An effete snob

89 Notes

In theatre school, we did the musical Working, based on the book by Studs Terkel. The book was based on his interviews with people about their jobs. Just regular people with regular jobs.

Near the end of the show, there’s a real tear-jerker of a number called “Fathers and Sons”. (Seriously — if your father was in the audience that night? Boom. Waterworks. Every single guy in the show lost it at least once. It was like living through the final five minutes of “Field of Dreams”. In song.) One of the characters is a construction worker and has a short monologue in the middle of the song where he talks about how he wants his son to not have to work with his hands, he wants him to be able to go to the best schools, he wants him to be able to have everything he could never have. He sums it all up with the line “I want my son to be an effete snob”.

I’ve always loved that phrase. “An effete snob”. And I loved that idea that it was something to aspire to. That if you were lucky, you could have everything you really needed and so much more, to the point you could live a life where you have the freedom to develop highly-cultivated opinions on things that ultimately don’t matter to your day-to-day survival.

From time to time, I like to recognize the fact I am, in effect, an effete snob. And that a lot of the stuff I care about doesn’t matter. And that it’s awesome I’m living a life where I can care about it.