Turn Left at the Trojan Horse.

A Would-Be Hero's American Odyssey.

by Brad Herzog.

I

high noon

Mount Olympus has vanished, so I order another beer.

Around me, the patrons in this lofty bubble stab at pan-seared mahi mahi and sip chardonnays as the restaurant rotates, revealing the wonders of Puget Sound in a slow-motion panorama. One floor up, tourists ooh and aah their way around the s.p.a.ce Needle's observation deck. Some five hundred feet below, the Emerald City continues with its daily bustle.

A silent procession hums along Interstate 5. Hulking vessels inch across the sound. A seaplane lands and glides to a stop on Lake Union. A cruise ship-the Sapphire Princess Sapphire Princess-sits patiently dockside in Elliott Bay. To the east is the Seattle skyline backed by distant vistas of the Cascades. To the west is the Olympic Peninsula, where Mount Olympus rises regally from its center. But the sky is br.i.m.m.i.n.g with low stratus clouds, like ceiling tiles, and the mountain is hidden.

So this is where it begins-with my view obscured, but with the world revolving around me, one degree of perspective at a time.

I reach into my backpack, thumbing past tattered translations of the Iliad Iliad and the and the Odyssey Odyssey and a few back issues of and a few back issues of Sports Ill.u.s.trated Sports Ill.u.s.trated until I find an envelope containing a breathless invitation: "Calling all cla.s.smates around the world to join us in Ithaca!" until I find an envelope containing a breathless invitation: "Calling all cla.s.smates around the world to join us in Ithaca!"

This is what brought me here. I have been invited-along with three thousand or so Cornell University cla.s.smates-to a fifteenth reunion at the gleaming school on the hill in Ithaca, New York. Come enjoy the guest lecturers and the glee club concert! Hear the president's State of the University address! Take in an alumni baseball game! Come enjoy the guest lecturers and the glee club concert! Hear the president's State of the University address! Take in an alumni baseball game! It might have added: It might have added: Consider the stratospheric success of your cla.s.smates, and wallow in a sense of under-achievement! Consider the stratospheric success of your cla.s.smates, and wallow in a sense of under-achievement!

When asked to revisit where you have been, you tend to a.s.sess where you are. You realize that the gradual march of days has acc.u.mulated into years and that the years are forming decades. When midlife approaches like a mugger in an alleyway, you don't merely take stock of your life; you recall your original goals-and perhaps you notice the gulf between the former and the latter.

I seem to arrive at such an existential crisis every decade or so. I a.s.sume we all do, in one way or another. My first one happened when I was thirteen and about to celebrate my bar mitzvah, the Jewish rite of pa.s.sage that was supposed to mean I was entering into some form of adulthood. I felt the weight of the world on my still-narrow shoulders, mostly because the world seemed suddenly complex and chaotic. I was overwhelmed by the onslaught of junior high school-the Darwinian game of social standing, the increasing imbalance of work and play, the shock of adolescence.

I recall the pressure of trying to memorize Hebrew text that-to my blurry and unconvinced eyes-looked like hieroglyphs and squiggles. I heard somewhere that girls preferred boys with dimples, so for my seventh-grade cla.s.s photo I tried to surrept.i.tiously suck in my cheeks while smiling. When the yearbook came out, I looked creepy and constipated. I remember silently sitting on my girlfriend's bas.e.m.e.nt couch with my arm draped around her shoulder for what seemed like hours as I tried to summon the courage to make any sort of move. I thought: If I am becoming a man, this is a h.e.l.l of an unimpressive start.

So I confronted this crisis of confidence by traveling inward, by delving further into my imagination. I escaped the chaos by creating worlds in which I was in command. I became a writer.

A few years later, in high school, I met Amy-as a result of my writing, in fact. An English teacher had decided to read one of my papers to her cla.s.s. I stopped in to chat for a moment. Amy says she liked my smile. I think she was smitten by my metaphors. We attended a couple of proms together, weathered college in Ithaca, and saved our pennies to pay for a walk-up apartment on a leafy street in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood. Following the thrill of our wedding day, we found ourselves falling into a routine and a future laid out before us like a straight track to the horizon. True adulthood had arrived, and responsibilities along with it. But we yearned for options. We wanted to sample life's possibilities before settling down. So this time I responded by traveling outward. We collected our meager savings, bought a thirty-four-foot RV, and hit the highway.

Through forty-eight states and nearly eleven months, we allowed our thoughts to expand and fill the open s.p.a.ces, crystallizing our criteria of what we wanted out of a place to live. In the end, we opted for small-town serenity on California's central coast, a place where John Steinbeck, Doc Ricketts, and Joseph Campbell used to clink beers, stare into tide pools, and ponder the human condition. I was self-satisfied at my ability to control my destiny and certain that the sky was the limit as long as I didn't settle for anything less than the ideal. But that was when I was a young phenom, newly married, already published at age twenty-six, still clinging to the idea that I could somehow change the world, one word at a time. That was before I had kids and a minivan and an unfathomable mortgage and the notion that my achievements were not meeting my expectations.

Before I found myself humbled by the vagaries of my profession, I would joke to friends that my sole objective was to someday gain entry into the encyclopedia. I figured the folks who make it into those glossy pages had been rewarded for being universally impressive or constructive or, at the very least, memorable. They discovered chemical elements or trekked into lands unknown or churned out literary cla.s.sics. They earned their immortality. So I aspired to join them. Was that too much to ask?

Be careful what you wish for.

Several years ago, at the peak of the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Who Wants to Be a Millionaire phenomenon, I tried out for the show. By that I mean I phoned the 1-800 number they flashed on the screen and attempted to answer three trivia questions. I did it once a day for a couple of weeks. Why not? I am self-employed. There are worse ways to take a work break. It was a diversion, a lark-until I pa.s.sed the initial round and received a fortunate random phone call telling me I had moved on to the next tryout hurdle. phenomenon, I tried out for the show. By that I mean I phoned the 1-800 number they flashed on the screen and attempted to answer three trivia questions. I did it once a day for a couple of weeks. Why not? I am self-employed. There are worse ways to take a work break. It was a diversion, a lark-until I pa.s.sed the initial round and received a fortunate random phone call telling me I had moved on to the next tryout hurdle.

So in rapid succession I answered five more questions, tougher ones, on subjects ranging from Mary Lou Retton to the Teapot Dome scandal. Finally, there was this synapse-snapper: "Put the following ancient civilizations in the order in which they were established-a.s.syrian, Mayan, Sumerian, Cla.s.sical Greek." Wise Athena must have been smiling down on me. More likely, it was Tyche, G.o.ddess of luck. Soon enough, I found myself in Manhattan, along with nine other contestants, hoping for an opportunity to sit across from diminutive Regis Philbin and his shiny teeth, each of us craving a chance to conquer trivia questions for gobs of money in front of an audience of millions.

Then I won the "fastest-finger" round-by thirteen-hundredths of a second. This meant I was headed for something called the "hot seat," which at the time was the epicenter of pop culture in America, a piece of furniture as iconic as Archie Bunker's chair. Surreal doesn't even begin to describe it, and because I tend to be rather cynical and inhibited, it was as out of character as if I had joined the cast of A Chorus Line A Chorus Line.

For the next forty minutes, I did my best not to humiliate myself in front of twenty-five million people. I am sure I didn't impress the ten million or so folks who were screaming at the b.o.o.b on the tube who wasn't quite sure about the name of Dilbert's pet dog or the logo of Hallmark cards. But, using my lifelines early and often, I clawed my way through the murk of ignorance until suddenly this little television host was showing me a fake check for $64,000.

Then came a question for $125,000: Which of these American westerns was not a remake of a j.a.panese film? Possible answers: The Magnificent Seven The Magnificent Seven, The Outrage The Outrage, High Noon High Noon, A Fistful of Dollars A Fistful of Dollars.

I knew that the first one was a remake of The Seven Samurai The Seven Samurai. I had no clue about the rest. If I wanted to hazard a guess, I had a one-in-three chance. However, if I guessed incorrectly, I would lose half my money. I kept focusing on High Noon High Noon, mumbling it over and over, whispering my suspicion that it was the answer.

Before jetting off to New York I had considered possible scenarios with my friends, and I actually had declared that if I were in that exact situation-with an inkling of an idea at that particular level of the game-I would go for it. You only live once, I announced. The name of the show isn't Who Wants to Be Slightly Better Off Who Wants to Be Slightly Better Off.

But when the real moment arrived, I hemmed and hawed and squirmed. Then, rather suddenly, I decided to stop. I took the money and walked away.

The next question would have been for a quarter of a million dollars. I would give anything to know what the subject would have been. In my daydreams, it is a bit of trivia about baseball or U.S. geography, something very much in my cerebral wheelhouse. All I had to do was answer three more questions correctly, and I would have been an instant millionaire.

The answer, of course, was High Noon High Noon. The irony-that I didn't have the guts to choose a film about one man's gallantry in the face of long odds-is not lost on me. While I was overjoyed at my windfall, I reflect on that moment of decision and feel pangs of weakness. I know that it took a certain daring to get there in the first place. And I very much believe that we make our own breaks in life. But that decision nags at me. How many people are handed such a black-and-white litmus test of their nerve? Isn't boldness the one trait shared by most every encyclopedia-worthy historical figure? Did my fears win the day?

It was my Scylla-and-Charybdis moment. In Homer's mythological epics, this is brave Odysseus's most heart-wrenching dilemma, as he pilots his ships through what may have been the Straits of Messina, off the coast of Sicily. On one side is Charybdis, an unpredictable whirlpool that may-or may not-swallow entire ships. On the other side, in a gloomy cliffside cave, dwells Scylla, a monster with "twelve flapping feet, and six necks enormously long, and at the end of each neck a horrible head with three rows of teeth set thick and close, full of black death." She is guaranteed to s.n.a.t.c.h a half-dozen crew members in her deadly jaws. So this is Odysseus's choice-if he steers clear of one, he falls prey to the other. It is the genesis of the rock-and-hard-place metaphor. Do you risk everything for success, or do you sacrifice for safety?

Like Odysseus, I chose conservatively-security over audacity. And I regret it, both fiscally and spiritually. But that isn't the end of the story.

After every commercial break, Regis would ask contestants a personal question or two, his note cards stocked with information gleaned from a producer's pre-interview. We chatted about how I met Amy and what magazines I write for. We discussed the one-in-a-billion coincidence that the person in the hot seat right before me was a good friend of mine whose husband I have known since the age of nine. We even touched on the fact that I suffer from cremnophobia, the fear of precipices (which-let's face it-is really the fear of death). Finally, after I had won the $64,000, Regis said, "So you've written a few books. What's the latest one?"

So for about thirty seconds I described a book I had written, an account of my life-altering year on the road with my wife. States of Mind States of Mind had been published to little fanfare by a small press in North Carolina. It had been sporadically, if kindly, reviewed, and only a few thousand copies had been sold. Before my moment of had been published to little fanfare by a small press in North Carolina. It had been sporadically, if kindly, reviewed, and only a few thousand copies had been sold. Before my moment of Millionaire Millionaire glory aired, I had logged on to Amazon.com and discovered that it was the online bookseller's 122,040th best-selling book. That's humbling. But there were twenty-five million people watching-and paying attention. Within twenty-four hours, glory aired, I had logged on to Amazon.com and discovered that it was the online bookseller's 122,040th best-selling book. That's humbling. But there were twenty-five million people watching-and paying attention. Within twenty-four hours, States of Mind States of Mind was ranked No. 7. was ranked No. 7.

USA Today ran a blurb revealing the book's meteoric rise. ran a blurb revealing the book's meteoric rise. Entertainment Weekly Entertainment Weekly called, followed by a parade of newspapers and national magazines. After I flew back to New York and chatted with Matt Lauer on NBC's called, followed by a parade of newspapers and national magazines. After I flew back to New York and chatted with Matt Lauer on NBC's Today Today show for five minutes, show for five minutes, States of Mind States of Mind rose to No. 2, behind only an unpublished Harry Potter novel. rose to No. 2, behind only an unpublished Harry Potter novel.

d.a.m.n wizard.

By the time People People magazine and the magazine and the Oprah Oprah show contacted me, my excitement had evolved into bemused fascination. It was thrilling, of course, but I also struggled with ambivalence. My book chronicled a search for virtue in America-a literal and figurative trip through places like Inspiration (Arizona), Honor (Michigan), and Wisdom (Montana)-yet I had promoted it on a mind-numbing television show predicated on greed. It was a bit like Harper Lee using show contacted me, my excitement had evolved into bemused fascination. It was thrilling, of course, but I also struggled with ambivalence. My book chronicled a search for virtue in America-a literal and figurative trip through places like Inspiration (Arizona), Honor (Michigan), and Wisdom (Montana)-yet I had promoted it on a mind-numbing television show predicated on greed. It was a bit like Harper Lee using Let's Make a Deal Let's Make a Deal as a platform, if you will pardon the comparison. And while the ensuing publicity was a hoot, it focused almost entirely on the book's sales, not necessarily the merits of the book itself. I feared that I had sold out and peaked at the same time. Other than quarterbacks and p.o.r.n stars, who wants to max out at age thirty-one? as a platform, if you will pardon the comparison. And while the ensuing publicity was a hoot, it focused almost entirely on the book's sales, not necessarily the merits of the book itself. I feared that I had sold out and peaked at the same time. Other than quarterbacks and p.o.r.n stars, who wants to max out at age thirty-one?

I am not a believer in predestination. But the ancient Greeks, the folks whose myths are driving my current excursion, were consumed by it. They believed their fortunes were at the mercy of the Morae-the three sisters known collectively as the Fates. Clotho, the youngest, spun the thread of life. Lachesis, the middle sister, measured it with a rod. Atropos, the oldest, snipped it with shears when Death arrived. It was said that even Zeus was powerless against them.

However, the mythic Morae determined not only the time and manner of one's death but also one's lifelong destiny. A thousand years after Homer's day, an Athenian sophist named Flavius Philostratus mused that the threads that the Fates spin are so unalterable that "a man who the Fates have decreed that he shall be an eminent archer will not miss the mark, even though he lost his eyesight." But I have begun to wonder if I was fated to slightly miss the mark.

"Brad Herzog. Remember the name," began a USA Today USA Today story in the midst of my fleeting media maelstrom. "He just might be the next Stephen King or John Grisham." Surely I am the only reader who recalls the words, but they now strike me as having a story in the midst of my fleeting media maelstrom. "He just might be the next Stephen King or John Grisham." Surely I am the only reader who recalls the words, but they now strike me as having a DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN quality to them. Acquaintances will refer to my quality to them. Acquaintances will refer to my Millionaire Millionaire moment and joke that I somehow managed to double my fifteen minutes of fame. But I didn't seek fleeting tabloid renown, and I have no desire that my obituary someday begin with a reference to a TV quiz show. In the long run, I became neither rich nor famous-just a bit more professionally established and briefly celebrated for being momentarily well-known. moment and joke that I somehow managed to double my fifteen minutes of fame. But I didn't seek fleeting tabloid renown, and I have no desire that my obituary someday begin with a reference to a TV quiz show. In the long run, I became neither rich nor famous-just a bit more professionally established and briefly celebrated for being momentarily well-known.

Now I am pushing forty. I seem to have aches where I didn't know I had muscles, rogue hairs where I didn't realize I had follicles, and frustration where I wasn't aware I had ambition. I have reached that psychochronological tipping point at which my life is no longer entirely a forward-looking phenomenon, and sporadic regrets have begun to creep in like c.o.c.kroaches. And I am being beckoned to the place where my grandiose dreams took root.

It has been nearly two decades since I first arrived in Ithaca, unpacking my bags and my potential. What kind of existence have I crafted for myself? Can I claim to have lived a good life? Are my contributions in any way heroic? And in contemporary America, what const.i.tutes a heroic life anyhow?

Funny thing is, I am wholly satisfied with my surroundings. How many people can say that? I lucked into an adorable and compa.s.sionate wife, two precious sons, loyal friends, and a fine house in a charming town. What I can't figure out is why, amid so much external contentment, I can harbor so much disillusionment. Lately, my angst has coalesced into a bit of a black cloud over my head, and it has begun to permeate the small world that means everything to me.

I used to write from the heart-experimentally, enthusiastically. But in recent years my grand literary dreams have softened into moderate ambitions revolving around paying the mortgage. Whereas once I was inspired by a shifting view of the big picture, now I constantly find myself sweating the small stuff, micromanaging my family like a retired guy who hangs around the house and annoys everybody-only I may never be able to afford retirement. I have bouts of irritability, periods in which I have difficulty living in the moment, times where I notice my innate cynicism evolving into a sort of nihilistic grunt.

I don't want to be that guy that guy. My wife doesn't want it either.

Amy is always the optimist, impossibly sunny-a Pooh to my Eeyore-and she has taken on the tiring responsibility of bolstering my sense of self-worth. But when I begin to cross the line-when my unreasonable expectations are thrust on my life partner and two little boys, who, after all, will be boys-her exhaustion turns to exasperation. The last thing I want is to unravel my near-perfect universe because I can't come to grips with my own imperfections.

"Go take a drive," Amy insisted. "I'll meet you in Ithaca."

I might have taken this to mean simply that I should light out after the kind of self-knowledge that only a journey can provide, that I should clear the existential cobwebs by crafting a unique itinerary through a nation's nooks and crannies, figuring it would take me to places I had not yet explored. But when she said it, she held my gaze for just a half-second longer than usual, a moment dripping with subtext.

Go away. Figure it out, she was saying. Don't come back until you do Don't come back until you do.

She looked at the calendar. "You have thirty-one days."

It was a Greek philosopher, Socrates, who believed, "The unexamined life is not worth living." And it was the son of French Canadian immigrants, Jack Kerouac, who opined, "The road is life." Some combustible combination of the two notions is the spark of my mission.

I have decided to let Homer ride shotgun. It was he, a supposedly blind minstrel nearly three millennia ago, who crafted the original hero's journey. Odysseus's was a practical quest-return home to his beloved isle of Ithaka after twenty years of war and wayward travel. But at its heart, the voyage of Odysseus represents an intellectual adventure. For all the G.o.ds and monsters he encounters, his is a pilgrimage toward an understanding of humanity.

In fact, much the same could be said about all ancient myths. "Society's dream" is how they were characterized by Joseph Campbell, the famed mythologist, who described myths as stories of man's constant search for meaning. The heroes are archetypes, replicated in many cultures over various ages. Their tests and ordeals are the wrappings of truth, a sort of collective unconscious, a vehicle for the communication of universal insight-all in the guise of a good yarn. In other words, we were not made in the image of G.o.ds; G.o.ds were made in our image-our fears, our foibles, our fantasies. In my journey, I am not aspiring to the deeds of ancient heroes; rather those ancient heroes are manifestations of the symbolic expression of my psyche.

I don't claim to be Odysseus. It is simply the other way around.

So Campbell will be a key companion of mine too, sitting in the back, occasionally looking over Homer's shoulder. Our ride is a cushy little house on wheels-a twenty-six-foot Winnebago Aspect, which is the perfect name, given my quest. It suggests a facet, a part of a whole-a component of the big picture. Campbell, an atheist's icon, will have to share s.p.a.ce back there with a pastor-turned-philosopher because I brought a collection of Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays along-treatises on concepts like Power, Truth, and Experience, just in case I need a dose of nineteenth-century self-reliance. So this is my traveling band-Homer navigating blindly, while a mythologist and a transcendentalist try to help me determine exactly where his tales should lead me.

My goal: Visit with other lives. Explore other places. Find coherence in the diversity I am sure to encounter. Acc.u.mulate the knowledge of journeys past and present as I rumble toward an under standing of the heroic ideal. Locate exemplars of that elusive concept. Court adventure and epiphany and insight. Then come home in one piece, and possibly at peace with myself.

I descend the s.p.a.ce Needle and spend an hour wandering around Seattle's trendy Belltown neighborhood, past a.s.sorted sushi bars and billiard halls and jazz clubs. Nothing much catches my eye until I reach...the single eye. Here it is, on the corner of First Avenue and Wall Street-blue-irised, red-lidded, rimmed in neon orange. It hangs over the sidewalk, three-dimensional and hypnotic, protruding from a red brick building. I have stumbled upon the Cyclops Cafe.

Seattle's Cyclops Cafe

The menu sounds appealing, in an ocular sort of way-a Greek-tinged Cyclops Omelette, a two-egg meal called the Bi-clops, drinks with names like Eye Caramba and Pink Eye-but it is midafternoon, too early for dinner. The door is locked, the lights dim, the chairs stacked on tables. This is one Cyclops lair that will have to remain unexplored.

I consider this a good omen. Odysseus would have been wise to skip it himself. Early in his journey, when he and his twelve ships catch sight of the Island of the Cyclops-a race of precommunal cave dwellers-Odysseus's prudence loses out to his curiosity. He takes a handful of men to the island, enters a cave, and starts feasting on the food there, only to be somehow surprised when the resident one-eyed giant, Polyphemus, returns. The Cyclops places a ma.s.sive boulder in front of the cave entrance to trap his uninvited visitors and proceeds to cannibalize a few of them.

Odysseus utilizes his famed cunning to extract himself from the situation-first getting the Cyclops drunk and then, when he falls asleep, using a fire-sharpened pole to destroy the creature's single eye. In the morning, when blinded Polyphemus moves the boulder so that his sheep may graze outside, Odysseus and his men, who have tied themselves to the animals' undersides, are able to escape.

But this scene is really a tale of Odysseus's flaws. Hubris book-ends the story. First, he deems his personal curiosity more important than the safety of his crew. Then, after their escape, his excessive pride puts them at even greater risk. When Polyphemus first asks his visitor's name, Odysseus calls himself Noman. After being blinded, Polyphemus cries out to his fellow Cyclops that Noman has hurt him. So they don't intervene. Clever move. But as Odysseus sails away, he stoops to perhaps history's first account of trash-talking, shouting, "If ever anyone asks you who put out your ugly eye, tell them your blinder was Odysseus, the conqueror of Troy, the son of Laertes, whose address is in Ithaka." Bad move. Turns out Polyphemus is one of the sons of Poseidon, who will take vengeance on Odysseus by constantly driving him away from his home and happiness, precipitating some ten years of wandering.

This is why I can identify with this ancient king of Ithaka. Although he claims to be Noman, he is essentially Everyman, in the sense that he is far from perfect. In the course of his adventures, Odysseus lies, steals, and schemes. He can be clear-minded and determined and remarkably courageous, but at times he is also distrustful and devious and hypocritical and merciless. He is not a particularly successful leader: His men often ignore his warnings and pay dearly for doing so, and he loses every single one of his ships and crew. His wife, Penelope, a daughter of Spartan royalty, is the very paragon of fidelity, yet he certainly isn't faithful to her during his long journey home. And when he finally reaches Ithaka, he murders the dozens of unarmed men who have been courting her, thinking her husband long dead.

Even physically, Homer describes Odysseus as unimposing. In the Iliad Iliad, an older man points to him and asks who the fellow is "who is shorter by a head than Agamemnon." Later, another admits, "No other man alive could come near Odysseus. But then we did not think him so very much to look at." By the time of the Odyssey Odyssey, he is probably well into his forties, maybe with bags under his eyes from his constant travails, possibly out of shape. Even one-eyed Polyphemus calls him a "short worthless-looking runt." You know you are no physical marvel when you are dissed by a Cyclops.

So Odysseus is the prototype of not only the hero but also all flawed flawed fictional heroes who followed. He is why Superman falls prey to kryptonite and Sherlock Holmes prefers his 7 percent solution and Indiana Jones hates snakes. And for a guy like me-somewhat vertically challenged, battling a paunch, not always taking the high road-his is a template to which I can relate. fictional heroes who followed. He is why Superman falls prey to kryptonite and Sherlock Holmes prefers his 7 percent solution and Indiana Jones hates snakes. And for a guy like me-somewhat vertically challenged, battling a paunch, not always taking the high road-his is a template to which I can relate.

Come to think of it, my imperfection has been immortalized. You see, there is one final addendum to my Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Who Wants to Be a Millionaire tale. A few weeks after the silliness subsided, the phone rang. It was a fellow from Grolier, the folks who publish tale. A few weeks after the silliness subsided, the phone rang. It was a fellow from Grolier, the folks who publish The Encyclopedia Americana The Encyclopedia Americana. They were putting together The Americana Annual The Americana Annual, a six-hundred-page recap of the events of the year 2000. Could I write 800 words about the history of quiz shows and the current craze? Sure, I said, only a tad reluctantly. At least it's one way to get into the encyclopedia. The lesson: When revealing aspirations, be specific.

Several months later, the volume arrived, a handsomely bound yearbook with Al Gore and George Bush awkwardly shaking hands on the cover. Squeezed in between an account of "Monkeys in Peril" and a spread about tall ships was my summary of quiz show history. To my surprise, the article began with a half-page color photo of my final moments on the Millionaire Millionaire set. So in perpetuity, anyone can turn to page 90 of the 2001 set. So in perpetuity, anyone can turn to page 90 of the 2001 Americana Annual Americana Annual and catch the forever frozen image of me sitting in the hot seat, smiling wanly at my old pal Regis, having just failed a test of courage. and catch the forever frozen image of me sitting in the hot seat, smiling wanly at my old pal Regis, having just failed a test of courage.

II

family plots

The original Encyclopedia Britannica Encyclopedia Britannica, published nearly a century ago, described suicide as "an act of cowardice disguised as heroism." It is a fascinating perspective, and it may have its origins in the ancient Greek myths, which are rife with dozens of tales of men and women who find death preferable to a troubled life. They hang themselves, stab themselves, drink poison, self-castrate, leap into the sea, and hurl themselves into the mouths of dragons. Usually, the G.o.ds are to blame.

At about the time of the inaugural Britannica Britannica, my great-great-great uncle took an easier route than most of the ancients. He simply shot himself-after shooting someone else. I am on a mission to find him and perhaps figure out why.

I have made this my first task because I have decided that I cannot examine the parameters of a heroic life without first considering the phenomenon of personal expectations. How does one's course compare to one's potential and, more important, to one's aspirations? If the decision to end it all may be oversimplified and described as an extreme reaction to an existence unfulfilled, doesn't it boil down to expectations? What society expects of us. What we expect of our world. What we expect of ourselves. And if the expectations are so unreasonable that they are all but impossible to meet, what is the source of such high standards?

So I am making my way toward a cemetery in eastern Washington, but first I am lunching in Paradise, a thin-aired hamlet at the foot of ma.s.sive Mount Rainier that receives nearly seven hundred inches of snowfall annually. It is midday in mid-May, and the sun has turned the blanket of snow around me into a billion crystalline wonders. As my companion Emerson once put it, on "one of those celestial days when heaven and earth meet and adorn each other, it seems a poverty that we can only spend it once."

The mountain as holy place is a notion present in nearly every culture, of course, and in every era-whether it be Mount Fuji to the j.a.panese or the Smoky Mountains to the Cherokee or Ararat and Sinai in Judeo-Christian teachings. We celebrate them as an opportunity to rise above humanity, literally and figuratively. Really, they are metaphors for aspirations.

Alpinists seem to find the climb itself-the challenge-to be a sort of stairway to the realm and the revelations of the G.o.ds. In 1950, when Maurice Herzog (no relation to my decidedly earth-bound family) reached the peak of Annapurna, at the time the highest mountain ever summited, he returned with the conviction that "in touching the extreme boundaries of man's world, we have come to know something of its true splendor." Those concerned with the big picture-the philosophers and photographers among us-tend to find a glimpse of immortality in the view. If one accepts the contention, articulated even in ancient times, that G.o.ds are heroes glorified over time, then these two perspectives of the mount might represent the dichotomy of the Hero, of what const.i.tutes heroic attempt-ascent versus awareness, effort versus insight, the challenge of overcoming man's limitations versus the possibility of actually understanding them.

The story of Odysseus embodies both. His is a search for both Ithaka and illumination. Joseph Campbell's blueprint for all myths, which he called the nuclear unit of the monomyth, is simply the following: "A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man." The last part, while it may be least exciting, is actually most important. It implies that one falls short of the heroic ideal if there is achievement without understanding, forces overcome without lessons learned and dispersed-that is, if you climb the mountain without absorbing the view.

But while this might be paradise after all, someday it will be annihilated. Mount Rainier is an active volcano, one of more than a dozen in the Cascade Range. Volcanologists keep an especially wary eye on it because a large lava eruption would melt the white sheet covering its ma.s.sive dome-more snow and ice than all the other Cascade volcanoes combined-and send a flood of mud and rock rushing toward the river valleys that radiate from the mountain.

Less than fifty miles south of here and almost exactly twenty-five years earlier, a tremendous blast blew the top off Mount St. Helens. An ash column rose more than fifteen miles and dumped volcanic dust across the Northwest. A hundred-mile-per-hour landslide covered twenty-three square miles and left debris and ash as much as six hundred feet deep. Fifty-seven people died. By contrast, Rainier's environs are far more populated than those surrounding Mount St. Helens; more than three million people live within one hundred miles of the mountain.

The ancient Greeks knew nothing of magma reservoirs, of course. To them, the rumble and steam from volcanoes were the hammer and forge of Hephaestus, the blacksmith of Olympus, G.o.d of fire and metallurgy. Unlike the other G.o.ds, who were usually portrayed as having exceptional beauty, he was short, fat, and, most remarkably, disabled-the result of being tossed from Olympus by either his mother, Hera, or his father, Zeus, depending on which version of parental rejection one prefers.

His is a mythos of great contradiction. He was a G.o.d, but he actually worked tirelessly, sweating over his fiery forge, wearing a smudged face and a sleeveless tunic. He was lame and ugly, yet he hammered out great power (Zeus's thunderbolts, Apollo's arrows) and unmatched beauty (the thrones of Olympus, Dionysus's golden cup). He was married to lovely Aphrodite, but her unfaithfulness led him to act on his vengeful desires, and so he tried to rape virginal Athena.

It was the three women in Hephaestus's life-Athena, Aphrodite, and Hera-whose I'm-prettier-than-you contest was judged by the Trojan prince Paris. Athena and Hera tried to bribe Paris with power and victory in battle, but Aphrodite promised him the love of the most beautiful woman in the world. She was Helen, wife to the king of Sparta and daughter of the king of the G.o.ds, conceived during one of Zeus's frequent adulterous endeavors. But it was her own adulterous elopement with this Trojan prince that led to a G.o.d-squabble played out on an epic human scale, launching a thousand ships, one of them captained by the reluctant Odysseus, amid the ten-year Trojan War.

Both mythographies-Hephaestus the unwanted G.o.d and Helen the wanted woman, he the repulsive creator of beauty and she the beautiful seed of ruination-share similar, almost paradoxical motifs: ugly attractiveness, blighted purity. The existence of a Mount St. Helens, bearing the forge of the G.o.d and the name of the woman-or a Rainier, even grander and deadlier-would seem to be a lesson in moderating expectations. The ability to both inspire and obliterate is a reminder that, however heroic we may deem ourselves, we are earthbound and at the mercy of something greater. They are monuments to the impossibility of perfection.

A few hours later, I have come upon a high desert mirage for the atomic age. In the distance, out past the sagebrush, beneath an armada of c.u.mulus clouds, a cl.u.s.ter of smokestacks and boxy buildings rise from the flatlands of Benton County like rows of Montecristos and packs of Marlboros. It is what John Steinbeck used to call the "yellow smoke of progress." The forested mounds of western Washington have flattened into the dry gra.s.slands of eastern Washington, and I am driving along the fringe of a 560-square-mile region over-seen by the Department of Energy-the Hanford site, an anti-oasis if ever there was one.

Two centuries earlier, when Lewis and Clark arrived at this curve in the Columbia River, they found the remains of Indian villages dating from prehistoric times. Today, more than 120,000 people reside in the Tri-Cities of Richland, Pasco, and Kennewick. Most of them are here because a few scientists discovered the devastating potential of nuclear fission.