National Post (National Edition)
The sweet irony of Jordan Peterson’s fame
IT’S NO CONTEST — 12 RULES FOR LIFE HAS TO BE NAMED CANADA’S BOOK OF THE YEAR
Who doesn’t love a good origin story (Book of Genesis, A Brief History of Time, Batman Begins)?
Two years ago, almost to the day, a child was born in the little town of … Sorry, my mistake, let me start again. It’s those damn far-too-early Christmas carols.
Two years ago, almost to the day (Nov. 29, 2017), the University of Toronto’s Varsity newspaper carried the bold, not to say ominous, headline: “Hundreds sign open letter to U of T admin calling for Jordan Peterson’s termination.”
The story underneath bristled with comminations of Peterson’s “gross misconduct,” his “efforts at agitation … inflammatory denunciations … evident connections to white supremacists … disruptive behaviour.” U of T’s administration had acknowledged the “danger he posed both to students and faculty” it claimed, and if he didn’t comply with “the law, the Ontario Human Rights Code and university policy” (I paraphrase) his academic goose was cooked, his copybook irredeemably blotted, and his career as a professor would soon be as one with the fates of the Norwegian Blue, the great auk, the dodo and (among the unsophisticated) red wine with fish.
And how did Peterson respond? Well, thank the stars, he didn’t flee into Egypt or, as being more proximate and fairly cheap with Air Miles, Vermont. He stood his wellreasoned ground, exhibited stores of that most fugitive of academic virtues — intellectual courage — and more or less told the pack of puerile leftlings chasing him with pitchforks and torches that their grandmothers wore severely unstylish army boots.
The only thing I regret as missing from that period, an element which would have poeticized this fable of his emergence on the world stage as a superstar academic, is that he didn’t don a chasuble and nail copies of Maps of Meaning (12 Rules was yet to come) to the doors of the U of T Library.
I’ve adverted to this point before, but it is such a vat of sweet ironic syrup, it’s worth a repeat. If, in place of honourably debating him, his opponents hadn’t tried to howl him down, tag him as a bigot, and have him fired, he’d today most likely still be placidly wandering the grounds and groves south of Bloor Street, one among many of the unsung pedagogues of the University of Toronto. Honourable men and women, all, but not, as a rule, to be found lecturing in Madrid one day, Oxford the next, felling shallow leftist interviewers on the BBC (redundancy) the next, podcasting to hundreds of thousands, and racking up more twitter hits than everyone except, maybe, Taylor Swift and Meghan Markle.
So here he is, just two years on, with 12 Rules for Life surpassing two million in sales, YouTube his (almost) private dominion, his ideas radiated through all the old and new media, and saluted and high-certified by one of the most independent minds in this age of mush-think, Camille Paglia, as “restoring a peak period in North American thought, when Canada was renowned for pioneering, speculative thinkers like media analyst Marshall McLuhan and myth critic Northrop Frye.”
Now there’s a trinity: Frye, McLuhan and Peterson.
She continues with what at least I see as the incontestable observation that she has “yet to see a single profile of Peterson, even from sympathetic journalists, that accurately portrays the vast scope, tenor and importance of his work.” To which can only be added she had best not look for one in the darkness visible of most of the Toronto literary media, where reviews have rained down snark and preening put-downs from the mastodons of political correctness and perpetually grieved identity-politics obsessives. To amend a fine declaration — a true academic is not without honour, save in his own home.
We’re about to enter the yearend book review festivals, when the works of the year passing will be given rank and celebration. Some will have a problem this year with a work they can’t pass over but which will give them cramps to mention.
It’s a no-contest, call-off-the-fight race for the ineluctable choice of Canadian book of the year. It’s 12 Rules for Life from the once near-ostracized clinical psychologist and professor, whom his home university was threatening with dismissal, and fellow faculty more than willing to leave high and dry as the canines barked, Dr. Jordan Peterson.
By way of coda, I actually think, seriously, the Book of Genesis is the better origin fable, just on language alone. But Jordan Peterson is out front of Batman Begins by whole leagues.
(Needless disclosure: Jordan Peterson sometimes shows up, and good thing too, in these pages.)