Gold Medal for a Life Well Lived

Good, better, best. Never let it rest until the good is better and the better best.

The tiresome adage seems to have become the theme song of this silly summer season. Every competitor, athletic or aesthetic, seems to be out to prove that old-fashioned determination to be “the best” is what makes America great.

Maybe. Then again, standing at the top of a pile of dogs may have some severe drawbacks. As the millennium approaches, good may just be enough.

Our obsession with the best infects us as consumers. We expend enormous energy, not to mention gasoline, in pursuit of the best sushi bar or the best cappuccino. One yogurt company even calls itself TCBY, The Country’s Best Yogurt. It is as though we believe we would be abandoning an American ideal to settle for anything less.

Republican publicists thought they had a winner with the slogan “Bob Dole: A Better Man for a Better America.” Contrasting Dole’s record for integrity with President Clinton’s, the phrase had a common sense ring to it. If Dole is better, of course we want him for our president. Cunningly omitted was any suggestion of what Republicans mean by a better America. Unfortunately, Dole had trouble getting his mouth around the line. He delivered it as “A Better Plan, a Man for a Better America.”

Caught up in the Olympic fever, we watch athletes push themselves beyond all reason to be the best in the world. We cheer on gymnasts who don’t go to school and teenage swimmers who rise at 4 a.m. for 50 laps. We take pride in their sacrifices and hold the winners up to our children as American heroes. David Remnick wrote that as audiences view Olympic performances, they “experience the rise of individuals from ordinary athletes and their humble beginnings to the company of the world’s elite. This identification reinforces belief in their own ability to achieve. This embodiment of possibility gives the viewer a reason he or she can make it through.”

It is fortunate that we on the couch have athletes who serve our psyches so well, but what about the human cost of their Herculean effort? Years from now, staring at the coveted medals, will some winners regret the years they lost to training? By then, of course, we will be watching someone else.

Granta, a prestigious English journal of new writing, recently announced the 20 best young writers in America. The only rule for entry was that the author had to be a U.S. citizen under 40 who had published at least one novel or short story by May 1995. In the first qualifying round, the several hundred titles submitted were sent to regional judges. The five regional panels submitted finalists to a national panel composed of Granta’s editor, Ian Jack, and literary giants Tobias Wolff, Robert Stone and Anne Tyler.

As a marketing ploy for books by the chosen few, the competition serves a valuable purpose. But do these 20 authors accurately represent the best writing being done in America today? And what does it mean to be the best in an event with no starting guns, no finish line and nothing to time? Possibly points were deducted for imperfect landings, but this is hardly an exact competition.

I cannot help but grumble that some of my favorite young writers--David Foster Wallace, Kay Gibbons, Gish Jen, Chan-rae Lee--didn’t make the final heat. In the process of identifying and glorifying the best, we take the risk of diminishing the value of the rest.

Next month, my soccer-playing son will try out for the Olympic Development Team. If he doesn’t make it, that is just fine with me. For this mom, good is plenty good enough.

Carol Jago teaches at Santa Monica High School and directs the California Reading and Literature Project at UCLA. She can be reached at <jago@gseis.ucla.edu>.