Cats, Cradles, Sopranos, And Boomer-Era Narcissism

If you're a professional storyteller, as I am, you have to stand in awe of Harry Chapin. He raised the song-as-story to high art --- or perhaps he returned it to high art, since the medieval bard would often sing the story he was telling. Any Chapin song is a study in compressed and refined emotion. I'm most partial to "Taxi", but most younger listeners know Chapin, if they know him at all, from "Cat's In The Cradle".

My father traveled for much of my childhood and my mother would often make a sarcastic reference to the song while he was away. In retrospect, however, his traveling was the only thing that preserved their marriage. Once he bought into a Columbus-area business and stayed home, they divorced almost immediately. I didn't think much about "Cat's In The Cradle" until my own son was born and I found myself away from him more often than I was home with him. That situation did not persist and nowadays I think John sees about as much of his father as he can stand. Maybe more than he can stand, judging by how he complained when I beat his ass at "RBI Baseball" this weekend.

I heard "Cradle" on Sirius Channel 7 during my morning commute today. The song hasn't changed, and I haven't changed, but something started nagging at me while I listened. It wasn't until I was settled in at my desk that I realized what that little something was.

My child arrived just the other day He came to the world in the usual way But there were planes to catch, and bills to pay He learned to walk while I was away And he was talking 'fore I knew it, and as he grew He'd say, I'm gonna be like you, dad You know I'm gonna be like you And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon Little boy blue and the man in the moon When you coming home, dad? I don't know when But we'll get together then You know we'll have a good time then

This verse, and the one that follows, details the life of a father who has no time for the son who idolizes him. He can't even teach him how to throw a baseball, which in postwar America was a basic a rite of passage as one could imagine.

Well, he came from college just the other day So much like a man I just had to say Son, I'm proud of you Can you sit for a while? He shook his head, and he said with a smile What I'd really like, dad, is to borrow the car keys See you later Can I have them please?

This third verse is where we get the traditional interpretation of the song, which is made explicit later on. The father had no time for the son; now the son has no time for the father.

I've long since retired and my son's moved away I called him up just the other day I said, I'd like to see you if you don't mind He said, I'd love to, dad, if I could find the time You see, my new job's a hassle, and the kid's got the flu But it's sure nice talking to you, dad It's been sure nice talking to you And as I hung up the phone, it occurred to me He'd grown up just like me My boy was just like me And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon Little boy blue and the man in the moon When you coming home, son? I don't know when But we'll get together then You know we'll have a good time then

My boy was just like me! The tragedy of it all!

Except.

You see, my new job's a hassle, and the kid's got the flu

Whoa.

Wait a minute.

The cycle is broken. The absentee father has a son who stays at home with his own boy. So why isn't this a happy song? Because it's told from the perspective of the father. Who is a narcissist.

Which leads to another question: Was this deliberate on Chapin's part, or was it accidental? Speaking personally, I want to believe that it was deliberate, that Chapin put that little twist in at the end after watching his fellow Baby Boomers virtually self-immolate in the narcissistic supernova known as the "Summer Of Love" and its lingering Studio 54 aftershocks.

Of course, the Boomers didn't invent narcissism. It was taught to them by parents who had survived the Depression, then World War II, and were determined to make the lives of their children as pleasant as their own childhoods had been fragile. Nor did narcissism end with the Boomers --- today's "selfie culture" is that mirror-loving impulse distilled into its purest form. But the Boomers were the first generation that refused to let go.

We live in a world where virtually every product besides the iPhone is designed and marketed for Boomers. They still have all the money. They are still buying all the products. They were promoted into management early because their parents were dead or maimed and they held on long past the time when they should have retired. There are examples of that in my own family; my grandfather quit work in his fifties to make room for the next generation of executives, while my father stuck around until he was sixty-five then "un-retired" almost immediately to work for a competitor of his former company. The difference between my grandfather's impact on the workplace and my father's was almost two decades --- and this is very far from being an unusual situation.

Some of that was financial; like many men of his generation, my grandfather rode the wave of the stock market for more than four decades of Cadillacs and retirement tennis, while my father did the math and realized that he would be far more secure if he worked another five or six years past the traditional limit. I will most likely be working two or three jobs until I die, whether that happens in forty years or during my next motorcycle commute. Yet there was also a cultural aspect to it, this idea that the Boomers could literally not imagine a world where their concerns and decisions were not at the white-hot center of things.

The narrator of "Cradle" never got over the idea that he was at the center of things. He was the main character of his story when he was working and his son was left holding an un-thrown baseball. And he was still the main character of the story when he was "long since retired". He revels in his parental neglect --- can't you hear the boasting in "planes to catch", particularly at the dawn of the Jet Age? --- and he wallows in his son's entirely reasonable decision to focus on his own child. You know what would be great? If the narrator "caught a plane" to his son's house so he could help out with the sick kid. But you know that he won't. He will sit and wait for the mountain to come to Mohammed. He is the main character in his story.

Which brings me to the infamous series ending of The Sopranos and The Last Psychiatrist's caustic take on it. I recommend that you follow the link and read it, but here's the money shot:

I knew Tony Soprano was dead because it was too abrupt, too final, for my friend, and for everyone in that bar. There was no denouement, there was no winding down, no debriefing, no resolution. Not even a struggle for survival-- at least let him draw his gun! No death on your terms. And, most importantly, the death didn't seem to flow logically from the show. The death made no sense, it was arbitrary. It was unsatisfying. . In other words, it was too real. . We all have an element of essential narcissism in us, that's part of having an identity. But it alters our relationship to death. We want it to flow logically from our lives, and most of the time it does. But sometimes it doesn't. Except for heroes and suicides, no one gets to choose the time and place of their death, nor the manner. Nor can we control people's reactions to our death. . All we can do is choose the life we leave behind. Choose.

Fair enough, but here's the rub. Narcissism is a hell of a drug and it leaves you resentful at your son's decision to neglect you in favor of his own child. But it's also the engine that fuels pretty much every artistic and innovative triumph on the planet. You cannot be a writer, or a musician, or a bard, unless you believe that you have the absolute right to produce what others will consume. It's true for Instagram stars and it was also true for Hemingway and it was even true for Bach. Every fat cuck on the Internet who puts on his Hunsiker Design shoes to eat cheetos in bed with his equally rotund wife while he watches Le Mans for the twenty-third time is living by the fruits of Steve McQueen's essential, miserable narcissism. Everybody loves Steve for it, even in death. The only person who had a problem with it was his son. The cat's in the cradle, and Chad McQueen had to be satisfied with being raised by a silver spoon.