This is one of the books I'll be thinking of often as I figure out how to be a man. The more the protagonist-narrator tries to conceal his cowardice and selfishness and hypocrisy and will-to-violence from himself in recursive coils of prose, the more the design of the coils reinscribes it for the readers to see. The more a mediocre man of habitual bad faith stares into himself, the less clearly he sees himself. It's brilliant.