brockmeier continued
“Chuck skimmed a news magazine he found on the table. Someone, a Chinese soldier, had been shot in the head. Light was gushing from his temple in a sideways fountain. Some children were starving, their stomachs glistening like crystal balls. Their pain had made them simple, honest, candid, like objects.” One of the excellent things that Brockmeier does with his conceit comes from its development over time in the book: the Illumination is at first an amazement, and then an enticement to good, but very quickly leads to awkwardness or embarrassment, forced indifference and artificial etiquette, ultimately making people into objects defined by their pain. This is not what Chuck sees here, necessarily -- he's got a closer sympathy with objects than with people, really -- but Brockmeier so clearly renders the internalized not-seeing that manners depends upon.