The Wit's Guide to Mediocrity
Or, soft in the middle
By definition, mediocrity isn’t so bad. In Latin, it means halfway up the mountain, a spot that you can’t skip if you’re headed to the peak.
“It isn’t evil that is ruining the earth, but mediocrity. The crime is not that Nero played while Rome burned, but that he played badly.”
— Ned Rorem
So why is there so much railing against mediocrity out there? It calls to mind the Dunning-Kruger effect: Most drivers rate themselves as above-average, even outside of Lake Wobegon. Wondering why everyone is so mediocre suggests a below-average understanding of mathematics.
“What is responsible for the success of many works is the rapport between the mediocrity of the author’s ideas and the mediocrity of the public’s.”
— Nicolas Chamfort
A more comfy complaint is that you aren’t successful precisely because you’re too good. You can console yourself with the thought that the masses will never appreciate your genius, and push away the possibility that you’re not good enough.
“Only mediocrity can be trusted to always be at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs.”
— Max Beerbohm
Dave Barry once offered up a surefire money making concept he called “the ‘Mister Mediocre’ fast-food restaurant franchise.” In a distinctly mediocre column from 1986, he argued that Americans “don’t want to go into an unfamiliar restaurant, because they don’t know whether the food will be very bad, or very good, or what. They want to go into a restaurant that advertises on national television where they KNOW the food will be mediocre.” Don’t forget that Barry won the Pulitzer!
“Awards are merely the badges of mediocrity.”
— Charles Ives
The novelist Mordecai Richler regularly supplemented his income with journalism, and in the late 1990s he wrote a weekly column for Montreal’s Gazette and the National Post. One of the Post’s obsessions at the time was the brain drain, the fear that Canada’s best and brightest were being lured to the lower-taxed pastures south of the border. Richler’s take: Harvest those tall poppies already so the rest of us can get some sunshine!
“Good riddance!” he wrote. “Look here, the more brainy types who quit the country, the more opportunities there are for the rest of us second-raters. So clap hands for brain drainage, if only because it gives Canadian mediocrity a real chance.”
“A best-seller is the gilded tomb of a mediocre talent.”
— Logan Pearsall Smith
Interesting how my two thoughts on mediocrity were from newspapers, which I consumed in mass quantities back in the days when there were mass quantities of them to consume. Such mediocrity, and in such large portions! Nowadays I keep threatening to read Middlemarch on my phone instead of all the predictable analyses of the latest indictments. Why, by the time anyone is behind bars, I could be thoroughly versed in George Eliot’s provincial satire! The Modern Library edition of which is 795 pages. I’ll keep you posted, but in the meantime, 1.5 cheers for mediocrity!
“The function of genius is not to give new answers, but to pose new questions – which time and mediocrity can solve.”
— Logan Pearsall Smith
Back of an envelope that’s full of Riposte Cards
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell, said Edward Abbey, and Big Ed had a point! And so I’ll here explain my endgame with Riposte Cards, the limited edition artworks I mail out each month to paying subscribers. It costs about $300 to commission original art each month and mail it out to the cromulent among you — $200 to pay the artist and ~$100 to print and mail. At C$80/month (that’s US$60 for my ten Americans, AUS$90 for my two Aussies, and 7922 króna for my one lovely Icelander!), that means I need 45 annual subs to float the whole nutty enterprise. And coming up on halfway through the fiscal year, I’m at 35 subscribers. So we’re close!
As for what’s next, I’m happy to announce that I’ve got two more New Yorker cartoonists lined up for August and September! More on that next week! In the meantime, here’s what you’ll get if you sign up today:
Quote Vote
“Mediocrity which claims to be intense has a particularly repulsive effect.”
— Edgar Wind
In last week’s poll it really looked like Humiliation would win, but then nominative determinism grabbed the wheel. So much wit derives from the humiliated, so let’s give them another shot. But if they win, does that negate them? Every week, a new philosophical pretzel dipped in the mustard of mystery!
Get Wit Quick No. 212 can see the peak of the mountain from here. Mordecai Richler was actually quite excellent, and he spent much of his midlife in London, where his countrymen and women constantly urged him to come home. “We need you in Canada,” visiting professors and diplomats would say. Then he moved back and they asked, “Didn’t things work out for you in England?” Which goes to show that while Canada is known as a world leader in mining, we’re also pretty good at undermining. My book Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting was published in other countries too, you know. I was trying to keep this one as mediocre as possible, so tap the ❤️ below to give me a thumbs-sideways.
I remembered Mr Mediocre not from Dave Barry’s column, but from his book Claw Your Way to the Top. Interesting to see how the idea progressed.