An Elderly Gentleman : IMAGE 140 : Now
After the Elderly Gentleman collapses, his butler/care-giver summons three medical specialists. One orders the butler to do something—the exact nature of which is purposely ambiguous. The reader is led to infer, from I141, he has been ordered to prepare blood work for the Gentleman’s surgery (I143). It is not until much later (I225) that we fully realize, in something of a revelation, the true nature of his task, and the hidden urgency of this transparently innocuous Image. The logic of the novel’s final, wrenching, twist requires that we recollect and reinterpret I140. Its strangely angular shape "points" at the pivotal importance of this image, as an overly obscure word or similitude or uncharacteristic syntax might in a written novel. Another conspicuous attribute: this image is the final small image in this section.
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