in many respects it’s well done, the blending between the narrator and the author and the main character and the qualitative and epistemological differences and similarities and into weaving of those is an interesting thing to do. it produces quite a fine gossamer experience in the reading of the prose which has to manage those layers. so i think it’s well done and well accomplished and i just didn’t like it very much. because - and i think this would have been anathema to a younger me - i didn’t like reading about him very much. and given the way the narrator, central character etc play off each other that’s a problem.
the question of what makes a main character and what the relation of other characters, not the main character, is, where the narrator is effectively doing indirect free speech à la Austen, is interesting but i didn’t find it likeable. as it was that egoist, hypersensitive neurotic type which i find uninteresting these days, probably in part because i self identified with it quite a lot in my younger days. i find it wearying and juvenile.