The Quiet Man

 

I am a fan of the CBS crime drama Person of Interest.  

While the two lead characters, Michael Emerson (formerly of Lost) as Harold Finch and Jim Caviezel (who has played two divinities, Jesus Christ in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ and Bobby Jones in Stroke of Genius)as John Reese, are superb actors, the show does not break new ground with their pairing.  Finch, a wealthy and reclusive computer genius—stiff, formal, and hobbled by a limp—and John Reese, an  improvisational former Green Beret and ex-CIA field officer, are polar opposites, the kind of characters that populate any number of TV series.   

I do find the premise of the show an interesting ethical tangle.  Post 9-11, at the government’s behest, Finch created a machine that keeps everyone, everywhere and at all times, under surveillance.  The machine has a unique feature: it can predict with statistical certainty “persons of interest,” persons, that is, who will either commit a crime or be the victim of one.  Though Finch considers this feature of prime importance, the government does not; so, he strikes out on his own, hiring Reese to intervene when the machine discloses the Social Security Number of a likely criminal or victim.  At the show’s heart, then, lies an ethical dilemma: the specter of omnipresent scrutiny by a machine, counterpoised by two individuals’ secret efforts to insure that justice is served.

 I can easily suppose that from a certain political perspective, the show can be seen as a wet-kiss sealed mash note to  neoliberal ideology, tarted up for acceptability with compassionate concern.  “You are being watched,” Finch intones ominously in the show’s opening voice-opener, and concludes with “We work in secret.  You’ll never find us, but . . .we’ll find you.”  If this is the case, the show would seem locked in a full-nelsoned contradiction:  the means—invading citizens’ privacy rights—are justified by the end—protecting those very citizens whose rights have been violated.  From another perspective, the show could suggest the monitoring authority of an omnipresent, omniscient and benevolent Creator.  Yet another perspective might take the show’s message as the possibility of interdicting the curved talon of fate.  I prefer to see the show as a parable for our technological age, exploring a means whereby machines remain our tools rather than we theirs.

But what I find most compelling about the show is the character of John Reese.  It is marked by quietness.  He speaks quietly, moves quietly, and when an intervention requires his martial arts skills, he deploys them with a quiet efficiency.   He is imperturbable, cool, a James Dean cool but without the disdain.  He moves about with stealthy silence, a ninja noiselessness,  entering and exiting buildings, rooms, scenes, people’s lives,  unnoticed, unradared, unsonared, quiet as a church-mouse’s shadow, as a whisper’s whisper.  John Reese is a man of action.  He is a man of quiet.

I find this all so compelling because the adjective “quiet” has often been applied to me.  The times I’ve entered the kitchen and thoroughly startled my wife Kathy are beyond counting—so beyond, it has become a private joke between us.  The first time it happened, her body spasmed, she  dropped the knife she was jellying  her toast with, and said, “God, Jerry!  I didn’t hear you coming.  You’re so quiet! Make a little noise, will you?  Clear your throat or something.  I’m going to make you wear a bell.  You almost scared me to death.”  “That was my intention,” I joked.  “Just call me Tony Perkins, and be especially wary when you’re taking a shower.”  “Very funny, Tony,” she replied, and to this very day, when I startle her, she puts a hand to her heart, laughs, and says, “you about Tonied me to death there, Mr. Perkins.”

On the plaque commemorating my winning the 2005 Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching,  I am described, in a paragraph written by my English Department colleagues, as a “quiet man who keeps a low social profile.”  Low, I hasten to add, but not disengaged.  I am not a social introvert.  I prefer to conserve my words.  I am not infatuated with the resounding peal of my own voice.  Members of committees on which I serve regularly tell me they appreciate my reluctance to engage in trifling, beside-the-point “jibber-jabber” and my speaking only to the point and only if I have something to advance the discussion.  In my literature classes I never lecture, never assume the role of “sage on the stage;” rather, I pose questions and wait, as uncomfortable as that can often be, for students to respond and weave a conversational thread.   At social gatherings I tend to listen, not just to what is said, but how it is said, its nuance and understatement, its texture and tone and grammatical shape, the felt experience it embodies or lacks, the meaning the words are given or that lies laired in the spaces between words. People tell me I’m a good listener.  In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the character of Polonius may be kind or sinister, jocular or Machiavellian, but he gives his son Laertes a bit of advice I’ve taken to heart: “Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.”

In this, I am my father’s son.  He confessed to me once his frustration in talking with people who were not listening but, rather, formulating a response as you spoke.  “You can see it in their eyes,” he said; “they’re inattentive because they think talk is some kind of competition.   It’s hard, but try to listen fully, right to their last word.  It’s basic respect.  Never interrupt.  Try to listen between the lines, too.”  But I think, too, my quietness has evolved from my lifelong study of literature, my pursuit of the quiet company of books and my thoughts about them—a form of conversation with their writers.  Perhaps my vocation accounts for my two favorite times of the day: the hush of predawn and the deep stillness of a midsummer midafternoon, times when I become a  chorus of one, when my restless thought syndrome settles into a pulsing hum, the yammering day takes five, and there is an “absence of insistence.”

I like to think that quiet is outgoing and social because it is receptive, mindful, hospitable, tolerant—not an outstretched arm palm up, but a hand waving in.  It fosters connections.  It draws energy from the substance of what others say.  But I also like to think that quiet is inbending and individual, drawing energy from its own resources, from the uncrowdsourced cartography of its own interior landscape, a place where the mind deliberates, the heart feels, and the soul, well, not for nothing are sacred places quiet.  As John Reese demonstrates, that quiet is kinetic, purposeful and active intervention, in the world outside ourselves, and the world within.