226
DWIGHT MACDONALD
Barrymore was not, by this time, exploiting
his
romantic per–
sonality; he was not even burlesquing it, since the
ad libs–
except for the crack about Lionel-were not funny. He was
living on
his
capital, selling his gilt-edge bonds
(his
romantic
reputation) and when he had liquidated them all (when the
public began to think of him not as "the great John Barrymore"
of the past but as the drunken cut-up of the present) he would
have been bankrupt. Luckily, he died before that happened.
For their part, the mass public liked him in this final stage
of disintegration precisely because it showed them he was no
better than they were, in fact he was a good deal worse. In the
"genius" act of the Masscult period, there is a strange amhival–
ence. The masses put an absurdly high value on the personal
genius, the charisma, of the performer, but it also demands a
secret rebate: he must play the
game-their
game- must distort
his personality to suit their taste. Byron did it when he wore an
open collar and made sure that his hyacinthine locks were prop–
erly disordered. Robert Frost did it when he called a press
conference, not so long ago, on moving into his office at the
Library of Congress as Consultant on Poetry, and told the as–
sembled reporters that his job might be called "Poet in Waiting"
and further confided that he wanted some good paintings to hang
in
his
office: "I want to get the place out of the small-potatoes
class." Even the staid
New York Times
was stimulated to
headline its story: POET IN WAITING BIDS FOR A RAT–
ING. That Frost is a fine poet isn't relevant here; he is also a
natural showman, and the relevant question is why our most
distinguished poet feels it desirable to indulge this minor talent,
clowning around like another Carl Sandburg. Bernard Shaw is
the most interesting case of all, combining arrogance and sub–
servience in the most dazzling way, as in the thousands of post–
cards he wrote to his admirers explaining why he couldn't pos–
sibly be bothered to reply.
In Masscult (and in its bastard, Midcult) everything be–
comes a commodity, to be mined for
$$$$,
used for something
