[Issue #5, Fall 2000]
Henry James Discovers Hypertext
By Bob Wake
Strommers arrived at the dining hall, ill of perception [1], yet
recalcitrant in regards to donning his spectacles, which having fallen [2]
from his face when he alighted from the coach, were now snugly shattered
in his coat pocket. Would he even recognize Miss Gostobble [3] if
she were somehow early for their appointment? He had walked the gardens
of the villa with Miss Gostobble and the twins, Chunny and Boinker [4],
in the fading crimson skyward gash [5] that defined the sunset of
the previous evening. But now, in this moment, her face was a darkening
memory, a gnarled rebus [6].
[1]. "ill of perception." Shadowed, as it were, by a reversal.
The surroundings refract a moral glimmer -- illaeso lumine solum
-- that he rebuffs.
[2]. "fallen." An Edenic collapse, a gravitas, a downness.
[3]. "Gostobble." Why must I always sabotage my novels
with these awkward, silly-sounding names? Gostobble is even worse than Strommers.
[4]. "Chunny and Boinker." Okay, but see I actually once
knew a Chunny and Boinker. True, they were Labradors, but I daresay no one
-- least of all Chunny and Boinker -- thought the names silly.
[5]. "crimson skyward gash." This would be a sexual metaphor
if I had the faintest notion what sex requires of two human beings, or even
one human being.
[6]. "gnarled rebus." I don't remember writing this. Isn't
a rebus some kind of monkey? Gnarled means all twisty like.
_____________________________
Bob Wake is editor of Cambridge Book Review and author of Caffeine
& Other Stories.
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