I finally read both Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and The Hours by Michael Cunningham back-to-back. In The Hours I came across this passage and paused for a moment (I love a good character sketch). While arguably not a complimentary fleshing out of the adult character Richard, I liked it. Richard's childlike. It reminded me of watching my son Charlie play over the years. Charlie has an enormous need for imaginary play and he creates grandiose scenes inspired by the current book he is reading. He also has an enormous need for others to join in with him.
"Richard cannot imagine a life more interesting or worthwhile than those being lived by his aquaintances and himself, and for that reason one often feels exhalted, expanded in his presence...He is the opposite kind of egoist, driven by grandiosity rather than greed and if he insists on a version of you that is funnier, stranger, more eccentric and profound than you suspect yourself to be... it is all but impossible not to believe, at least in his presence and for a while after you've left him, that he alone sees through to your essence, weighs your true qualities (not all of which are necessarily flattering-a certain clumsy, childish rudeness is part of his style) and appreciates you more fully than anyone else ever has. It is only after knowing him for sometime that you begin to realize you are, to him, an essentially fictional character, one he has invested with nearly limitless capacities for tragedy and comedy not because that is your true nature but because he, Richard, needs to live in a world peopled by extreme and commanding figures. Some have ended their relations with him rather than continue as figures in the epic poem he is always composing in his head, the story of his life and passions, but others enjoy the sense of hyperbole he brings to their lives."
Of course Charlie is only eight.
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