My head is a prison I’ve been locked in from the start,So if I'm treated like a criminal I might as well play the part.(attrib: E. Tancarville)

Fiction in general holds little interest for me. Novels, in particular, arouse more suspicion than intrigue. It truly baffles me that any practitioner of make-believe should (especially in this day and age) feel the need to produce anything so gratuitous. The fact that certain examples of this fare can approach the length of your average dictionary seems inherently absurd.

One makes his own meanings as the counterfeiter prints his own money: both know full well that the value of either rests solely in the gullibility of its recipient...

The code of the con is to know just enough about everything so you can lie about anything.(attrib: E. Tancarville)

Then there is the cosmologist, who views himself as nothing but a manipulation of atoms; his mind configured out of randomness into the tool a vast, blind universe might use to perceive itself. If this is so then truly "all is vanity". What could be more pleasing to the cosmic narcissist than to gaze eternally with a billion eyes into the mirror that is himself? What fault, however, if certain eyes ultimately don’t like what they see?

The prisoner of doubt ends his stint [through suicide], released to the custody of that final question mark which punctuates every life sentence.