TEXTS NARRATION (INTRODUCTION)

PART 1:

1.
Rosemary and Nathan have two children. They have gone upstairs to the bunk to watch
TV or play some computer game. Or so their parents assume. Gogo is the middle
daughter. She is taller than Rosemary and a little heavier in build. (Does Rosemary
watch her diet? Probably, though one wouldn't think so from the amount she has eaten
this evening.)... One would not like to speculate upon Gogo's profession, for fear of
reprimand or ridicule if proved wrong. (That she has a profession is manifest.) ... Gogo
and David have only one child. He is upstairs, playing or watching TV with his cousins.
Or doing whatever it is that children of that age do.

2.
High, high above the North Pole, on the first day of 1969, two professors of English
Literature approached each other at a combined velocity of 1200 miles per hour ....
Since the two men were in airplanes, and one was bored and the other was frightened of
looking out of the window - since, in any case, the planes were too distant from each
other to be mutually visible with the naked eye, the crossing of their paths at the still
point of the turning world passed unremarked by anyone other than the narrator of this
duplex chronicle.

3.
'Pardon me.'
It's the bespectacled blonde in the next seat. She holds a magazine open on her lap,
index finger pressed to the page as if marking her place.
'May I ask your opinion on a question of etiquette?'
He grins, squinting at the magazine. 'Don't tell me Ramparts is running an etiquette
column?'
'If a lady sees a man with his fly open, should she tell him'?
'Definitely.'
'Your fly's open, mister,' says the girl and recommences reading her copy of Ramparts,
holding it up to screen her face as Morris hastily adjusts his dress.

4.
`I make a great difference between people. I choose my friends for their good looks, my
acquaintances for their good characters and my enemies for their good intellects. A man
cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool.
They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me.
Is that very vain of me? I think it is rather vain.'
`I should think it was, Harry. But according to your category I must be merely an
acquaintance.'
`My dear old Basil, you are much more than an acquaintance.'
`And much less than a friend. A sort of brother, I suppose?'
`Oh, brothers! I don't care for brothers. My elder brother won't die, and my younger
brothers seem never to do anything else'
5.
I fear I must give you an exact account of the road which led to (Toby's adventure); - or
to drop my metaphor, (for there is nothing more dishonest in an historian than the use of
one,)... I must give you some account of an adventure of Trim's, though much against
my will, only because the story, in one sense, is certainly out of its place here; for by
right it should come in, either amongst the anecdotes of my uncle Toby's amours... or
else in the middle of his and my uncle Toby's campaigns... but then if I reserve it for
either of those parts of my story, - I ruin the story I'm upon, - and if I tell it here - I
anticipate matters, and ruin it there.

PART 2:

6.
a) The girl I'm currently supposed to be peeling off Gregory's back is called Miranda.
She's nineteen. She has blonde hair, a friendly figure, ever-moist blue eyes and a
wide square mouth. She's pretty - some way out of my league, I should think. But
she's quite posh and probably very neurotic (perhaps she does all those things he
said)...I quite like her. In contrast to Gregory's standard female consorts...They are
sheeny, expensive and almost invariably twice my height. I practically call them sir.

b) Has Terence said anything about my sexual dispositions? No doubt he has. Well, I
won't deny it. If it's a sexual equal I want - i.e., a boy, and a boy's unyielding
musculature - then it's a sexual equal I go ahead and have, rather than a thing with
breasts that happens to urinate sitting down...Imagine then my incredulous horror on
discovering the true colours of this Miranda, this jumpy little idiot whose immediate
transfer I have gulled Terence into accepting.