Topical Guide 547
Mark Dorset
Naïveté
Wishful Thinking
Good Works, Noble Efforts
Advertising: Appeal to Naïveté, Wishful Thinking, Good Works, Noble Efforts
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 7:
A GROUP of students arrives at the bar.
Now look at that, Matthew thinks. That’s the sort of thing that makes me think there’s reason for hope.
What Matthew finds heartening about them is the fact that they are a racially mixed group of students, quite thoroughly mixed, exhibiting skin tones ranging from his own sandy pink to the rich brown of a good strong cup of coffee, the step from one tone to the next quite a narrow one, so that, if they were to line themselves up properly, they would resemble the flexible plastic scale Matthew holds against his teeth to assess the success of his whitening efforts. There seem to be no strong pairings within the group. They seem to be a group of friends, not pairs of lovers.
You know, he thinks, this could be the salvation of the world. Groups like this.
Allusion
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 7:
She really is quite attractive, a tiny thing, wearing a skirt of some elasticized material, so short that the hem, drawn in by the elastic additive, cups her buttocks precisely along their nether curve.
I thank you, God, thinks Matthew, for this most amazing fabric.
i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
See also:
Advertising: Types of Appeal TG 373; “The Grass Is Greener,” Exoticism TG 441, TG 442; Appeal to Desire to Enhance One’s Self-Image TG 476, TG 484; Appeal to Sensual Pleasure TG 476; Branding TG 505
Allusion; Quotation TG 140, TG 455, TG 462, TG 502, TG 506, TG 532
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