Farmer. Country lawyer. Mill worker. Mine worker. Soldier of fortune. Contributor to Fortune. Loved fortune cookies. Father of one. Father of seven. Father of 17. Bachelor. Born: ?, in some writer’s imagination. Died: January 1, 2011, in all of our hearts, of a recognition of multicultural diversity caused by changing demographics, age ?.
He was tall to some, short to others, kind of average height to everybody else. He had brown eyes or he had blue eyes or he had grey eyes. He was a little bit country. He was a little bit rock and roll.
He was known as Everyman, but he would have just as soon you called him Bill…or Bob or Ted or Joe or Jimmy. He was down to earth that way, except when he was suspicious of you, being a stranger and all, or if there was bad blood between your families going back generations or if he was just having a bad day, in which case you better watch out cause he sure could be ornery!
Everyman was born in a log cabin in the middle of a major metropolitan city. He had an uneventful childhood, except for the time he fell in the well or the locusts destroyed the harvest or a black man went on trial for having sex with a white woman. The important thing was that his childhood experience gave him roots that made him wise throughout his later life, unless they scarred him for life and made him bitter.
When he was older, he would leave the country to find fame and fortune in the big city, or leave the city to find his urban roots. He was always restlessly searching for something, except, of course, when he found happiness in his own backyard and settled down to enjoy it.
He married his childhood sweetheart, Betty-Lou, Becky-Sue, Charmaine-Astrid or some such. They had a large family, unless one of them was barren, in which case they adopted two or three kids, often from impoverished nations. They were big-hearted like that, unless they got divorced. Then, look out! They loved each other for their entire lives, but boy the sparks could fly!
Everyman wasn’t what you’d call edjicated, ‘xactly, unless you’d call the university of the streets an education. Or, Harvard. Still, he could be the smartest man in the room when he wasn’t making a complete ass of himself. People took notice of Everyman when they weren’t completely ignoring him, but he was okay with that when he wasn’t resenting the hell out of it.
As time passed, Everyman put on weight, unless he stayed trim, lost his hair, unless he maintained a full head of it, and started forgetting the names of his children, unless his brain was sharp as a tack to the end or he didn’t have any children, in which case he started forgetting the names of his neighbour’s children, unless his brain was sharp as a tack to the end or his neighbours didn’t have children, in which case he started forgetting the names of his cats, unless his brain was sharp as a tack to the end or he didn’t have any cats, in which case he started forgetting the names of the states and provinces, unless – well, you get the idea. He suffered these indignities with grace, except when he raged against their unfairness (assuming he suffered them at all).
Towards the end of his life, he wrote an autobiography called Everyman by Himself. It was largely ignored by critics and, to the surprise of those of us who had been following his life, it didn’t sell very well. I would have thought that most people could see a bit of themselves in his story; it never occurred to me that maybe people wouldn’t want to see the bit of themselves revealed in his story.
Everyman died quietly in his hospital room surrounded by his family. Then, he died again alone in a back alley. He also died on battlefields around the world in the middle of an act of bravery or cowardice or boredom. He died saving a baby from a burning building, a quiet inspiration to us all even at the end. And, of course, he died robbing a liquor store, a silent rebuke to us all even at the end.
But, mostly, Everyman died because his position in literature had become untenable. Successive waves of immigrants had made human experience too obviously varied to be able to be summed up in the life of one fictional character. This was made most manifest at what had been his traditional home – the University – when feminist, then deconstructionist, then post-colonial theorists destroyed the myth of a single human experience.
Everyman will be missed mostly by traditional literary scholars, and those few literary tropes who survive and knew him well.
The Common Man
The Common Man was Everyman’s twin brother. He wrote this from his bed in the Mount Sigh Nigh Hospital. He was feeling very unwell himself.