Editor,
96 17-18. It seems that there are two magazines here. The
Swiss gentleman is reading the magazine that Hugh left 8 years ago. We
don't know what its title is. Hugh picks up the Transatlantic ( which the
Swiss gentleman had presumably just read, and upon which he had his elbow) which
is described as among "fairly recent periodicals" and it is that magazine which
has an article referring to "a man who murdered his spouse eight years
ago." A kind of parallel magazines: one old, which Hugh
had left behind; the other recent, containing an article about Hugh from
the time of the first magazine. I think it is deliberate that we might confuse
the two. It makes me think of the phenomenon where memory can conflate two
separate incidents and turn them into a "false" single incident.
Peter Washburn