The title of this post comes from Robert Walser, who I read about recently in the New Yorker. A rising modernist star, Walser's fortunes fell as he continued to write about humble, courteous nobodies. One of his novels is entitled The Assistant; he also wrote a short story called The Job Application.
My research is about just this sort of forbearance. I thought again about the piece on Walser while I was reading a bit about Modest Mouse yesterday. The origin of the band's name really struck me. Apparently, it comes from a short story by Virginia Woolf. The full quote, according to Wikipedia, is "and very frequent even in the minds of modest, mouse-coloured people." Even if this is apocryphal, it makes sense. Brock's comment that I quoted yesterday is full of class rage and I find it fascinating that the band could have pulled their name from Woolf, whose comments regarding the petit bourgeois and the working classes are notorious. It seems that MM comes from the same impoverished Pacific Northwest as Nirvana, but they are clearly a bit more reflective about their origins.
Like Walser, Modest Mouse seems to temper their rage with "modesty" and humor, while maintaining a clear sense regarding most people's low horizons and frustrated ambitions. It makes me think that even celebrities usually appear on the small screen. From MM's Missed the Boat:
Tiny curtains open and we heard the tiny clap of little hands
A tiny man would tell a little joke and get a tiny laugh from all the folks
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