In Julian Barnes' novel Sense of an Ending, there are two key women in the life of Tony Webster, the narrator, who at that critical late-life reflective stage offer him two possible epitaphs. Whereas he refuses to heed her counsel regarding his ex-lover, his ex-wife tells him, "You're on your own now." And whereas he has totally miscalculated the fate of the ex-lover, she tells him, "You don't get it, do you?" So he weighs these choices for his gravestone. Will it be, "He's on his own now"? Or will it be, "Tony Webster--He Never Got It"?
Margaret, the ex-wife, who Tony describes as lacking in mystery, seems to me to have come up with the clearest and truest end punctuation to Tony's life...or anyone else's for that matter. Though religion tries mightily to mitigate the reality of it, at the end we really are all on our own. Veronica, the ex-lover and more mysterious woman, offers the more complex and damning send-off--you just didn't get it. Having been accused of "not getting it" at least once or twice in my life, I know what a stinging rebuke it can be. There's so much implied in that charge. For the person it’s aimed at, it calls into question his or her intelligence, interest, sensitivity, worldliness, decency, compassion.
The first time I faced the "You just don't get it" indictment, I was editor of my high school paper. I had been elected editor in my sophomore year, the first time the position had ever gone to anyone that young. This drew the attention of the chairman of the social studies department who took me aside one day and told me how proud he was of me and pointed out what a great opportunity I had in coming in so young to have two years to remake the paper into a student publication of substance. Shortly thereafter, my erstwhile champion instigated the confiscation of my first issue of the paper and became the chief interrogator when I was summoned to the principal's office to discuss my first editorial. In it I had called for a reform of the American History curriculum, arguing that the way it was currently structured made it impossible not to get bogged down in the early battles of the 18th and 19th centuries. This, I wrote, prevented the course from ever getting beyond World War I before school was out for the summer, leaving us woefully ignorant of the later war that affected most of our parents and shaped the world we were living in. For that bit of hellraising, I was told that I had put the jobs of six teachers in the history/social studies department at risk. I was told that I wasn't old enough or experienced enough to understand the political pressures the school faced in regards to budget. And who made me an expert on school curriculum anyway? In truth, they didn't actually use the expression you don't get it, but that was clearly the message.
That expression itself didn't come into vogue--if memory serves me well--until the 1970s and was made popular by feminists who hurled it at obtuse politicians--usually Republicans--who didn't seem to "get" women's issues. Far be it from me to make apologies for politicians, especially Republican politicians, but the fact that they didn't get women's issues should not have come as a surprise to anyone. Nor should it be much of a surprise when white folks don't get black folks or rich folks don't get poor folks or boy editors of high school papers don't get teachers with families to feed and mortgages to meet. How could any of those in one uniquely defined and insulated group ever fully understand the struggles of those in another such group? Seriously, can we really expect (or do we even want) the terminally obtuse Mitt Romney, say, to show up among a group of poor black folks and say, "I feel your pain?" Isn't "Who let the dogs out?" much closer to his experience and more true to his heart?
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