An Average Man
The fourth of Robert Hugh Benson's "mainstream" novels, An Average Man is a far from average production. First published in 1913 and only appearing since in a limited edition in 1945, An Average Man
may well be Benson's finest achievement, as well as his most subtle
and mature work. It rips to shreds the assumptions on which Edwardian
upper class society believed civilization itself was built. Worldly
success destroys one "average man," while it presents another, afflicted
with seemingly endless and crushing defeats, with the opportunity of
practicing virtue of a heroic stature. An Average Man dissects
the idea that full participation in the common good is only for an
elite, promoting the revolutionary concept that life is for everyone.
(ISBN 978-1-60210-008-4, 340 pp., $20.00)
