living in the syntax, not the families
The exam was talking about the syntax of Tolstoy's sentence, not about real unhappy families
Context
Hal's reflex correction is his whole condition in miniature: where the others chat about whether unhappy families feel their unhappiness, he instinctively pulls the talk back to the sentence, to words-about-a-thing rather than the thing. It is a brilliant, exact distinction and also a small act of self-removal, the mind that lives one layer up in the grammar of experience rather than in the experience. The same reflex, cranked to catastrophe, is the boy in the admissions room.