In paths untrodden,” as Walt Whitman marvelously put it.” Escaped from the life that exhibits itself…” Oh, that’s a plague, the life that exhibits itself, a real plague! There comes a time when every ridiculous son of Adam wishes o arise before the rest, with all his quirks and twitches and tics, all the glory of his self-adored ugliness, his grinning teeth, his sharp nose, his madly twisted reason, saying to the rest –in an overflow of narcissism which he interprets as benevolence-“I am here to witness. I am come to be your exemplar.” Poor dizzy spook!...

--Saul Bellow, Herzog (p-324)

Bellow’s Herzog, Paul Auster’s The Book of Illusions & Orhan Pamuk’s The Black Book.