Not the least attractive object

[Phil Walsh]

Setting aside the papal-purple pericope, Chapter 3 is difficult to make headway through. We start right in with “not the least attractive object...a grotesque negro cripple…” If we linger over that just a bit, we hear the narrator telling us that though this character is grotesque, we will meet characters even less attractive (more grotesque?). They quickly appear, in the from of alms-givers who toss coins into the Black Guinea’s mouth as he imitates a dog. Everyone hear is repulsive—the Guinea acting a dog, the so-called charitable people who make a game of tossing coins into his mouth, the people who actually zing buttons at him rather than coins (and apparently hard enough to intend harm), and even (or especially?) the narrator, who describes the almoners as “playful,” puns on the cripple “[swallowing his emotions] while still retaining each copper this side of the aesophagus,” and finally, disparages the discharged custom-house officer for casting aspersions on the beggar, saying “cripples…should..refrain from picking a fellow-limper to pieces.” Ick. That’s how you feel about this whole mess of people, right? Ick. And we’ve barely begun the chapter.

The main problem to me as a reader at this point is hearing the voice of the narrator. I’m not at all sure what he sounds like, and whether he is being deliberately obscure or is actually obtuse (and repulsive).

—Phil