The Wreck of the Horizontal Man

"So, we'll wait for the appropriate time, when you have the tendency and the spirit to break your own schemes, when you turn away from the moral prescriptions in force, when you leave horizontality and you adopt verticality. Then we must seize, "horizontal man," when your defenses are low, when you look to the sky and not to the sides." This is what Selina said to the Horizontal Man in order to turn him vertical. The novel is about the deteriorating marriage of the van der Boner's, a couple with existential issues.