The novelist, I know now, frequently regards his characters with the veiled mystification of a child among grown-ups. He views them with the same callousness and the same suspicion, the same pain, marvel, and the same fickle love. And as he watches them, he adds them to his secret bestiary, to admire, to imitate, to reject, to punish. For its inmates, the sheltered world of intelligence can be wonderfully conducive to preserving this childish vision. From inside its walls, we young recruits were able to regard ourselves as mature to a fault. But let us loose upon the grown-ups, and most of us
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