Blitzleisch v. Rotzleisch

SOME NOTES ON LIFEMANSHIP (120 pp.) --Stephen Potter--Holt ($2.50).

Britain's most significant contribution to civilization, more important even than plum pudding, plaid dinner jackets and Winston Churchill, is the principle of the survival of the fittest. Adam Smith applied it to economics, Charles Darwin to biology and Cecil Rhodes to Empire. In these illustrious footsteps follows Stephen Potter, who threatens to apply it to everything.

Americans, in their open-faced optimism, are apt to believe that the basic assets for social success are good will, a pretty wife, and perhaps a few funny stories. Potter, product of an older and more cynical order, is convinced that all social intercourse is in fact a merciless jungle struggle, where the weaker will be gobbled up like an anchovy canape by the man with the firmer grip on the conversation and the Martini glass. In his scholarly The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship, or the Art of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating (TIME, Sept. 6, 1948), Evolutionist Potter brought this insight to bear on sport; in Some Notes on Lifemanship, which might well be subtitled The Art of Licking the Other Fellow Without

Actually Using a Crowbar, Potter extends his spirit of unfair play to the game of life in general.

"In one of the unpublished notebooks of Rilke," says Potter, "there is an unpublished phrase which might be our text, '. . . if you're not one up (Blitzleiscti) you're . . . one down (Rotzleisch).' " In his constant pursuit of One-Upness, the sound Lifeman first of all makes his opponent (i.e., everybody) feel like an idiot child, a boor or a cad (heel, if opponent is an American). To a visitor, the Lifeman remarks: " 'You want a wash, I expect,' in a way which suggested that he had spotted two dirty finger-nails." A rival talker is completely thrown off his stride by the Lifeman's "I knew as soon as I came in you were happy. You--you look so natural ... Go ahead. We're all listening to you."

But Not in the South. Experts of all kinds are the Lifeman's deadly enemies. One simple ploy (or gambit) against them is the Canterbury Block.

Expert (Who has just come back from a fortnight in Florence): And I was glad to see with my own eyes that this Left-wing Catholicism is definitely on the increase in Tuscany.

The Canterbury: Yes, but not in the South.

Explains Potter: " 'Yes, but not in the South,' with slight adjustment, will do for any argument about any place, if not about any person. It is an impossible comment to answer."

Another excellent conversational ploy is to pose an esoteric question and then rapidly answer it oneself (having, of course, looked up the answer beforehand), e.g., "I wonder what the expectation of life of, say, an advertising agent of thirty really is--at this moment of time, I mean." This, however, should be tried only by experienced Lifemen, as the gambit, like all gambits, has its answer or "counter-life," e.g., "I should have thought that question had lost validity in our contemporary context," or possibly, "I wondered how long it would be before somebody asked that question."

If the Lifeman happens to be a writer, he knows how to disarm the critics, e.g., one Lifeman dedicated his book "TO PHYLLIS, in the hope that one day God's glorious gift of sight may be restored to her," which made the reviewers feel it would be rude to pan the book. (They did not know that Phyllis was the author's 96-year-old great-grandmother.) Smart writership includes the use of "O.K.-words," e.g., diathesis, mystique, and classique, and deference to O.K. fellow writers, meaning chiefly Kafka and Rilke (who, "it is believed . . . will still be absolutely O.K. for another five years"). This practice is known as "Rilking."

The Counterpotter. Far from being merely a dry manual, Potter's book is alive with the personalities of real Lifemen. There are men like G. Odoreida, a thorough cad even by Lifemanship standards (to a fellow Lifeman ecstatically in love he would dryly remark: "Well, how is your little caper with Julia going?"). And there are crafty operators like G. Cogg-Willoughby, whose most famous victory came at a weekend party against an egregious hostess-nobbier named P. de Sint, the kind of man who develops a rich, bronze suntan in a matter of hours.

Cogg-Willoughby: You're one of the lucky ones.

De Sint: Oh, I don't know.

Cogg-Willoughby: They always say that the Southern types brown more easily . . .

De Sint: Well, I don't know, I'm not particularly . . .

Cogg-Willoughby: Oh, I don't know . . . Mediterranean . . .

In this way, reports Potter, Cogg-Willoughby was able to suggest that De Sint probably had a "touch of the tarbrush in his ancestry." De Sint spent the rest of the weekend fully clothed.

There may be some doubt that Stephen Potter is an O.K.-humorist, or that Pottering will become a major pastime in the U.S. Or, it may be necessary to develop some Counterpotters. Cogg-Willoughby, an experienced anti-humor player, might very well say: "Of course, what has gone out of our lives and our laughter is the fine simplicity of an Edward Lear." An American might do worse than to remark quietly but firmly: "Rather heavily on the British side, don't you think?"

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