Word: non-hero
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...general ideas, irreligious but without any definite atheist convictions, leading a sex life that is Casanovanic in theory but monastic in fact, boorishly bathed in beer, sweating out a degree and fighting to smother a lower-middle-class background with the correct set of socially acceptable diphthongs. The non-hero of this cad's paradise is John Chote, president of the junior common room at Sturdley College, an ancient, deliquescent foundation with a Victorian Gothic façade, where no memher has won any academic distinction since the 13th century...
...mind that conceived The Loser is obviously steeped in good will. But as its author says when speaking of his Nazi non-hero: "As so often happens, pen and mind tell a different story." Hans Winterschild, a Nazi infantry officer, is the loser of the title, and so, by reasonable extension, is Germany. But what if Hans and Hitler had been the winners? There are times when The Loser all but implies that the Allies would have been proved wrong, or so a cynic could argue. Hans is a case-history figure, a dedicated Nazi who never had to contend...
...before the non-hero can be properly launched on his affluent career, otherwise known as the rat race, he must have a mate so that he can share his disenchantment. Early snapshots of his beloved are etched indelibly in the non-hero's mind, partly because he always lives his life flashbackwards. Nathan is forever recalling Amy arched against the sky on a diving board at poolside on her aunt's rambling estate. In disenchantment novels, these rambling estates are the toys of a gracious childhood soon to be whisked away by that legendary anti-Santa...
Once Nathan's cartooning clicks, he and Amy move to Connecticut, where non-heroes almost always live. The couple has the standard nonheroic family, one boy, one girl. Nathan eventually makes $100,000 a year, above par for a non-hero, but the tax bite devours his bank balance. After a few years of this and nearly two decades of marriage, Nathan discovers, with the customary belated double take of the non-hero, that he does not know his wife, his children, or himself...
Vacuum Keening. At this point the non-hero always has two anodynes for his despair: 1) alcohol, 2) another woman. Author Wilson generously allows Nathan to sample both. Amy has an adulterous fling of her own after which the following dialogue ensues...