Popular Culture Review Vol. 3, No. 2, August 1992 | Page 9

The Limits of Narcissism

and the American Adam, Lasch goes on, concerns the origin of self
esteem. For the individualist, the only world worth living in was the
wilderness, where he or she could shape reality to individual design,
personal definition, whereas the narcissist regards the world as a
mirror in which his or her importance is merely reflected. This
reflection, moreover, depends upon the attention of admiring others,
particularly those who radiate celebrity, power, and charisma
(Lasch 10). It is for this reason that the narcissist pursues visible
success and often attains it, though it is success that relies more upon
winning images than upon character, more upon the manipulation of
personal relationships than deep personal attachments. By the same
token, since being a "winner" depends so much upon image and
personal attractiveness, the "gamesman in the executive success
game," as Lasch calls this type of individual, begins to lose ground as
he gets older, thereby losing "the adolescent charm on which
(successful achievements] rest. Middle age hits him with the force of
a disaster" (Lasch 43-45).
Many of the traits that Lasch describes here can be seen in
Wolfe's Sherman McCoy. Perhaps the most glaring is Sherman’s self
definition as a "Master of the Universe," by which he means one of a
handful of people who manipulate the wealth of the planet through
their professional activity as financial managers. As a bond trader,
he regards his company as "the power" and himself as one who is
"wired into the power" (72),^ the power in this case being fabulous
sums of money. Although he never shares the epithet Master of the
Universe with anyone else, thus acknowledging Ms awareness of the
pomposity of the term, its telling absurdity (the name derives from "a
set of lurid, rapacious plastic dolls" [12]), it nevertheless reflects his
own narcissistic response to life. He demands respect, even
exculpation from moral strictures, based upon this self-perception. He
judges the appearance of others as reflected in the distorted glass
through which he sees. His wife he deems old at forty, whereas he
himself is "still young" at thirty-eight (10-11). A bit later, when he
sees another narcissist, an old school acquaintance named Pollard
Browning, he judges his own appearance as superior but still resents
the fact that Pollard is a "true Knickerbocker" who started with
more advantages than Sherman did and loses no opportunity to let
Sherman know it. To justify his affair with a young and attractive
married woman, he says in an apostrophe to his wife, who has