Platitude Peddlers

A dear friend of Pretty Lady's once recommended to her that she obtain Paolo Coelho's 'The Alchemist' as literary fare for a long plane journey. Pretty Lady is still vaguely irritated. Not only was the text in question ridiculously inadequate to occupy her even halfway to Charles de Gaulle, the storyline was suspiciously familiar. It took a mildly exasperated New Yorker profiler to jog her memory; it was based on a story from 'A Thousand and One Nights,' which Pretty Lady first read at the age of six or seven. No wonder it seemed a bit clichéd.

Pretty Lady cannot really begrudge Mr. Coehlo his overwhelming Popular Success. He seems harmless enough. She is merely mildly disheartened, at the incontrovertible evidence that the vast majority of human minds are shallow, plebian, unimaginative, unoriginal, and not only satisfied with such pablum, but actually uplifted by it. The fact that these people are easily manipulated comes second, in her selfish opinion, to the fact that they are staggeringly boring conversationalists.