more from the four loves

A man I knew was even subtler. He simply referred to his friends as if we all knew, certainly ought to know, who they were. "As Richard Button once said to me...," he would begin. We were all very young. We never dared to admit that we hadn't heard of Richard Button. It seemed so obvious that to everyone who was anyone he must be a household word; "not to know him argued ourselves unknown." Only much later did we come to realize that no one else had heard of him either. (Indeed I now have a suspicion that some of these Richard Buttons, Hezekiah Cromwells, and Eleanor Forsyths had no more existence than Mrs. Harris. But for a year or so we were completely overawed.)

This is so hilarious and true. And ridiculous, if you think about it. It's one thing to lie and say you know someone intimately who everyone has heard of. It's another thing to completely make a person only you know into a celebrity, or make them up out of thin air. It just boggles my mind, the depths we'll go to feel affirmed and wanted.

It reminds me of a certain English professor I had who always talked of this one "roommate" he had in grad school. He probably talked as much about little witty quips shared between his "roommate" and he as he did lecturing on Faulkner. There were other people besides me in the class who secretly wondered whether this roommate actually existed, or whether the professor was talking about himself-projecting parts of his personality onto a madeup "roommate."

Interesting thought, maybe.