Dear Marjorie,
It’s creepy, I agree, that beer companies are now helping to shape alcohol policy on campus. But I’m not surprised it’s happening. If there’s a group of white-collar workers more clueless and malleable than college administrators I haven’t met them. And don’t want to.
On the other hand, I’m not sure that any form of advertising–subtle, jarring, subliminal–is going to have much effect on college drinking either way. It seems to me that college students get drunk a lot mostly because they can. Have you ever had more free, unstructured time than you had in college? Have you ever felt more sullen and confused? I haven’t. Which is why I spent much of my time there drunk. Not to mention unhappy.
That’s the terrible secret of college: It’s sort of boring. I often think I would have been far better off if I’d spent four years making furniture or working in a coal mine or collating page proofs at a newspaper–anything, really, but sitting around drinking beer and waiting for real life to happen. By the time I left, I had the feeling I’d been tricked, like while I’d been wasting the most vigorous years of my life, all the really smart people had been out there doing interesting things.
I still feel that way a bit. Today’s Times brought back the feeling. On C24 there’s a characteristically terrific Richard Severo obit of Ring Lardner Jr. In it we learn that two of Lardner’s brothers died young–James at 24 in the Spanish Civil War and David at 25 while on assignment for The New Yorker in World War II. It’s sad they were killed, but it’s impressive how. I wasn’t doing anything especially embarrassing at 24, two years out of college. But I wasn’t covering wars.
For the most interesting tidbit in Lardner’s obituary, though, you have to make it to paragraph 29: “He is survived by his wife, Francis Chaney, his brother David’s widow, whom he married in 1946.”
As of yesterday it’s my new policy not to comment on the marital arrangements of people I don’t know, even if I don’t work for them. But still. Pretty amazing.
I kind of dig Murdoch’s black turtleneck, by the way.
Yours,
Tucker
