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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kelsey, Robert
The outside edge: how outsiders can succeed in a world made by insiders / Robert Kelsey.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-857-08575-7 (paperback)
1. Self-esteem. 2. Identity (Psychology) 3. Creative ability. I. Title.
BF697.5.S46K455 2015
158.1 – dc23
2014047585
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-857-08575-7 (paperback) ISBN 978-0-857-08573-3 (ebk)
ISBN 978-0-857-08574-0 (ebk)
Cover design: Wiley
Cover image: ©Rawpixel/shutterstock
DEDICATION
INTRODUCTION
DEBUNKING THE OUTSIDER MYTH
‘If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you really want to know the truth.’
Holden Caulfield's sleep-deprived meanderings around 1940s New York provide the narrative for probably the most enduring treatise to adolescent alienation ever written. J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1951) is an exploration of the contradictions, shallowness and fakery of adult life – as seen through the eyes of a 16-year-old outsider. According to Caulfield, everyone he encounters is a ‘phony’ – pursuing thinly-disguised self-interest via artificial conventions and a veneer of amiability. It's a world he despises for its hypocrisy and materialistic insincerity. Seeking depth and purity, Cauflield clings to uncorrupted icons such as his kid sister or the ducks in Central Park.
It's a private and lonely rebellion: insightful yet naïve, sensitive yet hateful, individualistic yet aching to be understood. Defiant and insolent despite his inner confusion, Caulfield's inarticulate musings express both the hopes and despair of youth so authentically they've made Salinger's anti-hero the torchbearer for generations of tortured souls, me included. Like millions before and since, I identified with Caulfield's mix of cynicism and angst – even mimicking his train journey into Manhattan through adolescent forays down the Essex commuter line into London's Liverpool Street Station.
Clutching a day-return ticket, I'd wander the backstreets of the East End: collar up, cigarette in mouth, hands in pocket – the sheer misery of the streets around Petticoat Lane and Spitalfields markets (then, when shut, full of rubbish and winos) reflecting my lonely discomfort at the straightened adulthood I saw ahead of me.
Oh, how I loved Salinger for giving voice to my lonely disaffection.
Yet there's a problem with this vision. While Manhattan and central London are obvious comparatives – and Caulfield and I suffered the same mix or angst and alienation – we had little in common. Unbeknown to me, Caulfield had an edge. He was being thrown out of Pencey Prep, an exclusive private school that had equipped him well despite his inability to complete a history paper or enjoy the college football games.
The tutors knew him and even cared for his welfare, and he was captain of the school fencing team. Meanwhile, I was one more mass-produced nobody from a ‘bog standard’ state education system that expected, and planned for, low attainment. No one looked out for me and I was captain of nothing. So while Caulfield's alienation came from his fear and rejection of the expectations driven by his expensive education, mine came from an altogether different source: exclusion.
In fact, Caulfield was no outsider. He was an insider with attitude. It's a crucial divide, and one giving him an edge over the likes of me, who was simply on the edge: as denoted by our behaviour once in the big city. Caulfield confidently bluffed his way into expensive Midtown hotels – blagging alcoholic drinks and dancing with 30-something female tourists – while I kicked around closed markets, maybe engaging a homeless bum in a doorway or nursing a mug of tea in an East End ‘caff’.
Of course, The Catcher in the Rye is fiction, although Salinger's early adulthood somewhat mirrors that of Caulfield, with the added guilt of benefiting from self-made immigrant parents. Yet this theme of the romantic outsider being – in reality – an elite rejectionist, and therefore someone with an edge over less advantaged outsiders, is repeated time and again. A British literary hero of the rebellious classes is George Orwell (1903–50), a man disavowing imperial conformity to chronicle the poor and downtrodden of the interwar years. As social commentary Orwell's writing is explosive – not least his ability to experience the life of an alienated down-and-out or itinerant salesman.
And, like Salinger, Orwell's work has survived through decades of change by tapping into social exclusion via his own alienation. An alienation, what's more, that ran deep enough to reject the affected-revolutionary rhetoric of his fellow bohemians. Indeed, Orwell is a hero of intellectual heretics from both ends of the political spectrum – surely the mark of a true outsider?
Except that Orwell was no outsider. An Old Etonian – and part of the imperial governing class – Orwell, like Caulfield, had an edge over his fellow rejectionists. And he also had the indulgence of choice. Tired of roughing it, Orwell would return to his parents' seaside residence in the smart Suffolk resort of Southwold. Here, he could eat well, pursue love interests and perhaps be fitted for a new suit – all while damning the bourgeoisie for their selfish mores, petty snobberies and hypocritical values.
America's outsider here is Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961). A rugged and individualistic ‘man's man’, Hemingway repudiated societal boundaries by seeking novelty through adventure. His writing is legendary although, again, Hemingway was no outsider. He was the well-educated son of a doctor and musician. And those masculine survivor skills were learnt from his father at the family's second home in rural Michigan: a weekend retreat away from the smart gatherings of upper middle-class suburban Chicago.
As with Orwell, Hemingway pursued extreme individualism out of choice. Again, his expensively-honed skills and family connections gave him the edge required for him to profitably pursue macho dreams that indulged his love of European sophistication, hardcore naturalism and the adrenalin of war.
As outsiders, Orwell and Hemingway make poor role models. They renounced conventional attitudes not despite their privileges but because of them – relying on the edge their advantages gave them in order to succeed as outsiders. Meanwhile, anybody forsaking such norms without such an edge will find such individualism a far harder slog. In fact, they'll likely find it impossible.
Of course, to the observer, such rejection looks and acts outwardly the same. Orwell the tramp looks much like the next guy sleeping under Waterloo Bridge. Yet they couldn't be further apart. Given Orwell's privileges, he had
