be in an advanced state of self-loathing when Eliot abandoned the gubernatorial ship yesterday. But loathing over what? Was his shame as durable as he claimed in his resignation speech? He looks like he has swallowed a big gulp of crow, but is “The remorse I feel will always be with me” an accurate statement on his part? We detect a note of relief in his departing words:

I go forward with the belief. . .that as human beings, our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

In other words, he will not stay limp for long. He goes on…

As I leave public life, I will first do what I need to do to help and heal myself and my family. Then I will try once again, outside of politics, to serve the common good. . .

Serious students of self-loathing will detect in this trajectory the mark of the pseudo self-loather. Like Al Gore, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton before him, Eliot Spitzer’s dive may be a self-preserving stratagem designed to escape the harsher sort of public scrutiny and land someplace more cushioned where a person can be more effective, less embattled, better paid and — should he so desire — better laid than a public official.

As for Silda, her self-loathing seems at least temporarily authentic. “How could I?” reads her thought bubble. “How could I have gotten so entangled with this worm it no longer pays to leave? I should have run for Governor myself — like Hillary! And that hooker is so lame! ‘Ashley!!!’ When I think that he stuck his dick into a mouth from which came the words, ‘I am all about my music, and my music is all about me,’ I want to puke my guts out. And now I’m the icon for doormat wives. Thanks, girls.”

In US cinema, self-loathing in the line of duty was pretty much this year’s theme, making it hard to award SL4B’s coveted SLOscar to just one performance in the category: “Best Depiction of Self-Loathing.”

In Eastern Promises, Viggo Mortensen’s “Nikolai” had to become London’s top Russian mafioso in order to fight crime effectively. He ended up defaced by sinister tattoos and the splatter of underworld butchery, feeling too slimey to claim a woman’s love. That was also, more or less, the plot of Sweeney Todd, the vengeful barber and class warrior, magnificently portrayed in puddles of stage blood by Johnny Depp. Both actors were quite convincing and, more importantly, attractively miserable.

So was George Clooney’s “Michael Clayton” as a giant law firm’s fixer, a character who felt compromised (a) from the start and (b) to the core. After Clayton’s equally self-loathing friend, Arthur Edens (pb Tom Wilkenson), generously teaches him to put his self-loathing to work saving innocent maidens, (much like mob infiltrator Nikolai), Clayton ends up loathing himself for trading his livelihood (and ability to pay child support) for a hollow moral victory. He communicates this without lines, thank God, by slouching and looking empty, plus sad, palpably conveyong that the alternative to feeling compromised is feeling fired.

Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood and Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton both played ambitious strivers who spend their lives desperately running from themselves towards something they wrongly assume will be better. Swinton achieves a shivering state of free fall, and maintains it brilliantly, while Lewis keeps shooting black bile skyward as if we will never run out of the stuff. Bravo.

So who wins the SLOscar for best portrayal of making one’s self want to puke? Subtle Viggo? Operatic Johnnie? Suffering George? High strung Tilde or the explosive D.D.?

Well I just can’t decide. Isn’t that pathetic? Except I will say that Daniel Day Lewis’s Daniel Plainview does a little bit too much eye-crossing, shouting and turning red in the face to make a credible self-loather. When he famously bellows “I’ve abandoned my boy!” at a revival meeting, you suspect what he’s really feeling is tired of ingratiating himself with the saps he’s fleecing. There’s never a moment in which Lewis’s Plainview sees the worst in himself and figures it’ll be hard to live with. You can imagine him pouring himself a stiff one and cutting himself some slack, like, “Hey: At least I didn’t invade Iraq.” The giants of self-loathing don’t hedge like that. It was a fine performance, but less a portrait of a self-loather than of someone interestingly loathsome.

So, while we end up with an awkward number of SLOscar winners, I’m happy to say that we could at least pick a loser.

Books need friends, just like lonely rock stars, mathematical geniuses and losers do. Maybe more. Stars, geniuses and losers can all swap roles if they get bored, but a book lives and dies a book, and without friends books now die rather quickly.

To be this book’s friend, don’t be shy:

1. Quote from it (with attribution),
2. Ask your bookstore to carry it,
3. Give it to self-loathing and militantly happy friends alike, and
4. Post encouraging reviews of it on blogs and booksellers’ websites.

To be this book’s friend-with-privileges:

1. Turn it face up (or out) in bookstores if all they’re showing is the spine.
2. Leave it the bathroom of an institution devoted to intermittent self-loathing, like a university or barracks.
3. Wear its insignia proudly on a product from our store.

To be this book’s best best friend:

1. Become a celebrity and say it’s your favorite
2. Get it on Oprah.