blandishment with a jolly kind of bullying

pg. 30

blandishment is "flattery intended to persuade"; something a little bit more extreme than a nanny saying "you be a good boy and take your medicine"

the phrase describes how Blodwen Page treats her sick husband Dr. Page:

"...broken and bedridden, he was at her mercy, subjected to a treatment which combined blandishment with a kind of jolly bullying."

first sentence

"Late one October afternoon in the year 1921, a shabby young man gazed with fixed intensity through the window of a third-class compartment in the almost empty train labouring up the Penowell valley from Swansea."

nostalgia obliterates the past

"No doubt all of this is not true remembrance but the ruinous work of nostalgia, which obliterates the past, and no doubt, as usual, I have exaggerated everything."

last sentence

The author, after having recounted the events of a summer, inserts a disclaimer and faults nostalgia for any embellishments.

a sterling group of biologists

sterling: an adjective describing something that is thoroughly excellent

not so excellent < excellent < more excellent in some parts than in others < sterling

from the autobiography of Eric R. Kandel, co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2000:

Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 2000, Editor Tore Frängsmyr, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 2001

prestidigitated a perfect cylinder?

pg. 12

prestidigitation is another word for sleight of hand, legerdemain
to prestidigitate something would seem to mean to conjure something, "magically"

the cousin from Prague, Josef, just collected a bunch of cigarette stubs, and made a new cigarette by rolling into a new paper the remains in the stubs. he "had prestidigitated a perfect cylinder, as thick and straight and nearly as smooth as if rolled by machine." well, he 'pressed' the roll with his 'digits' and shaped it into a cylinder, but this is different from "conjuring" it like a magic trick...

the omniveillant maternal loupe

pg. 9

a loupe is a magnifying glass for jewelers and watchmakers

veiller is a french verb meaning to watch over, to take care. veillant is the present participle, watching over, or taking care.

best guess for omniveillant: watching over everything

one of the main characters, Sam, after having exaggerated his roles at his job, is wondering whether his mother knew all about his exaggeration, played along and told his cousin Josef about his job as an "artist"; so that Sam would be embarrassed in explaining his actual position. or whether his mother didn't see through the exaggeration, and really expected that Sam could get Josef a job. whether the omniveillant maternal loupe wasn't really so omniveillant.

first sentence

"In later years, holding forth to an interviewer or to an audience of aging fans at a comic book convention, Sam Clay liked to declare, apropos of his and Joe Kavalier's greatest creation, that back when he was a boy, sealed and hog-tied inside the airtight vessel known as Brooklyn, New York, he had been haunted by dreams of Harry Houdini."

Works Cited

TDZ = The Discomfort Zone, by Jonathan Franzen
YHCHI = Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, http://www.yhchang.com/

by young hae chang heavy industries

out of the internet and (into the night)

a couple, escaping from their old town, to a new one
have an argument about their insecurities
the car crashes, but they seem to be ok in the end

Lipps Inc's Funkytown:

"Gotta make a move to a town that's right for me,
Town to get me movin'
Keep me groovin' with some
energy."

a penny-ante investment club

pg. 7

penny-ante is an adjective describing a small amount of money, a 'trifling sum of money';

the author's mother was "a founding member of a penny-ante investment club";

on a to-do list of the author's mother who has cancer

"Invite best friends over one by one and say goodbye to them forever."

pg. 5, bottom

the sclerotic buildup of family photographs

pg. 5

an espaliered fruit tree

pg. 4

an espaliered tree is a tree that has been shaped into 2 dimensions. the espalier is the framework on which the tree is grown and "fit" to.

the author is collecting frames from a wall in the family room, and likens it to picking fruit from "an espaliered fruit tree", because the picking area is 2D

first sentence

"There'd been a storm that evening in St. Louis."