I always thought of him as a sociopath. From your other comments we know you're not a troll and that you worked at Apple. So I find it regrettable that you can

I always thought of him as a sociopath. From your other comments we know you're not a troll and that you worked at Apple. So I find it regrettable that you can't say this here. Two forces prevent it: the taboo against speaking ill (i.e. objectively) of the dead, and the cult of personality. That's not to say that SJ isn't a fascinating character and the OP moving -- I feel both those things too -- but there's a lot of myth-making going on here. The author is a novelist. That's what novelists do. Edit: not to share your description, necessarily. He seems too emotional to have been a normal sociopath, if there is such a thing. That's one thing I like about the OP - it dwells on the emotional side.