The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible
...more
Another famous passage. When demonstrating this level of what we might call clinical empathy Wallace is at his best. This type of tighter, more evidently directed and purposeful writing, is a breath of fresh air in such a dense, meandering novel.
