Simon Raven on Doctor Spock
A Young Person's Guide to Life and Love Benjamin Spock (Bodley Head £1.25) There is a photograph of Dr Spock on the back of the book jacket. He is walking down a street, both hands elegantly poised in his pockets, with a jaunty air, wellpolished shoes and a good-humoured, intelligent smile which proclaims that he was not born yesterday and is aware of the need to be tough, on occasion, as well as tolerant. It is, all in all, an attractive picture, suggesting a man of knowledge, competence and discipline, a warm man yet a shrewd one, naturally inclined to wide sympathies yet also inclined, if faced with folly, to irony or even to cynicism.
What a pity, then, that he writes in the tones of Uriah Heep turned pediatrician. He positively grovels before the young. It is not his place to say so but may he most 'umbly suggest . . . ? If it won't come amiss to their little lordships, might he venture to remark ... ? Of course they are all far more vital, idealistic, tender and imaginative than he could ever dream of being, but would they permit an old man respectfully to observe . . . ? The prevailing voice throughout this book is one of cringing apology for having presumed to write it.
Now, why this lack of confidence, this terrible sucking-up? For the truth is that this book contains the most admirable common sense. If one considers the matter and not the manner, it is a helpful and informative essay which treats accurately and moderately of all the problems of pubescence and the onset of sexual love. What's worrying you today? Pimples? All right, look at the index : Pimples see Acne, Acne pages 158 to 160, so turn them up. You'll be relieved to learn that spots and blackheads are not caused by dirty thoughts or playing with yourself too much, but by the plugging up of the pores. So wash your face, use a disinfectant, and don't fiddle with them all day long because this just spreads them about.
Simple good sense. Or rather, it becomes so when reduced to the few sentences above. The actual text, however, consists of two long pages of circumlocution and euphemism, at the end of which one's main impression is that it is blasphemous even to think of pimples in connection with Dr Spock's sublime and radiant young readers. The advice needed is there all right, and very sound it is, but before you can come at it you have to cut away 500 words of cosseting and youth-worship for every hundred words of practical value.
Which brings me back to my question. Why, when Dr Spock is so thoroughly sensible at bottom, does he have to wrap his sense in such layers of unctuous verbiage? Why does he spend so much of his time smarming at his audience, who would have far better cause to be grateful if only the man would get on with it? Yes, Dr Spock, they already know they're lovely kiddies (they've heard it often enough), and they already know it's not their fault (for nothing ever is their fault) if their little peckers stand up stiff: what they want to be told is what to do with a stiff pecker, not how holy it all is. You'll tell them in the end: so why, if you'll excuse the expression, Dr Spock, must you keep beating about the bush?
I will now take another look at the pleasant and sceptical face on the bookjacket, and then listen for a possible reply.
" My dear Raven," or so I seem to hear it, "you are of course quite right. But there is one point which you have overlooked. Whereas you know and I know that the young would be better and more truthfully served with short and precise answers, one's policy just now must be against this. In one way, as you suggest, the young themselves would probably prefer that I should simply get on with it'; but you must remember that they also require to be made to feel important. Since most of them are mediocre boys and girls who will spend their lives doing boring and futile jobs, this is very difficult; yet it must be done, or else they will become troublesome and violent — and as you may know, I am an advocate of peace. So in order to keep the young quiet and make them feel that they matter, I have taken the only exciting thing that will ever happen in their drab and stupid lives, that is to say, Sexual Love, I have blown it up as big as I can, and in so doing I have tried to imply that it comprehends, in itself, all those excellences of intellect and spirit, as well as all those social achievements and distinctions, to which they will never, in any other way, attain. In short, my sanctimonious tautologies are designed to make these poor wretches think that the one activity of which they may just be capable will transform them into successful and significant people. I only hope, for your sake and mine, that they believe it."
Thus the imagined voice of the photograph. For the good Doctor himself, alas, I cannot answer.
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