this is why Wallace was wrong to say that “you have to be willing to look honestly at yourself and at your motives for believing what you believe, and to do it more or less continually.” You really can’t do that, which, I believe, he discovered: his ceaseless self-examination caused him ceaseless misery and contributed in a major way to his early death. Better to follow the principle articulated by W. H. Auden: “The same rules apply to self-examination as apply to auricular confession: Be brief, be blunt, be gone.”
