He could write only perhaps a page at a time so scarred was he of losing the brilliance that he had somehow found again. After a few minutes of writing he was haunted by introspection reading back on what he had just written he couldn't escape the notion his words had been penned by some greater man and if he were to continue, to add to it, he would only be lessening a beautiful portrait. The effect was that each page he wrote looked like a biography with each chapter recorded by a different writer giving his work the disjointed feeling of having many contributors all compiling their experiences to tell this one story. He had never bothered to understand Durkheim's theory of alienation, but he imagined it was something close to this – not recognising himself in every story he wrote, only knowing that it was somehow someone different each time and that they were all trapped somewhere deep inside him.