“What a Lovely Generalization!” :: James Thurber .. The New Yorker .. March 26, 1949

I HAVE COLLECTED, in my time, derringers, snowstorm paperweights, and china and porcelain  dogs, and perhaps I should explain what happened to  these old collections before I go on to my newest  hobby, which is the true subject of this monograph.  My derringer collection may be regarded as having  been discontinued, since I collected only two, the second and last item as long ago as 1935. There were  originally seventeen snowstorm paperweights, but  only four or five are left. This kind of collection is  known to the expert as a “diminished collection,” and  it is not considered cricket to list it in your Who’s  Who biography. The snowstorm paperweight suffers  from its easy appeal to the eye and the hand. House  guests like to play with paperweights and to slip them  into their luggage while packing up to leave. As for  my china and porcelain dogs, I disposed of that collection some two years ago. I had decided that the collection of actual objects, of any kind, was too much  of a strain, and I determined to devote myself, instead, to the impalpable and the intangible.  

Nothing in my new collection can be broken or  stolen or juggled or thrown at cats. What I collect  now is a certain kind of Broad Generalization, or  Sweeping Statement. You will see what I mean when  I bring out some of my rare and cherished pieces. All  you need to start a collection of generalizations like  mine is an attentive ear. Listen in particular to  women, whose average generalization is from three  to five times as broad as a man’s. Generalizations, male  or female, may be true (“Women don’t sleep very  well”), untrue (“There are no pianos in Japan”), half  true (“People would rather drink than go to the theater”), debatable (“Architects have the wrong idea”), libellous (“Doctors don’t know what they’re doing”) ,  ridiculous (“You never see foreigners fishing”), fascinating but undemonstrable ( “People who break into  houses don’t drink wine”), or idiosyncratic (“Peach  ice cream is never as good as you think it’s going to  be”).  

“There are no pianos in Japan” was the first item  in my collection. I picked it up at a reception while  discussing an old movie called “The Battle,” or  “Thunder in the East,” which starred Charles Boyer,  Merle Oberon, and John Loder, some twenty years  ago. In one scene, Boyer, as a Japanese naval captain, comes upon Miss Oberon, as his wife, Matsuko, playing an old Japanese air on the piano for the entertainment of Loder, a British naval officer with a dimple,  who has forgotten more about fire control, range finding, marksmanship, and lovemaking than the Japanese  commander is ever going to know. “Matsuko,” says the  latter, “why do you play that silly little song? It may  be tedious for our fran.” Their fran, John Loder, says,  “No, it is, as a matter of — ” But I don’t know why I  have to go into the whole plot. The lady with whom  I was discussing the movie, at the reception, said that  the detail about Matsuko and the piano was absurd,  since “there are no pianos in Japan.” It seems that this  lady was an authority on the musical setup in Japan  because her great-uncle had married a singsong girl  in Tokyo in 1912.  

Now, I might have accepted the declarations that  there are no saxophones in Bessarabia, no banjo-  mandolins in Mozambique, no double basses in Zanzibar, no jew’s-harps in Rhodesia, no zithers in Madagascar, and no dulcimers in Milwaukee, but I could  not believe that Japan, made out in the movie as a  great imitator of Western culture, would not have any  pianos. Some months after the reception, I picked up  an old copy of the Saturday Evening Post and, in an  article on Japan, read that there were, before the war,  some fifteen thousand pianos in Japan. It just happened to say that, right there in the article.  

You may wonder where I heard some of the other  Sweeping Statements I have mentioned above. Well,  the one about peach ice cream was contributed to my  collection by a fifteen-year-old girl. I am a chocolate  man myself, but the few times I have eaten peach ice  cream it tasted exactly the way I figured it was going  to taste, which is why I classify this statement as idiosyncratic ; that is, peculiar to one individual. The item  about foreigners never fishing, or, at any rate, never  fishing where you can see them, was given to me last  summer by a lady who had just returned from a motor  trip through New England. The charming generalization about people who break into houses popped  out of a conversation I overheard between two women,  one of whom said it was not safe to leave rye, Scotch,  or bourbon in your summer house when you closed it  for the winter, but it was perfectly all right to leave  your wine, since intruders are notoriously men of in-  sensitive palate, who cannot tell the difference between  Nuits-St.-Georges and saddle polish. I would not repose too much confidence in this theory if I were you,  however. It is one of those Comfortable Conclusions  that can cost you a whole case of Chateau Lafite.  

I HAVEN’T got space here to go through my entire collection, but there is room to examine a few more items.  I’m not sure where I got hold of “Gamblers hate  women” — possibly at Bleeck’s — but, like “Sopranos   drive men crazy/’ it has an authentic ring. This is not  true, I’m afraid, of “You can’t trust an electrician” or  “Cops off duty always shoot somebody.” There may  be something in “Dogs know when you’re despondent” and “Sick people hear everything,” but I sharply  question the validity of “Nobody taps his fingers if  he’s all right” and “People who like birds are queer.”  

Some twenty years ago, a Pittsburgh city editor  came out with the generalization that “Rewrite men  go crazy when the moon is full,” but this is perhaps  a little too special for the layman, who probably  doesn’t know what a rewrite man is. Besides, it is the  abusive type of Sweeping Statement and should not  be dignified by analysis or classification.  
In conclusion, let us briefly explore “Generals are  afraid of their daughters,” vouchsafed by a lady after  I had told her my General Wavell anecdote. It happens, for the sake of our present record, that the late  General Wavell, of His Britannic Majesty’s forces,  discussed his three daughters during an interview a  few years ago. He said that whereas he had millions  of men under his command who leaped at his every  order, he couldn’t get his daughters down to break-  fast on time when he was home on leave, in spite of  stern directives issued the night before. As I have  imagined it, his ordeal went something like this. It  would get to be 7 A.M., and then 7:05, and General  Wavell would shout up the stairs demanding to know   where everybody was, and why the girls were not at  table. Presently, one of them would call back sharply,  as a girl has to when her father gets out of hand, “For  heaven’s sake, Daddy, will you be quiet! Do you want  to wake the neighbors ?” The General, his flanks  rashly exposed, so to speak, would fall back in orderly  retreat and eat his kippers by himself. Now, I submit  that there is nothing in this to prove that the General  was afraid of his daughters. The story merely establishes the fact that his daughters were not afraid of him.  

If you are going to start collecting Sweeping Statements on your own, I must warn you that certain drawbacks are involved. You will be inclined to miss the  meaning of conversations while lying in wait for generalizations. Your mouth will hang open slightly,  your posture will grow rigid, and your eyes will take  on the rapt expression of a person listening for the  faint sound of distant sleigh bells. People will avoid  your company and whisper that you are probably an  old rewrite man yourself or, at best, a finger tapper  who is a long way from being all right. But your collection   will be a source of comfort in your declining  years, when you can sit in the chimney corner cackling  the evening away over some such gems, let us say, as  my own two latest acquisitions : “Jewellers never go  anywhere” and “Intellectual women dress funny.”  

Good hunting.