Escape from Public Life

Bellow's famous variation on Gresham's Law

“I thought of a variation on Gresham's famous Law,” mused Saul Bellow’s character, Herzog, in his book of the same name, “Public life drives out private life.”

Readers will recall Gresham’s Law as (in a nutshell): Good money drives out bad. That is, in an economic system where there exists a money of superior utility, people will tend to save it and, instead, spend the inferior alternative.

In formulating his variation to Gresham’s Law, Herzog (Bellow), observed that our time, like all other resources, is ultimately finite. It matters a great deal, therefore, how we spend it… how we save it… to what ends we allocate our precious moments.

Continued Bellow, “The more political our society becomes (in the broadest sense of "political" - the obsessions, the compulsions of collectivity) the more individuality seems lost.”

We do well, in other words, to remember that, every minute we invest in the ongoing public circus comes at the cost of a minute that might otherwise have been invested in our own private lives… building our familial relationships and our friendships, fostering individual development and contemplating our innermost meditations.

This is the great, unseen predation of public life. The political process literally steals your breath away… one election, one news hour, one inane sound bite at a time.

Herzog’s/Bellow’s sage words in mind, we decamped the city of Buenos Aires this week to spend some time with dear wife and daughter on the beach... where we continue to flâneur the world, one idea at a time...

(Escaping public life in Armação dos Buzios. Source: Wifey.)

Until next week...

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

September 21, 2022 - Buzios, Brazil

P.S. Bellow’s Herzog also contains one of my favorite opening lines. In fact, I referred to it in Chapter VIII of my own novel: Morris, Alive

“If I’m out of my mind,” Morris reread Bellow’s masterly opener with a naked, sinking awe, “that’s alright with me.” There it was. Uneditable. Unimprovable. And, from the moment it was committed to press, unavailable. Along with “Call me Ishmael” and “It was the best of times...” Herzog’s deranged soliloquy surely ranked among the greatest inceptions of all time. And so it would stand, vaunted and unparalleled in Morris’ mind. Until, of course, the budding bibliophile read another classic and was thus compelled to add a new line to the scrawled, pocket list he carried with him in and out of the city’s rambling, weekend hours.