Hate is All Around: The Politics of Enthusiasm (and its Discontents)

Still, this version of the politics of enthusiasm forgets that we’re equally defined by our dislikes. William Hazlitt even went so far, in his essay “The Pleasures of Hating,” as to suggest (with tongue only partly in cheek) that Hate is a Force That Gives Our Lives Meaning:  “Nature seems (the more we look into it) made up of antipathies: without something to hate, we should lose the very spring of thought and action. Life would turn to a stagnant pool, were it not ruffled by the jarring interests, the unruly passions, of men.”

Edward Gorey, the author of whimsically macabre little books with titles like The Loathsome Couple, wonderfully exemplifies this point. To be sure, Gorey loved many things, banal and sublime, from the Tale of Genji to Golden Girls, but he loathed with equal passion. In The Strange Case of Edward Gorey by Alexander Theroux, we learn that Gorey detested fruitcakes (only one existed, he contended, a stale horror endlessly re-gifted around the world at Christmas time). Also cataloged in Gorey’s ever-expanding inventory of abhorrent things were “the invincible vulgarity of the preposterous Kathie Lee Gifford and the host of miniature faces she was constantly pulling”; Al Pacino (“the name of a local hole in space”); Gene Hackman (“suet”); Sam Waterston (who looked, Gorey thought, “like the offspring of Roddy McDowell and Tony Perkins”) and the “Frankensteinian” Ted Danson.

The sheer relish, the malicious glee of Gorey’s fond loathing is infectious, reminding us of the carefree, innocent joy to be had in hating, really hating something that simply begs to be hated. This is hathos, a term coined by Alex Heard to express “a pleasurable sense of loathing” but best defined, I think, by Andrew Sullivan, as an “attraction to something you really can’t stand; it’s the compulsion of revulsion.”

The unquestioned Queen of Hathos is the 10th-century Japanese courtier Sei Shonagon, author of a deliciously dishy diary called The Pillow Book. Amid the court intrigues, snobbish score-settling, exquisite set pieces about nature, and closely observed meditations on the little dramas of everyday life, we find the acidly funny “Hateful Things,” a laundry list of all things great and small that vex the perfectionistic Shonagon, who has an opinion about everything. It’s impossible to nibble just one of these poisoned bon bons; here’s a sampling:

One is in a hurry to leave, but one’s visitor keeps chattering away. If it is someone of no importance, one can get rid of him by saying, “You must tell me all about it next time”; but, should it be the sort of visitor whose presence commands one’s best behavior, the situation is hateful indeed.

One has gone to bed and is about to doze off when a mosquito appears, announcing himself in a reedy voice. One can actually feel the wind made by his wings, and, slight though it is, one finds it hateful in the extreme.Some children have called at one’s house. One makes a great fuss of them and gives them toys to play with. The children become accustomed to this treatment and start to come regularly, forcing their way into one’s inner rooms and scattering one’s furnishings and possessions. Hateful!

A person who recites a spell himself after sneezing. In fact I detest anyone who sneezes, except the master of the house.

Fleas too, are very hateful. When they dance about under someone’s clothes, they really seem to be lifting them up.

Sometimes one greatly dislikes a person for no particular reason—and then that person goes and does something hateful.

What we cordially loathe, then, is every bit as illuminating as what we like and why we like it.