[...] How he wished he could cast it all off, admit his ignorance, embrace his normality. He entertained absurd fantasies of giving up his teaching job and becoming a plumber or a van driver instead. If he thought for more than a few minutes, however, he realized that this was impossible. The idea of normality still revolted him. The people he saw every day-with their haircuts, their glasses, their well-chosen shoes-they had never welcomed him before, and he had spent his adult life leaning away from them. How could he now seek succor in their ranks?

So, deported from the higher state of intellect and ideas, and unwilling to take up citizenship in a more mundane country of skin and bone, Chester had for the past three years been stuck in a limbo, stranded in a purgatorial Heathrow of indecision and inertia. His marriage remained an engagement, his book a few contradictory jottings, all he didassiduously and almost every hour-was eat. He guzzled up to seven meals a day, and the departmental snack bar became his de facto office.