The Age of Rage 

The comedian Jackie Mason used to do a routine about visiting a psychiatrist. “You hate your father,” the shrink told him. No, Mason protested, I love my father very much. “Then you hate your mother.” No, said Mason, I love my mother. Told that he didn’t hate his brothers or sisters either, the shrink suggested, “Maybe you’ve got a cousin?”

Reversing Tolstoy, the twentieth century decided that unhappy families were all alike. According to Freud, it was natural for boys to hate their fathers. And their brothers too. Phrases like Oedipus complex and sibling rivalry became part of the vocabulary of educated people.

The idea that anger lies at the heart of family life has become pervasive in contemporary culture. Anger in general has been exalted in contemporary drama, especially cinema. Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, John Osborne (first of the British “angry young men”), Marlon Brando, and Robert (Raging Bull) De Niro are only a few of those who have created and sustained the vogue of rage. Anger certifies “authenticity.”

As always, life and art imitate each other, and fiction and fact have merged. Celebrities now tell their life stories with special emphasis on how cruel their parents were. Miseries that used to be hidden in shame are now featured with perverse pride; skeletons in the family closet have become precious heirlooms. If you weren’t abused as a child, don’t bother writing your autobiography; you won’t find a publisher. The comic and affectionate genre of Life with Father has long since given way to Mommie Dearest.

But maybe the reason for this is not that anger is typical, but that it is especially dramatic. From Aeschylus to Dostoyevsky, great literature made use of family tensions, but with the understanding that they weren’t necessarily normal.

If it weren’t for my late stepfather, Jerry Fox, I might have been able to write a lucrative bestseller. My parents, after a stormy marriage, divorced when I was still small, and for a couple of years I tasted Dickensian childhood.

But then my mother married Jerry, and from then on I enjoyed a normal family life. I called him Pop, because, out of respect for my real father, he wouldn’t let me call him Dad. But over the years I saw less and less of Dad, and Pop shaped my life.

Here is where my autobiography gets really dull. You may want to skip the next few paragraphs.

Pop was a gentle man, but no wimp; in high school he’d been an all-state football lineman (I learned this from one of his old friends; he never mentioned it). He treated me like his own son.

Pop almost never raised his voice; he did spank me once, in a rather half-hearted way. If he and Mom ever quarreled, I missed it. There was no anger in our house, either overt or, as far as I could tell, seething. Displays of anger were called “tantrums” or “pouting.”

Mom and Pop had a strict moral code, but it never seemed strict; its style was easy-going. It was tacitly understood that some things just weren’t done, and they rarely had to be spelled out. We weren’t always blissful; life was partly a matter of putting up with each other, and making ourselves easy to put up with. This meant doing our duties, conversing agreeably, sharing jokes, and avoiding temperamental scenes; saying “please,” “thank you,” and “excuse me.” Love was expressed through good manners as well as hugs and kisses. Undramatic, but no less real for that. Even, in its way, “authentic.”

My heart always lifted a little when Pop came home from work (he repaired telephones). Dinner time was a cheerful get-together. Mom laid out a good meal, and Pop, after saying grace, told funny stories.

It was nothing to brag about, but it was, and is, something to be grateful for. At the time I assumed it was a typical family life. I’ve heard of much worse, and I’ve learned too that many stepfathers — and mothers, for that matter — are much less kindly disposed.

An acquaintance, imbued with the modern spirit, once speculated that there must have been a lot of buried anger in our family. I’m still trying to figure out where it was buried. I got the indelible impression that family life can do without it, if you’re willing to cultivate good humor and contentment.

Mom and Pop did have one great failure. They failed to teach me how much I owed them. They left me to figure that out for myself, and it took me an unconscionably long time.

Joseph Sobran