Summary

Paul spends months in Corfu relaxing and getting himself prepared to re-enter real life. He encounters penniless and homeless Otto Silenus and invites him to stay at Margot’s villa. Having accepted that Margot is married to the “sensible Maltravers,” Otto abandons his plan to marry her and decides to stay a long time so he can recuperate.

Otto then delivers (again uninvited) his views on life to Paul, who, as usual, listens politely. He describes life as the big wheel at Luna Park. Observers sit on chairs arranged circularly around the room, the big wheel in the center spins, and people, as dictated by their character, get on and off, clinging on for dear life at the edges, or trying to edge their way in closer to the center where it revolves slowly. The fallacy, he believes, is in thinking that one has no...