The proofs are spread around me, I said to W. I’ve marked them with little proof readers symbols, but it’s no good, I said. It’s mediocre, the book, and nothing can change that. It’s mediocre just as I am mediocre. Here I sit, I said to W., in tubby mediocrity. Look at me, I said, I’m aging fast.
What’s disappointing is that I’m not the worst, I said to W. I don’t even have that consolation. I can’t say to myself: I’m the worst and still I sit here in my office, still I keep my job. No, there are others like me, hundreds of them, sitting in their offices. Hundreds of us, writing our mediocre books. Some of us do well, I said, and some of us do badly. What does it matter, the mediocrity is the same.
I have no real idea of I’m writing about, I said. I’m like a mole tunnelling through the darkness. But a mole without claws, going nowhere. There’s no progress, nothing changes. There’s a little pile of dirt behind me, a little mound. I take it as a sign that I’ve advanced. But the mound is a mound of papers and articles. Then, the horror: it is the mound of what I’ve written. That mediocre mound of bad prose and flimsy arguments.
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