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The fact is that we’re all lonely, of course. Everyone knows this, it’s almost a cliché. So yet another layer of my essential fraudulence is that I pretended to myself that my loneliness was special, that it was uniquely my fault because I was somehow especially fraudulent and hollow. It’s not special at all, we’ve all got it. In spades.
Sidelong glance (fourth wall breaking but where is that wall in this story) at the fractal nature of the story and the FP itself. How many layers of fraudulance is DFW attempting to punch through, only to find the FP folding back upon itself?
With Dr. G. it was more in the form of a prolonged, multi-session back-and-forth on whether or not I was a total fraud, during which I got more and more disgusted with myself for even playing along.
So at this point Neil is so invested in being a fraud, that the only way he can feel authentic is to insist that he is completely fraudulent, so even admitting that he is being honest about being a fraud feels fraudulent.
By pointing out the honesty in admitting feelings of fraudulence G. is stating one of those simple, but profound truths that DFW talks about in "This is Water". He is trying to show N. the first step out of the maze, but N. is too stuborn and afraid to take it.
amount of fraudulence and calculation involved in my career—not just in terms of manipulating the consumer and manipulating the client into trusting that your agency’s ideas are the best way to manipulate the consumer, but in the inter-office politics of the agency itself, like for example in sizing up what sorts of things your superiors want to believe (including the belief that they’re smarter than you and that that’s why they’re your superior) and then giving them what they want but doing it just subtly enough that they never get a chance to view you as a sycophant or yes-man (which they
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Mr. Squishy
