H o w t o R e a d L i t e r a t u r e5 4their welfare, they would probably sink without trace before the
end of the first chapter.
* * *Some time back, I referred to idiosyncratic characters as ‘types’,
which seems to be something of a contradiction. (The word ‘type’,
incidentally, can also mean a printed letter, just like the word ‘char-
acter’.) To typecast individuals is to slot them into certain categories
rather than to perceive them as beyond compare. Yet it makes perfect
sense to speak of a quirky type, not least because there are a lot of
them around. Ironically, words like ‘quirky’, ‘oddball’ and ‘singular’
are generic terms, meaning terms referring to a whole group or class.
They are quite as generic as ‘celibate’ or ‘courageous’. One can even
speak of different types of eccentric. So even freakish people are not
unclassifiable. Oddballs can have as much in common with each
other as rock climbers or right- wing Republicans.
We like to think of individuals as unique. Yet if this is true of
everyone, then we all share the same quality, namely our unique-
ness. What we have in common is the fact that we are all uncommon.
Everybody is special, which means that nobody is. The truth,
however, is that human beings are uncommon only up to a point.
There are no qualities that are peculiar to one person alone.
Regrettably, there could not be a world in which only one indi-
vidual was irascible, vindictive or lethally aggressive. This is because
human beings are not fundamentally all that different from each
other, a truth postmodernists are reluctant to concede. We share an
enormous amount in common simply by virtue of being human,
and this is revealed by the vocabularies we have for discussing
human character. We even share the social processes by which we
come to individuate ourselves.