I think that people who write great mainstream fiction have to be great observers of the human condition.

On NPR the other day, a man spoke about how he became interested in the theater and decided to make it his career. He was part of an integrated busing program in Detroit. He had been in an all black school up until junior high, and then as part of desegration, he was bused to a school that was about 95% white. He didn't fit in, and was really struggling. Somehow his English teacher roped him into a part in a play (I think maybe Shakespeare). He talked about being there on opening night and feeling totally absurd walking out on stage alone at the beginning of act, dressed in a fake beard and robe. He summoned up this deep voice from inside of himself and played it totally straight, and somehow the audience bought into it. He decided he had found his place and worked in the theater, (although not always as an actor) for the next thirty years.

So the same day I heard that on the morning radio, I was reading "Pigs in Heaven" by Barbara Kingsolver, and there it was, in a sentence, in a book that had nothing to do with growing up in an integrated society. Just an offhand observation about a film played at the Herbert Hoover dam museum. Here she is... "The film describes the amazing achievement of a dam that tamed the Colorado River. In the old days it ran wild, flooding out everyone downstream, burying their crops in mud. 'There was only one solution-the dam!' exclaims the narrator, who reminds Taylor of a boy in a high school play, drumming up self-importance to cover up for embarassment.

Funny how such a moment of importance for this young man in Detroit was really the experience of many young men, and how Kingsolver knew enough of the human condition to see it and put it as the tiniest part of her novel.