In just a second, in just a second. You keep talking about ego. My God, it would take Christ himself to decide what's ego and what isn't. This is God's universe, buddy, not yours, and he has the final say about what's ego and what isn't. What about your beloved Epictetus? Or your beloved Emily Dickinson? You want your Emily, every time she has an urge to write a poem, to just sit down and say a prayer till her nasty, egotistical urge goes away? No, of course you don't! But you'd like your friend Professor Tupper's ego taken away from him. That's different. And maybe it is. Maybe it is. But don't go screaming about egos in general. In my opinon, if you really want to know, half of the nastiness in the world is stirred up by people who aren't using their true egos. Take your Professor Tupper. From what you say about him, anyway, I'd lay almost any odds that this thing he's using, the thing you think is his ego, isn't his ego at all but some other, much dirtier, much less basic faculty. My God, you've been around schools long enough to know the score. Scratch an incompetent schoolteacher-or, for that matter, college professor-and half the time you find a displaced first-class automobile mechanic or a goddam stonemason. Take LeSage, for instance-my friend, my employer, my Rose of Madison Avenue. You think it was his ego that got him into television? Like hell it was! He has no ego any more-if ever he had one. He's split it up into hobbies. he has at least three hobbies I know of-and they all have to do with a big ten-thousand-dollar workroom in his basement, full of power tools and vises and God knows what else. Nobody who's really using his ego, his real ego, has anytime for any goddam hobbies.
( J.D. Salinger )
[ Franny and Zooey ]
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