Ezra Stoller, John Hancock Building, Skidmore Owings & Merrill, Chicago, IL, 1970. |
Before you leave here to resume that crude approximation of a human life you have heretofore called a life, I will undertake to inform you of certain truths. I will then offer an opinion as to how you might most profitably view and respond to those truths. (...) You will return to your homes and families for the holiday vacation and, in that festive interval before the last push of CPA examination study - trust me - you will hesitate, you will feel dread and doubt. This will be natural. You will, for what seems the first time, feel dread at your hometown chums' sallies about accountancy as the career before you, you will read the approval in your parents' smiles as an approval of your surrender - oh, I have been there gentlemen ; I know every cobble in the road you are walking. For the hour approaches. To begin, in that literally dreadful interval of looking down before the leap outward, to hear dolorous forecasts as to the sheer drudgery of the profession you are choosing, the lack of excitement or chance to shine on the athletic fields or ballroom floors of life heretofore.
(...)
To experience commitment as the loss
of options, a type of death, the death of childhood's limitless
possibility ; of the flattery of choice without duress - this will
happen, mark me. Childhood's end. The first of many deaths. Hesitation
is natural. Doubt is natural.
(...)
I wish to inform you that the accounting profession to which you
aspire is, in fact, heroic. Please note that I have said “inform” and
not “opine” or “allege” or “posit.” The truth is that what you soon go
home to your carols and toddies and books and CPA examination
preparation guides to stand on the cusp of is - heroism.
(...)
Gentlemen - by which I mean, of course, latter
adolescents who aspire to manhood - gentlemen, here is a truth : Enduring
tedium over real time in a confined space is what real courage is. Such
endurance is, as it happens, the distillate of what is, today, in this
world neither you nor I have made, heroism. Heroism. By which, I mean
true heroism, not heroism as you might know it from films or the tales
of childhood. You are now nearly at childhood’s end ; you are ready for
the truth’s weight, to bear it. The truth is that the heroism of your
childhood entertainments was not true valor. It was theater. The grand
gesture, the moment of choice, the mortal danger, the external foe, the
climactic battle whose outcome resolves all - all designed to appear
heroic, to excite and gratify an audience. An audience. Gentlemen, welcome to the world of
reality - there is no audience. No one to applaud, to admire. No one to
see you. Do you understand ? Here is the truth - actual heroism receives no
ovation, entertains no one. No one queues up to see it. No one is
interested.
(...)
True heroism is you, alone, in a designated
work space. True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the
quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care - with no one
there to see or cheer. This is the world. Just you and the job, at your
desk. You and the return, you and the cash-flow data, you and the
inventory protocol, you and the depreciation schedules, you and the
numbers.
(...)
True heroism is a priori incompatible with audience or applause or even
the bare notice of the common run of man. In fact, the less
conventionally heroic or exciting or adverting or even interesting or
engaging a labor appears to be, the greater its potential as an arena
for actual heroism, and therefore as a denomination of joy unequaled by
any you men can yet imagine
(...)
Too much, you say ? Cowboy, paladin, hero ?
Gentlemen, read your history. Yesterday's hero pushed back at bounds
and frontiers - he penetrated, tamed, hewed, shaped, made, brought
things into being. Yesterday's society's heroes generated facts.
(...)
For
this is what society is - an agglomeration of facts. In today's world,
boundaries are fixed, and most significant facts have been generated.
Gentlemen, the heroic frontier now lies in the ordering and deployment
of those facts. Classification, organization, presentation. To put it
another way, the pie has been made - the contest is now in the slicing.
David Foster Wallace, The Pale King, Little, Brown & Co., 2011, p.230-233.
Merci à A.H.
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