the name of the world

I doubt there were more than a dozen others at the tables around us. All men. Middle-aged, middle-income, midwestern. Golfers. In this twilight they were more imagined than seen, but I felt surrounded by the practitioners of a sacred mediocrity, an elegant mediocrity cloistering inaccessible tortures. I don't know quite how to put it. People, men, proud of their cliches yet full of helpless poetry. - Denis Johnson, The Name of the World