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SIGNS: First paragraph
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--- On Sat, 4/26/08, jansymello <jansy@AETERN.US> wrote:
> First paragraph:
> (a) "For the fourth time in as many years..."
> Only four times did these parents have trouble to choose a
> birthday present for their incurably deranged son who had
> no desires and lived in an abstract world?
He hasn't been so deranged for his whole life. I imagine
that "long convalescence from pneumonia" was between his
sixteenth and seventeenth birthdays.
Some superficial comments and questions:
Why "deranged in his mind" instead of just "deranged"?
Gallicism? Repetition so the reader can't miss it?
What point of view is the "hives of evil" description from?
His mother's, like most of the rest of the story? Did the
boy manage to communicate this to her? Or is this the
"omniscient author"? I like "vibrant", by the way.
Why "was taboo"? The sentence is fine without it. Does
it suggest a comparison with the networks of relationships
in animist religions?
Jelly jars are man-made objects. Perhaps they're "gross
comforts" rather than the much worse possibility of
something "that might offend him or frighten him".
Jerry Friedman
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> First paragraph:
> (a) "For the fourth time in as many years..."
> Only four times did these parents have trouble to choose a
> birthday present for their incurably deranged son who had
> no desires and lived in an abstract world?
He hasn't been so deranged for his whole life. I imagine
that "long convalescence from pneumonia" was between his
sixteenth and seventeenth birthdays.
Some superficial comments and questions:
Why "deranged in his mind" instead of just "deranged"?
Gallicism? Repetition so the reader can't miss it?
What point of view is the "hives of evil" description from?
His mother's, like most of the rest of the story? Did the
boy manage to communicate this to her? Or is this the
"omniscient author"? I like "vibrant", by the way.
Why "was taboo"? The sentence is fine without it. Does
it suggest a comparison with the networks of relationships
in animist religions?
Jelly jars are man-made objects. Perhaps they're "gross
comforts" rather than the much worse possibility of
something "that might offend him or frighten him".
Jerry Friedman
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm