Really, Ronald, They Repulse Me

Anthropologists estimate that men acquired individual names about two million years ago, and ever since, the species has persisted in abusing this innovation through a single insidious practice--name-dropping. My friends and I are awfully distressed by this vicarious form of status-seeking and so, to nip incipient name-droppers in the bud, here is a stage-by-stage account of the development of a name-dropper.

The first level is so imperceptible it is often mistaken for mere absent-mindedness. This consists of the interjections of a familiar moniker into a conversation where the name is completely irrelevant. Kurt Vonnegut does this all the time: in the middle of a discussion of, say, polo ponies his eyes will suddenly glaze over and he'll shake his head and mutter, "Erooke Shields." This behavior is--poor Kurt--the familiar early symptom of a greater malaise.

In the second stage, the name-dropper refers to the dropee in such a way as to imply a certain amount of intimacy between the two. The link may be as tenuous as "I was at a party with Suzanne Somers" or "Donald Sutherland walked into the drugstore while I was buying aspirin," but the speaker associates himself in no uncertain terms with the name he drops. I could never get over the way Woodward and Bernstein used to skirmish this way: Bob would tell Carl he saw Frank Perdue on the bus; Carl would tell Bob he nearly ran Rod McKuen down in front of Sans Souci, and so on. I guess it was just hard for me to understand how two people as as sensitive and wonderful as Carl and Bobby could stoop to such silliness.

The late Vladimir Nabokov will always be for me the epitome of the third stage of name-dropping. Vlad was always a sweet man, with more taste and savoir faire than anyone I'll ever meet, but he could never refer to anyone without calling him "my dear friend." "My dear friend Phyllis Schlafly just dropped in," he once told me. Another time--this was with John Updike at the Algonquin--Volodya turned to me and, with his mouth still full of mashed potatoes, whispered into my ear, "Reminds me of the way my very, very, very dear friend Rusty Staub cooks."

By the fourth level of name-dropping, the afflicted person has pretty well crossed the line beyond which there is no rehabilitation. He will drop names until he drops; he will never get through a sentence without a gratuitous reference to a celebrity of his acquaintance. For by the fourth stage, the name-dropper's sense of propriety and modesty has disintegrated to the point that he refers to his friends by their first names alone. I know these people so well, the fourth-stage dropper says, that it would be unnatural for me to refer to them by their full name, the way you do.

Now I would be the last person to say a bad word about Mick and Bianca, but both of them--Bianca especially, if you want to know--should hear themselves talking. "Tatum and Ryan are going to be late, so I called Warren, Diane, and Misha," I heard Mick once tell our friend Reggie. "What about Jodie, Sissela, Derek, Archie, Zubin, Roman and Nastassia?" Bianca managed to reply. It was about then that Fellini and Marcello walked in. Rico and I have never been able to stay in the same room for longer than it takes to see what the other is wearing, so I left hastily.

Finally, after years of dropping, after checking the phonebook for first names, after making nicknames out of nicknames, the name-dropper touches bottom--the tragic fifth and last stage. For at the fifth stage (I remember when this happened to Kate Hepburn), the name-dropper slips into near-unconsciousness and drops names instinctively without realizing it. (Ringo keeps telling me he's trying to stop but I just don't believe him) Nor do the references make any sense whatsoever: they become for the dropper as (God, I hope things work out for Theda) vital an element of speech as inhaling and exhaling--occurring inexorably and reflexively. (Why won't Woody just realize he's peaked?) This is a horrifying state (I wonder if Marion will ever work again) of affairs because the dropper's speech and thought patterns are rendered virtually (I do so miss Scott and Zeida) incomprehensible. And as the drops (Things will never let up for Luciano now that he's published) pile up (I'll never forget breakfast with Al and Casper) on each other overwhelming (Sissy has always known how to tell a joke) all other forms of expression, the name dropper's ruin is com-(Charlie and Di are such a perfect couple) plete.