“Characters are Ciphers”

Peter Mendelsund writes for the Paris Review about how we see, or think we see, fictional characters. “Characters are ciphers. … We are ever reviewing and reconsidering our mental portraits of characters in novels: amending them, backtracking to check on them, updating them when new information arises.”

is a staff writer for The Millions. She lives in New York and every so often writes things at kaulielewis.wordpress.com.