The Gift for Theatrical Self-Transformation

(from Philip Roth's The Counterlife, p. 210):

"What people envy in the novelist aren't the things that the novelists think are so enviable but the performing selves that the author indulges, the slipping irresponsibly in and out of his skin, the reveling not in 'I' but in escaping 'I', even if it involves—especially if it involves—piling imaginary afflictions upon himself. What's envied is the gift for theatrical self-transformation, the way they are able to loosen and make ambiguous their connection to a real life through the imposition of talent. The exhibitioinism of the superior artist is connected to his imagination, fiction is for him at once playful hypothesis and serious supposition, an imaginative form of inquiry—everything that exhibitionism is not. It is, if anything, closet exhibitionism, exhibitioinism in hiding. Isn't it true that, contrary to the general belief, it is the distance between the writer's life and his novel that is the most intriguing aspect of his imagination?"