Alan S. Oser

How it happened that the man who manufactured Sell’s Liver Paté came to be the editor of Town & Country Magazine I cannot say. Possibly he was the editor first and decided only later to give the world his liver paté.

Whatever the order of events, Henry Sell came to my father, the president of Food and Drug Research Laboratories Inc., in the 1940’s to have him test the liver paté before Sell brought it to market in its pretty little cans. Mr. Sell’s association with my father subsequently led to a job for me as a proofreader for Town & Country during a summer vacation from college.

The year was 1950 and Henry Sell was in his 70’s. He was in a philosophical mood one day when he called me to his office and lectured me about Life.

“You don’t know if you’re smart until you’re 70,” he announced, his eyes half-closed and his feet propped comfortably on his ornate desk. The smile of contentment on his face left me in no doubt about the conclusion he had reached in his own case.

Although my understanding of smartness at the time was different from his, I took his point. Now that I am over 70 myself, I have come to see things his way.

If you can look back in satisfaction after 70 at what you have done, and avoided doing, I think you are entitled to consider yourself smart. If you look back in disappointment or regret, and must in honesty admit that you yourself were responsible for the decisions and events that brought on these unhappy conditions, then you have not been too smart.

A young man I shall call Larry C. wasn’t too smart. Fifty years ago he could have married the young lady who became my wife. While he meditated indecisively I swooped in. Cleverly concealing my weaknesses, I tricked this young woman into getting engaged to me. We have been married since 1952.

The concept of smartness, as understood by Henry Sell, is clearly bound up with the concept of success. He considered himself successful, and he decided he had therefore been smart. But other circumstances enter into success. Luck, for instance. Luck was important in my case, since neither I nor those close to me – with the important exception of a son with a congenital psychological disability – have experienced serious illness. Nevertheless, I prefer to claim credit for a large share of my good fortune.

Smartness involves avoiding poor choices. Take my decision not to apply to law school. Argumentative and outspoken child that I was, my family assumed that I would become a lawyer and aspire to elected office. But clear-eyed candor led me to realize in college that many other students had greater aptitude for the law and public service than I. Go where the competition is weaker, an inner voice whispered. So I became a newspaperman.

It turned out that even in newspaper work the competition was formidable. My strength lay in persistence, along with a willingness to tolerate unpleasant personalities and duties. I had little choice, since newspapers were not clamoring for my services. After forty-five years of continuous and mostly painless employment, mainly with one newspaper, I have pronounced myself a success.

There is not universal agreement on this point. A late and beloved friend, a lawyer renowned for his brilliance and whom I shall call Justin G, would taunt me by suggesting that I had not lived up to my potential by settling for a career as a newspaper editor and writer on the subject of real estate. He had the journalist-author John Gunther in mind as the proper model for my professional life.

But Justin G. was not so smart himself. He made an unfortunate marriage and his life style was extravagant. He died suddenly at 74 leaving debts and professional and family problems for his children to untangle. His death was mourned more widely than mine will be, but the distance between what he achieved and what he might have achieved was greater by far that it was for me.

Sad cases of personal achievement accompanied by avoidable personal tragedy abound in this world. I’ve known a few cases myself. Take the builder I knew who also owned race horses. He made a fortune as a real estate developer and owner, and his horse once won the Kentucky Derby. But he died of alcoholism in his 60’s.

Or take the case of the young neurologist who was considered one of the most brilliant members of his medical school faculty. He decided to go into private practice, and then got himself accused and convicted of child abuse because of an unorthodox method of treatment he adopted. He was sentenced to a prison term. I believe in his innocence to this day, but I cannot say he was smart to put himself in a position to be plausibly charged with that offense.

The importance of underlying social and economic conditions is of course not to be underestimated in their effect on personal achievement or its absence. Many careers failed because of the Depression. Others never blossomed because of bigotry or were cut short by war. And obviously, wealthier people with good educational opportunities and useful family connections are in a better position than others to have successful careers.

But judgment enters it it too. Know thyself, Henry Sell advised, picking up on the ancient Greeks. That means understanding one’s own strength and weaknesses. It also helps to be able to assess the character and ability of others accurately.

Looking back, I can think of numerous misjudgments that tripped me along my path to self-proclaimed wisdom. Once, a managing editor who was interviewing me for a job took a phone call in my presence and chatted amiably for a few minutes with an apparent personal friend. They were arranging a tennis date. When he hung up I looked at him brightly and announced, “I’m a tennis player too.” He winced but ignored my comment. He never offered me a job.

Do not let your interviewer know that you eavesdrop.

On another occasion when I was on the copy desk of the New York Times, while I was editing a biographical story that a reporter wrote about a man I knew well, I mentioned the subject’s two former wives, enraging his third wife and losing me a friend. That misjudgment haunted me for years.

On the other hand, I do not suffer from a “shoulda” complex – I should have done this or that instead of what I did do. Apparently, neither did Henry Sell, although by the time he was 80 his liver paté had almost disappeared from supermarket shelves. He was not too popular with those who worked for him either. His managing editor once quivered with anger in my presence and blurted out, “I’m sick of playing nursemaid to that psychopath!” He quit the next day.

Nor do I yield to sudden impulses, as a copy editor I worked with at the Wall Street Journal seemed to do at lunchtime on a summer day long ago in New York. He stood up and remarked to the rest of us, “It’s a lovely day, I think I’ll go to California.” With that he walked out. We assumed he was going to lunch, and perhaps he was, but we never saw or heard from him again. Fifteen years later I saw his name on a theater marquee. He had become a writer of Hollywood films.

By now that fellow is over 70. He probably considers himself smart too.