The Curmudgeon — A short talk about Andy Rooney, by Jerry K. Robbins

Andrew A. Rooney ( January 14, 1919-November 4, 2011)

I hated Rooney. It was a love-hate thing. I loved him for his amusing writing. I hated him that he was so successful at it.

How successful you ask? He wrote a column that appeared three times a week in over 300 newspapers. He put his columns in books (7+) that were published by reputable book publishers (Random, Public Access) that sold millions. He made a lot of money from this genuine effort. More than that he got a lot of fame from his writing. He even has his picture on every book he’s written.

I call it simple because that was what it was. He didn’t offer saving advice about anything. He didn’t provide insightful commentary on world affairs. He didn’t invent a plan to stop aging. He didn’t illuminate our knowledge with a thoughtful biography of an extraordinary person. He didn’t even give us a book of recipes or helpful hints about raising children. There was nothing useful about what he offered. Still, people bought his books by the millions, and before he died lived comfortably in New York City, eating at excellent restaurants, and hob-nobs with celebrities.

What is so infuriating is that he wrote about the obvious. He devoted a whole piece to kitchen leftovers, another column about just sitting around the house. He told you what you already knew about driving, garage sales, and staying in motels. I have learned nothing new reading his articles about doctors, fat people, or plumbers.

Tell me you didn’t know that a handyman is a man hard to find (“Death of a Handyman”), that people can go crazy over politics (“The Nuts”), the tobacco industry is dangerous (“Where There’s Smoke”), or about the inadequacies of road maps (“Where Am I Anyway?”), that dentists are by-and-large nice people ( “The High Cost of Chewing”), and that repairmen never show up when they are supposed to (“No-Show Repair People”)

He wrote about the obvious, so I learned nothing new from him. At the same time there is a certain “edge” to his writing that is appealing. I refer to his penchant for complaining. He not only writes about familiar things he complains about them. He opens with, “Nothing irritates me more…,”* a phrase that set the tone of much of his writing. Sometimes he gets angry. So, as fundamentally unhappy people, occasionally mad, we feel an immediate kinship with him.

For instance, he not only wrote about soap, but he also complained that a bar of soap is too small. Mail? He complained that if he contributed, it would only supply the recipient with more incentive to write to him about giving more money. He complained about strawberry jam. Strawberry jam, for God’s sake! Signs are offensive because they always want to push him around. And as for sports, “I hate baseball.” How could you not like a curmudgeon (“I am not a nice person,”)** like this?

The reason we like him is that we are all basically grumblers. In public, we have to spend our time being nice, being positive, but underneath we are seething malcontents. Or, that is the way society makes us. We resent a lot of things. Just leaving the house makes us mad. We don’t like the direction of the country or losing our old ways. Nothing fits anymore like a cake of soap in our hands. Solicitations besiege us. We can’t stand baseball. But, of course, we can’t say anything about this. We let Rooney speak it for us, and so we like his writings.

I like his writings, too, and I suppose I will go on reading them until I find my pet peeve, people who say “No problem,” when they should say “You’re welcome.” I can’t wait to see how he skewers them. (He does, in fact. Oh, no. ***)

*Not That You Asked, (N.Y.: Random,1989), p.150.
**Years of Minutes. (N.Y.: Public Affairs, 2003), p.77
***Ibid. p. 75.

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