Matt: Why point out that the vane is "stiff"? Are some vanes droopy? It seems like an entirely superfluous adjective. If VN needed something there for meter's sake, he could have as easily chosen a color or another, more useful, pathetic modifier..
JM: It just occurred to me that VN's adjective is a clever and synthetic rendering to emphasize the difference bt. the motion of a vane ( it is not still: its motion suffers and shows the change of direction of the wind, aso) and the relative immobility of the TV antenna (the Lolita hurricanes are carried inside to be watched in a TV-screen). The mockingbird is perched on TV-antennae, not on a real vane?
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