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My daughter doesn't think I read enough fiction. Sigh.
She knows I read all the time, but I read mainly nonfiction: history, biographies, memoirs.
I tell her that once a year I allow myself to read whatever new book John Grisham puts out...that that's my fiction indulgence. She groans and tells me that John Grisham "isn't a very good writer." I say maybe not, but he tells a good story. She groans louder, slaps her forehead, rolls her eyes-a little dramatic if you ask me.
Apparently Grisham doesn't count.
So a few months ago, she bought me a fiction book that she thought I would like. It's called The Thirteenth Tale by someone named Diane Setterfield.
I didn't like it so much. I felt like I was on a perpetual starting line gunning the engine, but never taking off. Besides, it went on and on-slight exaggeration coming: I think there was an epilogue, a post-epilogue, a re-epilogue followed by a post-postscript...Setterfield just wouldn't stop talking.
One thing my daughter is not, however, is a quitter. So she bought me another one...
This book was written by Bryce Courtenay, published in 1989, called The Power of One.
I'm only seventy-five pages in, but it's showing some promise. In it, Courtenay writes possibly the best single sentence I have ever read in my life. I'm a big fan of a meaningful thought summed up in succinct poetry...he does this quite well.
I have to set it up:
In this book, he speaks in the first person, telling the story of when he was a five-year-old English boy in South Africa at the outbreak of World War II. Hitler has promised to punish the British for their imperialistic atrocities and to free nations like India and South Africa from the Brit's grasp.
So this little white English boy is a minority among a black populace with their hatred of Britain and affections for Hitler and his promises. He suffers tremendous abuse.
He's a smart boy, but decides he must dumb himself down so he doesn't stand out. If he gets any extra attention, it could be trouble for him. So rather than excel in school, he purposely performs no better than average.
He does this because, as Courtenay writes (here it comes), "Mediocrity is the best camouflage known to man."
Ah, yes. What a sentence, what a thought...poetic, profound, simple all at once.
By definition most people are average...that's what average means...the place where most people are.
Thus, if you wish not to be seen, then hide amongst the average, the common, the adequate, the mediocre. No one will notice you. You'll never stand out.
It's comfortable there. It's low risk. There's little scrutiny. There's little abuse. Hide there...go ahead.
The imprint you leave will be shallow. The light that trails you will be dim. You will do little good, but you will survive.
So often frightened by the shadows of what might be, we dodge the risk and run from our potential.
"The unforeseen does not exist," says Phileas Fogg in Around the World in Eighty Days, a pretty good book in its own right. And yet, we live petrified by the unforeseen, by consequences that could befall us.
So we dwell in the land of the mediocre, the great camouflage. We stand with the multitude that gazes...we don't venture the venture.
It was certainly understandable for a five-year-old under constant threat in abusive South Africa. What is understandable for him, however, seems unforgivable for us.
Give me the man or woman who picks their way through the jungle...in pink.
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