After Gonk

To judge by its content, the typical British reader of the weekly Spectator is a staid, orderly man who carries an umbrella on threatening days, and whose wife has the vicar to tea in the garden. He is likely to say "verb. sap." when he means "a word to the wise," and if he says, "I rather think I shall go sailing tomorrow, D.V.," everyone knows that he means "Deo volente" (God willing).

He may resent the satires on British mores of such writers as Max Beerbohm, "Saki," and Evelyn Waugh, but he will concede humor to the contrariness of inanimate objects--such as the collar-button under the bureau--preferably someone else's collar-button. He dislikes gloomy foreign philosophies such as Jean-Paul Sartre's Existentialism, and he likes to see them made fun of, in his fashion. Recently he has been getting what he wants in some spirited exercises in the Spectator's colums.

The Marmalade Hypothesis. Contributor Paul F. Jennings started everything off by hailing an entirely new philosopher--"Pierre-Marie Ventre"--and a new philosophy: "Resistentialism." Wrote Satirist Jennings:

"Resistentialism is a philosophy of tragic grandeur. It is difficult to give an account of it in textbook English after hearing Ventre's witty aphorisms, but I will try. Resistentialism derives its name from its central thesis that Things (res) resist (resister) men . . . Pre-atomic philosophies . . . were concerned merely with what men think about Things. Now, Resistentialism is the philosophy of what Things think about us . . .

"Readers of this journal will recall the interesting account that appeared some time ago of the experiments in which pieces of toast and marmalade were dropped on various samples of carpet arranged in order of quality from coir [coconut fiber] matting to the finest Kirman rugs; the marmalade-downwards incidence was found to vary directly with the quality of the carpet . . . Gonk's Hypothesis, formulated by our own Professor Gonk, of the Cambridge Trichological Institute, states that a subject who has rubbed a wet shaving brush over his face before applying the cream cannot, however long and furiously he shakes the brush, prevent water from dribbling down his forearm and wetting his sleeve once he starts shaving. Gonk has also, of course, carried out some brilliant research on collar-studs, shoelaces, tin-openers, and the Third Programme atmospherics . . .*

"The Resistentialist ideal is to free man from his tragic destiny of Thing-hauntedness by refusing to enter into relation with Things. Things always win, and man can be free from them only by not doing anything at all."

The Custard Principle. Ventre hit a deep strain in Spectator readers. But would his philosophy work? Wrote one: "Kick the cat, snap asunder the shanking mashie . . . show resistentia that you will stand no nonsense. But this is bad for the blod pressure . . . Ventre gives no guide in this dilemma." Wrote another: man might still "divide, deceive and sometimes rule. A lawn perishing from drought may be saved by its owner's . . . leaving a valuable book outdoors. By a variation of this principle, the grim persistence of watched pots in not boiling can be harnessed to prevent the ruin of a custard . . ."

By last week, word of the Jennings bull's-eye had reached the marble-topped tables of the famed Cafe de Flore, on Paris' Left Bank, where small, homely M. Sartre had first preached Existentialism. The young Existentialists who still hung around the Flore took the news of Resistentialism calmly. Said a philosophy student: "The idea merits attention. Voyes-vous, the antagonism between things and man is nothing new. Even the great Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason seems prepared to grant some mysterious powers to things. In this book Kant admitted that the essential nature of objects remains completely unknown.* The trouble for us Existentialists is: how are we going to argue with inanimate objects? Let collar-buttons and slices of toast write a treatise of their own philosophy and then we will deal with their arguments."

M. Sartre himself was unavailable for comment.

*"Collar-studs" means collar-buttons. "Tin-openers" is British for can-openers. "Third Programme atmospherics" refers to static interfering with higher-browed broadcasts of the BBC. *Kant's view of the Ding ais sich (Thing-in-itself) may have been influenced by the fact that nothing whatever, not even marriage, ever happened to Immanuel Kant. He lived all his life in or near Koenigsburg; his habits were so regular that neighbors used to set their watches by his comings & goings.

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