Milan Kundera wrote something that, like actors without a script, we're constantly going on "cold," maneuvering through life feeling helpless and exposed. On the contrary, we spend out lives arming ourselves against precisely that feeling-that nightmare- of being caught off-guard, in the spotlight, our scripts lost or forgotten. Madness is but an extreme version of the character armor we employ to give ourselves a sense of control, to keep chaos at bay. Our roles and the selves we exhibit are collages, as we collect bits of personae like artifacts-from books, movies, real-life characters-and keep them groomed for the unexpected. We arrive on the scene as actors, authors, and directors all in one, equipped with phrases, prejudices, attitudes, mannerisms, props, all burnished and shiny and ready to be placed around, like cherished personal possessions in a hotel room, to render the unfamiliar familiar, to stave off being overwhelmed by too many possibilities.....
Andrew's madness seemed like the ultimate defense, as hard and as unyielding as granite as it converted everything, everyone, into an enemy. He was like Leontes in Shakespeare's, A Winter's Tale, who, having suspected, then convinced himself of, his wife's treachery, seeks out proof of her perfidy everywhere, a confirmation of his malignant vision in which he takes a positive relish. Her beauty itself becomes evil, an instrument of betrayal.
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