It may be that art, like drugs, is a way of dulling or controlling pain. Eloquently articulating a feeling is one way to avoid actually experiencing it. Words are only symbols, noises or marks on paper, and turning the messy, ugly stuff of life into language renders it inert and manageable for the author, even as it intensifies it for the reader. It’s a nerdy, sensitive kid’s way of turning suffering into something safely abstract, an object of contemplation. I suspect most of the people who write all that furious invective on the internet, professional polemicists and semiliterate commenters alike, are lashing out because they’ve been hurt — their sense of fairness or decency has been outraged, or they feel personally wounded or threatened. Writing may ultimately be less an offensive weapon, like the proverbial rapier, than a shield.

TIM KREIDER