THE SOUL THIEF

I dreamed I had my wish:

                                  -- I seemed to see

the conditions of my life, upon

a luminous stage: how I could change,

how I could not: the root of necessity,

and choice.

Frank Bidart, The Golden State

He was insufferable, one of those boy geniuses, all nerve and brain.

Before I encoutered him in person, I heard the stories. They told me he was aberrant ("abnormal" is too plain an adjective to apply to him. He was given to public performative thinking...

He performed intellectual surgery using hairsplitting distinctions. At the age of nineteen, during spring break he took up strolling through Prospect Park with a walking stick and a fedora. Even the pigeons stared at him...
The Soul Thief
Charles Baxter

Like Saul and Patsy, Baxter again just ends this book like he's run out of story. No resolution.