Chrisonomicon

Tuesday, November 5, 2002

My friend Cale illustrates the benefits of a graduate education with two excerpts from assigned readings that don't mean what they did when they were written:

After my month [following childbirth] was up, my mother returned to Dean Street and I to my occupation of daddling after her, carrying the child with me, as I had the honor of suckling till I became a perfect shadow; and they were forced for very shame to let me off that duty, and get me an ass to suck myself.

—Thraliana, April 1778

And:

... I turn and retrace my steps and come back to the winding road past the hospital, where at night in certain wards the gay student nurses dispensed a far more precious thing than pills to lucky boys in the know...

— Invisible Man, 1947