The Memoir Of A Thoroughly Dull Man - The Irony Of Thinking He Mattered

Daniel was an ordinary man, so ordinary in fact that he never showed up on anyone's radar - a quantum particle that appeared and then disappeared into the void leaving no trace, a quantum bit that maybe existed or maybe didn't, and even if it did it was without definition, place, or time. 

He was recorded in the Lake County vital statistics, born on this day to X and Y, themselves blips on the screen, paid his taxes, had a driver's license and Social Security number; but other than that he was an empty space.  He took up no room, edged no one aside, came and went without notice, was unrecognized even in familiar haunts, and would certainly one day vanish without a trace, a three line mention in the obituary column. 

What possessed this man to write his memoir was a mystery - some epiphany perhaps that he had never mattered to anyone, and it was about time to set the record straight; or intimations of morality, better get something down on paper before one disappeared; or the fanciful idea that what he had experienced actually had salience and interest - but he was determined, and after a few months of struggling over the first chapter, let it be read. 

As one might expect there was nothing whatsoever of interest in what he wrote, not a scintilla of anything that would catch the reader's interest, not one unique notion, not one singular idea, not a trace of insight or particular vision.  It was as thuddingly dull as the man himself. 

The comments he got from those few he asked to read it were kind.  There was no point in spoiling good intentions even though they would lead nowhere. 'Nice job, Daniel...great introduction...can't wait for the next installment...a page-turner' they wrote.  In fact it was hard to imagine how a man even with Daniel's limited abilities could have written twenty-five pages of absolutely nothing.  

Even an eight-year old can come up with a story about lions and bears in the closet, but there was no inkling of anything in Daniel's work. The pavement was nothing but asphalt, trees were just trees lining the road, the sky was never mentioned, the sun incidental. There were no colors, no surprises, no light and shadow, no nothing. 

Life to Daniel, judging from the first few pages of the memoir, was a matter of tire pressure and gear ratios - not as metaphors for life's balance and resistance, but the heart of the matter.  His interest was not even getting from here to there but the mechanisms of going. 

Many people have tried to write their memoirs, nothing surprising or shameful about that.  We all feel the need to say 'I mattered' even if we didn't.  There has to be something enduring, worth saving, worth noting in life.  If not, and it goes seventy years unremarkably and without notice, then it is like being erased like a smudge on a page. 

The life described by Thomas Hobbes - solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short - at least has drama.  Sisyphus pushing the boulder up a hill only to have it eternally roll back down, Hercules and the Sirens of Circe, up by the bootstraps rags to riches stories, victories against all odds, tragedy, courage, lovers gained and lot.  But a life without any definition whatsoever, no distinction, and no memorable moment is worse even than dying miserably. 

So one should have patience with Daniel.  His ambition was laudable even if its result wasn't.  The memoir was his last and only choice to show the world that despite the lack of any distinction, any memorable quotes, any fascinating interludes, his life mattered after all. 

After many rewrites based on comments which had become more insistently critical, Daniel hired an editor.  There was no shame in seeking professional guidance.  The work would be his and the editor would only nip and tuck, trim, and offer suggestions as to tone and direction. 

The editor had worked on many memoirs before.  They all shared a commonality - the voice of the narrator was absent.  The tales of a Vietnam Huey gunner were flat, prosaic, and as uninteresting as an almanac. She tried to get him to write about the sun rising over the mountains above Dalat, the glint of the moon over the Gulf, the cough of the engines as they came to life, the receding jungle landscape below...but he couldn't do it. His mind was focused on how the thing worked. 

The gunner was one of the few Vietnam veterans who loved the war, who loved flying and raining rockets down onto Viet Cong emplacements near the LZ; but the editor could not get him to put any of his joy, his irrepressible delight into words. 

In Daniel's case there was no voice to come through, no sense of delight, joy, or amazement.  After lengthy interviews with him the editor realized that there simply was nothing there, nothing whatsoever.  There was nothing to build on, nothing to edit; so after a number of meetings she told him that other business that she couldn't put off was pressing and she had to resign. 

This did not stop Daniel who kept at it day and night, turning out page after page of unreadable prose.  One might have expected some glimmer of light somewhere - a moment of color, form, or chance - but in page after page Daniel slogged on without the hint of personal reflection.  

That in itself is a story worth telling, said an acquaintance who was aware of Daniel's marathon.  A classic tragedy - a man without depth, insight, understanding, or emotional tenor struggling to show the world that he mattered. 

Daniel never actually gave up, nor said one day 'I can't do this anymore'; but petered out.  Fewer hours of the day writing, then fewer days of the week, then not at all.  It wore him out and rewarded him with nothing.  To a more sensitive, intelligent, reflective man, this might have been cause for depression if not despondency; but because he was so narrow and confined in his thinking, it became just like everything else.  The car in the garage, neatly aligned, polished and ready to go tomorrow.