Second acts in American lives

In last week's chat, we got to talking about wrongheaded quotes, one of which is F. Scott Fitzgerald's "There are no second acts in American lives." There wasn't for him, sadly enough, but really, America is all about the second act. We are a nation of immigrants, after all, and what do immigrants come here for if not a second act?

My buddy Pacer521 at The Blog at the End of the Universe has some thoughts to share on the issue. He's less interested in the actor than he is in the stage manager, whom he identifies, for a certain segment of society, as "the PR guy":

Lets face it — America loves the comeback kid. Simply, we love to read about the guy who was once bad and now is good. If they reconstructed their life, they have a story. And in a sense — that’s what makes us great — we give second chances, and people who accept that have another chance. But this is something that goes beyond the television, beyond the newspapers — behind the scenes. This is what saves the day for the rich and famous, celebrity and nutty. And finally, this is what gives the genius PR guy his well-earned week’s pay.

(I'm not sure I agree that Paris Hilton has earned a second act with her hilarious McCain retort--and it is hilarious regardless of what your politics are. It was a heck of an intermission show, though.)

I've always been a sucker for the second act, as behooves someone who at the relatively young age of 41 has had at least three distinct career phases, conservatively estimated. Pacer521's focus on the architect of the second act is something I've never considered before. This is embarrassing, slightly, because a great deal of the work I do at Harvard Business School focuses on how even the best and brightest don't get to where they are all by themselves--they need mentorship, support, teams of good people surrounding them. This doesn't negate the individual's intelligence, courage, determination, or talent, but paints a more complex picture. We find this threatening in America. As Robert Bellah and colleagues wrote in Habits of the Heart:

Americans define success in terms of the outcome of free competition among individuals in an open market. One is a success to the extent that one personally comes out ahead in a fair competition with other individuals. Most of those we talked to emphasized that they attained their present status in life through their own hard work, seldom mentioning the party played by their family, schooling, or the advantages that came to them by being middle class to start with. It is not that they would deny the contributions others have made to their success in life; what they deny is the moral relevance of those contributions. It is only insofar as they can claim that they have succeeded through their own efforts that they can feel they have deserved that achievement.

But it doesn't make less of you to acknowledge your advantages. It makes you both more humble, and more strategic in how you approach career and life planning. Eliza Doolittle never would have gotten her second act without Henry Higgins, which she is smart and honest enough to recognize. One of the reasons that "Pygmalion" is a better work than "My Fair Lady" is that the Shaw original paints it as Higgins' moral and intellectual flaw that he doesn't realize that she can offer him a second act, too. He believes he created her out of nothing, and he is wrong.