On the Jack-of-All-Trades

“Such older people were accustomed to say that he simply lacked power, but it would have been equally valid to call him a lifelong many-sided dilettante, and it was quite remarkable that there were always authorities in the worlds of music, painting and literature who expressed enthusiastic views about Walter’s future.  In Ulrich’s life, by contrast, even though he had a few undeniably noteworthy achievements to his credit, it had never happened that someone had came up to him and said: ‘You are the man I have always been waiting for, the man my friends have been waiting for.’  In Walter’s life this happened every three months. [...] He had an air about him that seemed to matter much more than any specific achievement.  Perhaps he had a particular genius for passing as a genius.” (pp.48-9)