Pulse

by Julian Barnes

‘This feels to me like when you have a collection of blokes round a table and someone mentions how the size of your tackle is directly related … Dick, why are you putting your hands out of sight?’ ‘Because I know the end of the sentence. And because, frankly, I don’t want to embarrass anyone by obliging them to deduce the magnificence of my, as you put it, tackle.’ ‘Sue, a question. The class has in its last lesson been taught the difference between a simile and a metaphor. Now, which grammatical term would you say best described the comparison between the size of a man’s hands and the size of his tackle?’ ‘Is there a grammatical term called boasting?’ ‘There’s that term for comparing the smaller to the greater. The part to the whole. Litotes? Hendiadys? Anacoluthon?’ ‘They all sound like Greek holiday resorts to me.’ ‘As I was trying to say, we don’t talk about love.’ ‘…’ ‘…’ ‘…’ ‘…’ ‘…’ ‘…’ ‘So that’s my point.’