"He thinks he's hallucinating"

[Michael Bailey]

alice wellintown wrote:

> Do people talk like Shasta? Do people, when engaged in a conversation
> with only one other person, say, "Thinks he's hallucinating"? Oh,
> sure they do.

right, and what does that say about our society?
that within an affectionate relationship one of the parties addresses
an imaginary personage - who is it supposed to be?  how comes such a
custom to be?  Is there a specific free-floating incarnation of common
sense, tantamount to a spiritual presence, available for address?

Having volubly called into question many practices in the course of
his fiction, the author may have primed the pump or jump started a
process of questioning of
phenomena both on and off the page

The consensus reality that Shasta appeals to, is that not tantamount
to a wire or puppet string which to some extent Doc has chosen to live
free of?