Odd Fellows Gallery Of Eccentric Characters Makes A Fascinating Study Of Mental Health, Creativity, Intelligence And Humor

“Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness” By David Weeks (277 pages; Villard; $23)

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation, according to Henry David Thoreau. Dreams of glory are dampened by the dread of falling on one’s face.

So we settle for struggling with the pathetic quandaries of T.S. Eliot’s Prufrock: “Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?”

Thoreau also wrote, “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears.”

“Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness,” by physician David Weeks in collaboration with journalist Jamie James, is a study and a celebration of those who dare to be different, who march to paradiddles the rest of us can’t hear.

Among Weeks’ gallery of distinguished eccentrics are Albert Einstein, pianist Glenn Gould, William Blake, Johnny Appleseed, Benjamin Franklin, Howard Hughes, Henry Ford.

Lesser known oddballs include Joshua Abraham Norton, who declared himself Emperor of the United States in 1859, suspended the Constitution, printed his own money and strutted around in a blue military uniform with golden epaulets.

Weeks, a clinical neuropsychologist, discovered some contemporary eccentrics living in caves. Some are obsessive collectors. Few are literally mad. Many are bad spellers.

Eccentricity is a British trait, exemplified by John Ward of Northhamptonshire. Ward, who describes himself as a “junkist,” has invented an electric spoon, a bra warmer, a confetti machine and a catamaran made out of bathtubs.

Weeks argues that eccentrics are often mentally more healthy than we “normal” folks. “Eccentrics appear to be happier than the rest of us,” he writes. They’re likely to be creative, curious, idealistic, intelligent and possessors of a good sense of humor.

Being different isn’t automatically a blessing, of course.

“Eccentrics have thrown off the constraints of normal life to let themselves do exactly as they please - and anyone who doesn’t like it be damned,” writes Weeks.

They may be anti-social or self-destructive. Oofty Goofty, for instance, lived on the streets of San Francisco and supported himself by allowing passers-by to kick him for a dime. Jack Mytton set himself on fire to get rid of the hiccups.

Variety, however, may be a key to the survival of the species as well as the spice of life.

“A high degree of variability is obviously favorable, as freely given the materials for natural selection,” wrote Darwin.

Eccentrics are “the mutations of social evolution,” according to Weeks. “Human evolution needs human diversity. Although in an age of standardization and homogeneity, psychologists may react suspiciously to peculiar ideas and idiosyncratic people, they should keep their minds open to the rebellious fun of those who deviate from the norm.”

Unfortunately, we of the orthodox herd instinctively reject most new ideas and scorn the agents of progress and change as if stagnation were ideal. We pay lip service to “diversity” but define it according to stereotypes. And the politics of diversity demand conformity.

The educational establishment is promoting national standards as if the job of schools was to turn out widgets. Coupled with brutal peer pressure, young people are encouraged to suppress everything about their personalities that’s original.

“That so few dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of our time,” wrote John Stuart Mill.

A companion volume to “Eccentrics” is “Holding On: Dreamers, Visionaries, Eccentrics and Other American Heroes,” by David Isay with photographs by Harvey Wang.

Isay, a frequent contributor to National Public Radio, has compiled vignettes of people who are “holding on to the individual lives they cherish.”

His cast includes serpent handlers, a castle builder, the caretaker of America’s only coon dog graveyard, hobo “Steam Train” Maury Graham, the curator of a bell museum, a drag queen, an obsessive diarist who records his every thought and action of the day and a woman who’s been a Woolworth’s lunch counter waitress for 40 years.

“Holding On” pays homage to resilient survivors who’ve refused to give up, to abandon the watch, to yield to discouragement, no matter how little notice or reward they’ve received. Heroes of a different sort, they show a route to human dignity other than the celebrity and conventional success we worship.

In his introduction, writer Henry Roth compares the concept of “holding on” to someone grasping a high-voltage wire. “The current is killing you, but you can’t get rid of it” - except by “converting yourself” into a vehicle of creativity.

“Don’t let the high voltage kill you if you can still convert it into a conduit for communication with your fellow humans,” Roth writes. He adds, “The least it does is help pass the time.”