Many of the writers I know have a stand-in. Bellow has Herzog. Mailer had this character named Sergius O'Shaughnessy. Céline had Céline. Gombrowicz had Gombrowicz. They didn’t have stand-ins but they were stand-ins indeed labeled with their own name. A stand-in both frees you to draw on your own experience and to invent off of your own experience. It’s a mask. And in masks there is freedom.
PHILIP ROTH
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