least be free of what she suffers, through her sister, at my brother’s hands.
Yet given the daily advances of science and the inspiring circumstance of Your Majesty’s visit, I dare this final hope: that at your bidding the world’s most accomplished surgeons may successfully divide my brother from myself, in a manner such that one of us at least may survive, free of the other. After all, we were both joined once to our unknown mother, and safely detached to begin our misery. Or if a bond to
something
is necessary in our case, let it be something more congenial and sympathetic: graft my brother’s Thalia in my place, and fasten me … to my own navel, to anything but him, if the Thalia I love can’t be freed to join me! Perhaps she has another sister.… Death itself I would embrace like a lover, if I might share the grave with no other company. To be one: paradise! To be two: bliss! But to be both and neither is unspeakable. Your Highness may imagine with what eagerness His reply to this petition is awaited by
Yours truly,
LOST IN THE FUNHOUSE
For whom is the funhouse fun? Perhaps for lovers. For Ambrose it is
a place of fear and confusion.
He has come to the seashore with his family for the holiday,
the occasion of their visit is Independence Day, the most important secular holiday of the United States of America.
A single straight underline is the manuscript mark for italic type,
which in turn
is the printed equivalent to oral emphasis of words and phrases as well as the customary type for titles of complete works, not to mention. Italics are also employed, in fiction stories especially, for “outside,” intrusive, or artificial voices, such as radio announcements, the texts of telegrams and newspaper articles, et cetera. They should be used
sparingly.
If passages originally in roman type are italicized by someone repeating them, it’s customary to acknowledge the fact.
Italics mine.
Ambrose was “at that awkward age.” His voice came out high-pitched as a child’s if he let himself get carried away; to be on the safe side, therefore, he moved and spoke with
deliberate calm
and
adult gravity.
Talking soberly of unimportant or irrelevant matters and listening consciously to the sound of your own voice are useful habits for maintaining control in this difficult interval.
En route
to Ocean City he sat in the back seat of the family car with his brother Peter, age fifteen, and Magda G_____, age fourteen, a pretty girl an exquisite young lady,who lived not far from them on B_____ Street in the town of D_____, Maryland. Initials, blanks, or both were often substituted for proper names in nineteenth-century fiction to enhance the illusion of reality. It is as if the author felt it necessary to delete the names for reasons of tact or legal liability. Interestingly, as with other aspects of realism, it is an
illusion
that is being enhanced, by purely artificial means. Is it likely, does it violate the principle of verisimilitude, that a thirteen-year-old boy could make such a sophisticated observation? A girl of fourteen is
the psychological coeval
of a boy of fifteen or sixteen; a thirteen-year-old boy, therefore, even one precocious in some other respects, might be three years
her emotional junior.
Thrice a year—on Memorial, Independence, and Labor Days —the family visits Ocean City for the afternoon and evening. When Ambrose and Peter’s father was their age, the excursion was made by train, as mentioned in the novel
The 42nd Parallel
by John Dos Passos. Many families from the same neighborhood used to travel together, with dependent relatives and often with Negro servants; schoolfuls of children swarmed through the railway cars; everyone shared everyone else’s Maryland fried chicken, Virginia ham, deviled eggs, potato salad, beaten biscuits, iced tea. Nowadays (that is, in 19_____, the year of our story) the journey is made by automobile—more comfortably and quickly though without the extra fun
Yet given the daily advances of science and the inspiring circumstance of Your Majesty’s visit, I dare this final hope: that at your bidding the world’s most accomplished surgeons may successfully divide my brother from myself, in a manner such that one of us at least may survive, free of the other. After all, we were both joined once to our unknown mother, and safely detached to begin our misery. Or if a bond to
something
is necessary in our case, let it be something more congenial and sympathetic: graft my brother’s Thalia in my place, and fasten me … to my own navel, to anything but him, if the Thalia I love can’t be freed to join me! Perhaps she has another sister.… Death itself I would embrace like a lover, if I might share the grave with no other company. To be one: paradise! To be two: bliss! But to be both and neither is unspeakable. Your Highness may imagine with what eagerness His reply to this petition is awaited by
Yours truly,
LOST IN THE FUNHOUSE
For whom is the funhouse fun? Perhaps for lovers. For Ambrose it is
a place of fear and confusion.
He has come to the seashore with his family for the holiday,
the occasion of their visit is Independence Day, the most important secular holiday of the United States of America.
A single straight underline is the manuscript mark for italic type,
which in turn
is the printed equivalent to oral emphasis of words and phrases as well as the customary type for titles of complete works, not to mention. Italics are also employed, in fiction stories especially, for “outside,” intrusive, or artificial voices, such as radio announcements, the texts of telegrams and newspaper articles, et cetera. They should be used
sparingly.
If passages originally in roman type are italicized by someone repeating them, it’s customary to acknowledge the fact.
Italics mine.
Ambrose was “at that awkward age.” His voice came out high-pitched as a child’s if he let himself get carried away; to be on the safe side, therefore, he moved and spoke with
deliberate calm
and
adult gravity.
Talking soberly of unimportant or irrelevant matters and listening consciously to the sound of your own voice are useful habits for maintaining control in this difficult interval.
En route
to Ocean City he sat in the back seat of the family car with his brother Peter, age fifteen, and Magda G_____, age fourteen, a pretty girl an exquisite young lady,who lived not far from them on B_____ Street in the town of D_____, Maryland. Initials, blanks, or both were often substituted for proper names in nineteenth-century fiction to enhance the illusion of reality. It is as if the author felt it necessary to delete the names for reasons of tact or legal liability. Interestingly, as with other aspects of realism, it is an
illusion
that is being enhanced, by purely artificial means. Is it likely, does it violate the principle of verisimilitude, that a thirteen-year-old boy could make such a sophisticated observation? A girl of fourteen is
the psychological coeval
of a boy of fifteen or sixteen; a thirteen-year-old boy, therefore, even one precocious in some other respects, might be three years
her emotional junior.
Thrice a year—on Memorial, Independence, and Labor Days —the family visits Ocean City for the afternoon and evening. When Ambrose and Peter’s father was their age, the excursion was made by train, as mentioned in the novel
The 42nd Parallel
by John Dos Passos. Many families from the same neighborhood used to travel together, with dependent relatives and often with Negro servants; schoolfuls of children swarmed through the railway cars; everyone shared everyone else’s Maryland fried chicken, Virginia ham, deviled eggs, potato salad, beaten biscuits, iced tea. Nowadays (that is, in 19_____, the year of our story) the journey is made by automobile—more comfortably and quickly though without the extra fun
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