Like The Old Man and the Sea, much of the conflict is internal, as the protagonist works through his self-loathing and indecision and searches for a perspective on his life and his relationship with his parents. How to Live is a character-driven novel in which the protagonist revisits his past relationship with his brilliant, depressed father (who abandoned his family and disappeared into some unknown niche of the space-time continuum) and tries to reconcile those memories with how he is living his own life. Within those infinite moments, the time traveler truly experiences free will, even while he hurtles toward a future he knows he cannot change. Part The Old Man and the Sea, part Waiting for Godot, and part Slaughterhouse-Five, How to Live takes the reader through the time loop between the instant the protagonist sees himself step out of a time machine and, in a panic, shoots his future self and the instant that he steps off his time machine knowing that he will be shot by his past self. But the time travel element is only a background, a vast, complex background that makes introspection a necessary part of life, if not a necessary evil. So, yes, this is a story involving time travel, and it includes a moment when the traveler meets himself.
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