‘The problem of goodness’
My mother used to rant about how the middleaged Leo Tolstoy became one of the most boring writers in the world, having abandoned youthful ribaldry for Christian vegetarianism.
She was right. “War and Peace,” penned by the 41-year-old Tolstoy, is a ripping yarn. Having trouble sleeping? Pick up “Resurrection,” written 11 years before the author’s death at age 82.
This is the problem with Apple TV+’s generally engaging two-part Steve Martin docu-biography, titled “STEVE (martin): a documentary in 2 pieces.” The title reflects the two halves of Martin’s life. In part one, “STEVE,” Martin rises from humble beginnings to become the most successful standup comedian in the country. He fills stadiums effortlessly. At its apogee, his marketing clout rivals Beatlemania.
He was miserable, dispirited, and lonely. Martin quit arena-sized stand-up in 1981 to concentrate on movies.
In part two, “martin,” set in the present day, Martin has a whole new life. Miraculously, as he would be the first to admit, he has found happiness in a second marriage and non-celluloid parenthood.
Part two is no arena show. We see him dropping off his dry cleaning and pedaling his oldster bicycle around his upscale neighborhood. Some of his current work is good, e.g., the brilliant comedy theater with Martin Short, and some less so, e.g., the meh TV series “Only Murders in the Building.” But work is no longer his top priority.
Steve Martin is a happy and fulfilled family man, and it’s kind of boring.
This is what writer Tracy Kidder calls “the problem of goodness.” Kidder’s last few books have been about do-gooders, most recently about Dr. Jim O’Connell, founder of Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program. When I saw him on book tour last year at the Coolidge Corner Theater, Kidder mentioned that he and his editor wrestle with the literary challenge of writing about good actors.
Speaking at Gordon College about his previous book, “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” concerning the late Dr. Paul Farmer’s legendary relief work in Haiti, Kidder said that there is “a tendency for people to feel rebuked if Paul Farmer becomes real to them.” In a different appearance, Kidder noted, “This problem of goodness isn’t just a literary problem. It’s also a personal problem. The personal problem is that good provokes and forces us to think about things that we would rather not think about.”
The lives of the saints threaten us; how can we sinners relate to a life dedicated to virtue? Ditto happiness. I’m glad Steve Martin has mastered his anxieties; I certainly haven’t.
The good life has been a problem since time immemorial. In the mythological Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve experienced perfect bliss, and it was a drag. Real knowledge, the fruit of the poisoned tree, entailed misery, suffering, and death, which they freely chose.
Kidder isn’t the first writer to experience a goodness problem. In John Milton’s epic poem, “Paradise Lost,” the rebel angel Lucifer has the rock ‘n’ roll mojo. The treacly, virtuous archangels and the spotless Son of God prompt the forbidden thought: Maybe heaven can wait.
We know we have a goodness problem when not a day goes by without journalists like me filling the media space with breathless reporting on his not-so-satanic majesty Donald Trump. He’s a Luciferian attention sump, even when, or especially when, he cloaks himself in the ill-fitting raiments of the Bible story. “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose,” as Shakespeare memorably remarked in “The Merchant of Venice.”
In spring 2016, I wrote a column opining that Donald Trump would never be elected president because — invoking Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address — our nation’s “better angels” would prevail: “At the end of the day, he is not the kind of person Americans want to lift up and celebrate.”
Better angels my eye.
There is a goodness problem all right, and it doesn’t look like a problem we’ll fix anytime soon.
In the mythological Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve experienced perfect bliss, and it was a drag.