Part I: Conrad Gets An Intro

In the book A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe one of the main characters, Conrad Hensley, has a bad day when he loses his job to corporate downsizing. That bad day stretches into a few bad weeks when he can't get a job. Then it becomes a bad month when he hops a fence and punches a police officer. It culminates with time in jail. And to be sure, its hard to know just how things are with Conrad unless you've (a) lived it or (b) read the book.

The key element in the story is something that doesnt ever really get said, though its the single constant strain in Conrad's life up to this point. That element is simply that he doesn't believe anyone understand's just how he feels: marginal, unappreciated, and blank. He is mistaken.

It seems most people feel this way at some point in their lives, but they call is something else, and they tend not to see it in others. Conrad can't seem to forget how the world doesn't need him around, where most people prefer to consider their circumstances hopelessly unique. Conrad sees his life as trivial, largely irrelevant. But he mistakes this percieved irrelevancy as a product of his lackluster environment. The truth is that his irrelevancy is just part of the human condition. Over the next third of the book, Conrad is put in touch with the work of an old greek philosopher named Epictetus and only from his recorded teachings does Conrad realize a larger truth.

And that truth is a simple one: that ones life is irrelevant to the workings of the world is in fact irrelevant to ones life. From this base launching pad, Conrad is displanted from one coast to the other, where he meets the other central character, Charlie Croker.

Coincidence leads to circumstance, and lo and behold, Conrad is face to face with the man who sent him on this roller coaster to begin with, Cap'n Charlie. And oh! irony of ironies, doesnt Conrad affect Charlie in such a way that the world is changed for the better, if only slightly.

Part II comes when I've got it straightened out in my head.