And out of our own curious need to finalize our opinions, to decide what we really think, we read on and on unable to prevent ourselves from being shaped by this novel. There are arguments for both disgust and pity. The genius of the novel is found in that the way one reacts to Nagel invariably reveals something about you, the reader! Do you hold the wealthy intellect in contempt for not breaking free from the situations he creates? Or do you sympathize with this man and relate to his own pattern of self destruction? The answer does not come easy. Here is a man able to intelligently articulate (whilst drunk, mind you) on the scope of man's most pressing questions of existence, but struggles repeatedly with his own conscious and interactions with people. He does not reveal a complete and thorough past - partly because he guiltily enjoys the shroud of mystery people pin on him - partly because he can not come to grips with it himself. Nagel arrives in town as an eccentric outsider. "Mysteries" remains amongst the handful of pure existential novels before there was such a thing before the very word became a contrived label.
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