On the very American story—in some of the best and worst senses—of Rudy
Stanish.
While I hope that yesterday’s post complicated some of the simplest narratives
about a figure like Cornelius Vanderbilt II, it was nonetheless, I admit, still
pretty crazy to use the phrase “rags to riches” to describe Commodore
Vanderbilt’s grandson. But Rudolph “Rudy”
Stanish, who began life as the seventh of thirteen children born to an Eastern
European (Croatian and Serbian) immigrant couple in Yukon, Pennsylvania and
ended his life as the
world famous Omelet King, chef to some of America’s most prominent people
and families? A young man who was brought to Newport’s mansions before he was
16 (in 1929), to work as a kitchen boy with his godmother, and who through a
combination of talent, hard work, luck and timing, and more found himself
making John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural breakfast? Yup, I’d say that just about
defines rags to riches.
The principal question when it comes to such rags to riches stories has
never been whether they’re possible at all, however, but whether they’re
representative of something larger than their singular existence—whether, that
is, they offer any sort of more general blueprint for success. As part of the
audio tour of The Breakers—which is not where Stanish began his career but
where he received his first big break, filling in as head chef at the last
minute for a dinner party and impressing the hosts sufficiently to stay on—Stanish
is quoted as saying precisely that his story was indeed telling; that in a
world like that of The Breakers, those among the servants (“The Staff,” as the
Vanderbilts insisted on calling them) who worked hard and gave it their best
and, yes, were gifted at their jobs could make their way to something far
beyond the cramped and hot upstairs quarters where they lived at The Breakers. And
it’s hard to disagree: without at least the possibility of such mobility, more
than just Stanish’s own story would lose a good bit of its appeal—the story of
America would as well.
But even if we accept that Stanish’s story is not only individually
possible (which of course it was) but communally achievable, there remains at
least one other significant criticism that can be levied against such stories. Which
is that they represent more a form of celebrity, of our society’s
unquestionable emphasis on and celebration of fame, than narratives of
meritocracy, of opportunity, or, even more radically, of challenge to the
existing hierarchies of wealth and class. That is, Stanish became famous for
how well he served the nation’s powerful elites—but even if that fame granted
him a place among those elites, it neither equated his identity with theirs nor
(especially) led to any questions about the world in which they all operated. To
be clear, that’s not the role of any individual, and I’m not critiquing Stanish
in any way—but if his story is a uniquely American one, it is at least in part
because it reflects the often superficial nature of success in our society.
Next Breakers
story tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think?
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