The multiple voices that crowd our minds and make us uncertain are hostages in a single body crowded with organs vulnerable to external violence, disease, decay, and accident. Our body has a future we can be certain about. This future is an open secret we attempt to conceal from ourselves. Bill says totalitarian governments succeed if they can hide the bodies of their victims. But it's not just political groups who hide bodies.
Individuals are maoists too.
Bill has changed his name from Willard Skansey, a bare-chested fighter. Bill has neglected wives and children to give total attention to his work. Now that it is exhausted, he thinks of it as a body. He says his biography will be the story of his body, the small changes he attempts to cover up with alcohol and drugs. Having given his life to his small body of work and a new book that he calls dead, Bill wants to surrender his body to Rashid.