SLPAD - 113 - “Low-Lands” - 25

[Michael Bailey]

Technical passage, part deux:

“Whenever he was away from Cindy and could think….”




“Whenever he was away from Cindy and could think” - he’s probably ascribing
causation to this correlation.

There’s another way one could parse this, with a Venn diagram overlapping
“time with Cindy” and “times when he can think”

Although in terms of Flange qua “Flange the unhappy husband” one doubts
he’s built such a Venn diagram, still, structurally the ambiguity is
present & presumably intentional on the part of the omniscient narrator.

Being omniscient it’d be the work of no time at all to posit “time with
Cindy” “time without Cindy” “times when he can think” and “times when he
cannot think” and interlock them attractively, with suitable captions.

I just mention this because while it seems to me that we are supposed to
sympathize with Flange to some extent, I doubt that the notion “he’s
thinking a little oddly here” isn’t supposed to arise as we read.

And of course, odd thoughts are (mutatis mutandis) like Vonnegut described
peculiar travel suggestions: “dancing lessons from God”