IJ study archive

Joelle cleans and remembers the Incandenzas (pp. 741–742)

quote

The memory of that H.S. afternoon remained real strong. She could smell the mesquite smoke and the blue pines and the YardGuard spray, hear the squeals of the stock they butchered and cleaned in symbolic prep for the opener against the N. Paducah Technical H.S. Rivermen. She could still see the swooning lineman, wet-lipped and confessing, keeping himself upright against an immature blue pine until the blue pine’s trunk finally gave with a snap and crash.

Context

The Shiny Prize Boosters cookout — the first male-female approach of her life, and the scene's one demonstration of memory at full sensory strength: smell, sound, sight, all still there years later. The vividness is the point; what's contested (see n.307, at this section's end) is never a memory's texture but its shape.

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