the brother where sincerity actually lands — "Except with you I can feel…"

Hal, a connoisseur of everyone's lies, tries to work out how Mario is never once fooled and lands on a different physics: whatever comes at Mario, however crooked it leaves the sender, reverses its spin in the air and arrives true. Mario is the one receiver in the book on whom sincerity actually registers — "with you I can feel you mean it" — which is why the counterpoint the brothers run all night, two monologues that only graze each other, is somehow the warmest failed conversation in the novel: the connection survives even when the content doesn't land. [sweep · shared-ground irony-sincerity]