[Exley leads a] trouble-seeking, trouble-rich existence [in Pages From a Cold Island]. He is always putting, indeed pushing, his foot in it. Everything with him is more than enough, or less than enough; there is no unqualified enough. But as he describes his embarrassing, often comic, occasionally joyful meetings with the strangers he drags or tickles out of the blue, as he tells of the intimacy with the strangers that seems to constitute most of the intimacy he knows, he reminds us that a large part of the trouble he discovers is trouble we, too, have had, and that much of the rest is trouble we haven't the nerve to seek. Most of us have adversity thrust upon us; Exley achieves it.
He makes the most of this achievement in his books. He is a kind of redeemer, exonerating our mischievous wishes, and less frequent acts, while experiencing them. He operates with a helpless force of Id that carries us, as readers, beyond embarrassment for him and for our own desires and crudities, to a state of amused, relieved acceptance. It is easy to imagine that if everyone behaved like Exley, the world would become unpopulated mud; but the author acting in our place makes it possible to see that our fear is usually greater than it need be. Exley does for us the writer's job. Above all, however, he is obsessed with literary courage and performance in continuing the story about writing his own biography.
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