[...] discomfort goes hand in hand with the therapy -- that the emotional response, in fact, is a sign the medicine is working. As Wallace's comments imply, a novel is therapeutic only to the extent it allows readers to see aspects of the world (particularly, of themselves) that they have resisted seeing -- a process that, by its nature, requires a lot of working through. This is why I reject the disempowering trope of the addicted reader [...] I have portrayed the reader as an active agent rather than the author's silent partner; if any reader steps away from a book with a changed understanding, this can only happen because that reader, rather than the author, has made the change. [...]