The Overstory

by Richard Powers

What’s retarded?” “It means you’re a retard.” “What’s that?” “Not regular people.” And that’s okay, to Adam. There’s something wrong with regular people. They’re far from being the best creatures in the world.

She hates the phone. Handheld schizophrenia. Unseen voices whispering to you from a distance.

“I never knew how strong a drug other people are.” “The strongest. Or at least the most widely abused.” “How long does it take to … detox?” He considers. “Nobody’s ever clean.”

“We have the numbers.” “Then why doesn’t the market respond?” Because ecosystems tend toward diversity, and markets do the opposite. But she’s smart enough not to say this. Never attack the local gods.

Remember? People aren’t the apex species they think they are. Other creatures—bigger, smaller, slower, faster, older, younger, more powerful—call the shots, make the air, and eat sunlight. Without them, nothing.

To be human is to confuse a satisfying story with a meaningful one, and to mistake life for something huge with two legs. No: life is mobilized on a vastly larger scale, and the world is failing precisely because no novel can make the contest for the world seem as compelling as the struggles between a few lost people.

And that, for Ray, is the greatest mercy fiction gives: proof that the worst the two of them have done to each other is just another tale worth reading together, at the end of the day.

She remembers now why she never had the patience for nature. No drama, no development, no colliding hopes and fears. Branching, tangled, messy plots. And she could never keep the characters straight.