A solution to this problem might seem to be to deny that the judgment of others has anything to do with who we are or what we mean - that is, to decisively privilege our "inner" selves over the self that we expose to the public. But this option, sometimes associated with romanticism or modernism in the arts, is connected in Brief Interviews to the temptation to remain "forever overhead," like the decadently isolated writer in "Death Is Not the End" or the boy poised on the edge of the diving board. [...]