Chapter 44 hint

"Won't you stand by the window, dear?" "why?" "You're not wearing anything." "That's better..." She was so considerate to me.Out of respect for her, I slammed the window shut, and the sound of closing the window was drowned out by the second half of my sentence. She smiled at me.I went over and stood beside her.She was lovely, leaning on one elbow, her black hair falling over her smooth bare shoulders.I looked down at the top of her head. Suddenly she blew and said, "Albert is awesome!" I said my name was not Albert.My name is Joe, Joe Len.

Myrtle looked up at me playfully.Seems to be asking. Maybe I grinned. After a while, she stopped again. "Men are lucky," she said, her voice deep and thoughtful.I didn't say anything, I don't think this is the time to make a philosophical statement.I stared at the opposite wall. Finally she stopped. "What?" I lowered my head just in time to catch a glimpse of her lying down slowly with a look of surprise on her face. "Then," said I, "you'll have to wait again for your tea." "Ah..." Myrtle sighed heavily, somewhat proudly.She closed her eyes.Soon we were drinking tea.

William Cooper, Fragments of Local Life (1950) A truly exhaustive account of any event is impossible, so all novels contain gaps and unmentioned parts to be filled in by the reader in order to "create the text." (Poststructuralist critics) But sometimes , these blank and unmentioned parts are due to the writer's unconscious avoidance or concealment (without compromising the whole text), and sometimes it is the writer's conscious artistic strategy, that is, the writer implicitly reveals rather than directly states his point of view. . Suggestion is an especially useful method in dealing with sexual problems.Novels have always explored the emotions and desires of the sexes, but straightforward descriptions of sexual behavior in novels were not allowed until recently.Hinting is a solution.

"Please, dear," said the mother, "you haven't forgotten to wind the clock..." "My God!" cried the father, "since ancient times no woman has ever bothered you with such a stupid question." Man!" Excuse me, what did your father say? ... said nothing. From this conversation between Tristland, Shandy, and his imaginary reader, we can infer that his father was doing something at the time, that is, he was making Tristland. The Victorian era was notoriously reserved, and sexual matters were notoriously reticent.The novel is intended for family reading, and therefore, in the words of Dickens' character Mr. Podsnipe, "it must not contain anything that would make a young man blush." ​​In a recent BBC television adaptation Arthur Donnelthorn hugs a half-naked Hetty Sorrell on a couch in Adam Bede.This scene is absolutely absent in George Eliot's novels.Readers of his novels were more naive, and they probably thought Hetty Sorrell got pregnant by kissing. In "Midmarch", the married life between Dorothea and Castle is not happy, but this is conveyed to the readers through the most subtle hints, and many hints are implied.As late as 1908, in "Old Wives' Tales," Arnold Bennett deliberately omits Sophia's silent wedding night, but hints at it through an alternate form of narrative. It was an unpleasant and hopeless experience: the sordid scenes of public executions, all the bloodshed and phallic symbolism that Gerald forced her to see on their honeymoon.

By the time William Cooper published his Fragments of Local Life, the writer's field had greatly expanded, but the kind of things he described here for lovers could not be directly described in 1950. Description, otherwise it will lead to lawsuits.Cooper is blunt enough to allow his readers to deduce a scene that is both interesting and erotic. The narrator and his girlfriend are already in bed at a country cottage.This cottage is shared by him and his friend Tom.He offered to make a cup of tea.Just then, he heard the sound of a car approaching.He thought it must be Tom's car, and got out of bed to find out.Myrtle's words tell us he was naked.We can easily complete his unfinished "That's better..." because his words use the same structure as what the wolf said to Red Riding Hood, and we also know that the omitted verb phrase is not very elegant.In the next paragraph we can imagine the narrator standing over his lover.She reclines, also naked.

"Suddenly she blew." When the subject refers to a person, the verb "to blow" usually follows the object, sometimes following a preposition, but we have to guess what it means. "Albert is awesome!" she said.Since there is no obvious clue to Albert's identity in the next paragraph, we can almost conclude that Albert is the tweed nickname for the object of "Blow". (It also gives the narrator the opportunity to officially introduce her real name, which adds to the spice.) We don't know what Myrtle abruptly stopped, but like Mr. Shandy, she certainly didn't stop talking because it She was still talking afterwards.There are other places like this.These short, irregular paragraphs highlight the fact that there is more going on at the same time than what they say and what the author describes.

Like Stern, Cooper's use of allusion isn't just expedient; it's creative, with a touch of humor.A decade or so later, however, attempts were made, to the regret of many readers and writers, to break all the boxes and sweep away all the taboos that made this artistic indirection mandatory.Although most of Kingsley Amis' stories are about sex, he tries not to write about sex itself, and makes it his credo.A passage from his recently published novel, "The People Who Dwell on the Hill" makes this point, and gives an example of how sex is discussed in everyday conversation:

"Let's go to bed early and comfortably tonight," said De Lise.This seemingly frank proposal has several implications. "Go to bed early and do nothing else, as the literal meaning is, basically just a way of telling the time that nothing else is planned for the evening, no social extras or excursions, etc." Comfortably "Early bedtime" means not just excluding anything that gets in the way of the two of you, but including actual, inevitable sex. This is best guessed rather than described. Another challenge for novelists who write frankly about sexuality is how to avoid reusing the language of pornography and how to make an otherwise limited number of sexual tricks less cliché, which is not what I want in this book. solved problem.