Response to Bizz B's post "He's real and solid but we still don't know the guy"

I tried to comment on Bizz's actual blog wall but I wasn't able to. I'll try to play around more and figure out how to do that. In the meantime, here's my response to her post:

I agree with Bizz that Nanson knows little of himself at the beginning of the novel, as he thinks more of concepts than of facts. His switch in emphasis to biography is beneficial, as not only does he begin to see the world in terms of the tangible, but he also begins to act instead of just think. What I mean by this is that Nanson goes out into the world and, in the process of searching for facts about Destry-Scholes, discovers how to be a human being. For instance, he gets a job and begins to interact with women, two aspects that most people would consider to be good indications of a functioning member of society. The root cause of this transformation is Nanson's decision to abandon post-modernist philosophy for biography. So basically, as we have already discussed in class, Nanson's pursuit of facts about Destry-Scholes leads Nanson to discover facts about himself, and by knowing himself he begins to truly live.