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Elaine Scarry, in her classic literary-philosophical study of the subject, “The Body in Pain,” zeroes in on the inexpressible nature of physical torment, the way it can “destroy language” and thereby seal a person off from understanding.

One of the more frightening aspects of pain, Scarry notes, is that what is “indisputably real to the sufferer” may be, when not accompanied by grave outward signs, “unreal to others.”

“I just assume anymore that any anecdote is fabricated and that nobody cares that he fakes all of his efforts to ‘connect’ with an audience,” The Federalist columnist Eddie Scarry wrote on X.

Charm abounds — again, this is Tom Hanks — but “Masterpiece” is too often a maddeningly excursive endeavor that made me think, more than once, of a Richard Scarry book without the drawings.

Carlson and Scarry go on to decry the pox of representation in pop culture.