Nicely modulated sympathy and judgment

from a book with many nice long sentences:

He remembered the familiar landscape better than the conversation. He remembered that Liza Hatter had begun to talk, and that he had begun not to listen, because to listen, to really pay attention, would have to become that other self, the one that smiled and nodded, the one that seemed to be on loan to someone else, the one that completed his four years of college education, the one that for years to please his parents and succeeded very well in doing so, the one that had made him popular, admired, and envied by virtually everyone he'd been around every day for the last half-dozen years, so that he felt a huge chunk of his life had been used up by this other self on loan to these other people, answering their demands, giving pleasantry for pleasantry, joke for joke, sage advice for the asking, while the self he wanted to be and felt most comfortable with, the self that thought and acted boldly, erratically, somewhat dangerously on certain occasions, was a private self that had not got all it asked for, ever, and could seldom go about its business unhindered, and it was that self, there in the car, that tried to shake loose from Liza Hatter's conversation, sought escape through the windows into the woods and the wheat fields, the fireworks stands and the casinos on the reservations, the dusty streets and violent taverns of the reservation towns themselves, and then later, after it had turned dark, into a little game that this self liked to play, and in which Liza Hatter had joined to the best of Tristan's recollection, a game that involved leaving the brights in and drinking from a whiskey bottle, kept always under the seat for this purpose, each time another driver on the lonely highway flashed them, which was often enough that Tristan felt fairly dizzy by the time they pulled off the highway and onto the road to the lake house.

from The Dart League King, by Keith Lee Morris