Please help me with these sentences!Thanks!

Forgive my enthusiasm, that I go on like some secular patriot wrapped in the simple flag of self, a professional descendant, every day the closed-for-the-holiday banks and post offices of the heart.

This sentence is also difficult for me to understand,especially the last part.

I think this is pure gibberish. It's futile to try to understand it.

Re: Please help me with these sentences!Thanks!


"Oh, Phooey" is an expression indicating exasperation, like "Damnit." The author refers to the First Families as those who were the first to make it big in America, to become rich, when opportunity was ripe. He first damns the families that started the railroad, steel mill, automotive, public utiltiy, banking, and shipping industries.

By damning hermetic legacy, he is referring to the legacy of rich people keeping the wealth in their own families by passing leadership down to their children.

Morganatic and blockbuster blood-lines, is once again just referring to those greedy rich people. Blockbusters would be popular movies so using it as an adjective would refer to people who are in the big movie business, or metaphorically just rich and famous.

Changing the maps and mobility patterns...this much is pretty obvious, he is talking about people that help shape the world (rich people) as opposed to poor people who just accept it as is.

"your jungle wheeling and downtown dealing a stone's throw from warfare"

I have no idea what that part means; it does not follow the rules of grammar. "your jungle wheeling" should be followed by a noun because it is supposed to be part of the list of things he is damning, yet he then tries to morph it into a statement (a nonsensical one). But, if it were a statement it should be "you're" not "your" anyway.

kittylh:

You should compare notes with this thread: CLICK HERE

Thank you all very much!
Stuh505, thank you for your answer. Would you please also help me with the sentence "every day the closed-for-the-holiday banks and post offices of the heart"? It makes no sense to me.

It is not a complete sentence, it doesn't mean anything by itself...perhaps if you post the rest of the sentence, and put it in context, then I can help

Stuh505,this is the context. The sentences in black are really a headache to me. Thanks.
It is as I see it a perfect genealogy, and Wealth is not after all the point. The genealogy is. That bridge-trick nexus that brought Newpert to Oh, Salts to Ashenden and Ashenden to Oh, love's lucky longshots which, paying off, permitted me as they permit every human life! (I have this simple, harmless paranoia of the good-natured man, this cheerful awe.) Forgive my enthusiasm, that I go on like some secular patriot wrapped in the simple flag of self, a professional descendant, every day the closed-for-the-holiday banks and post offices of the heart.

I know this is no help Kitty, but this novel is about the worst choice that could be made for ESL students. The writing is pretentious and un-necessarily complex. Even for a native speaker of English, this book would be difficult for anyone without a good dictionary and a couple of years in college.

The whole point of writing is communication. Good writing requires an interesting idea, thoughtfully structured to lead the reader from one subordinate idea to another. One of the great writers in our language was Winston Churchill, and his advice was never to use a fancy word if there is a commonplace Anglo-Saxon word available. Most people don't have really large and sophisticated vocabularies, and get along quite nicely anyway.

Generally, keep your sentences short and simple. The chances of screwing up grammatically in long, complex sentences is much greater. Short sentences of around 14 words, consisting of noun, verb, object, are reader friendly. When reading becomes a chore, readers get frustrated and more often than not will just go on to easier things. The writer is the one responsible for insuring that their message is communicated, so you need to write in terms and style that will be easily approachable by your audience. Know your audience, and tailor your writing accordingly.

I'd like to suggest that you find yourself a very good English dictionary, and keep it close at hand while reading and writing in this difficult English language. It would also be helpful to use your computer's spell and grammar checker often to catch the typos that we all make. The spell and grammar checker functions of the computer are also great learning tools.

The more you speak, read and write in English, the faster and better you will learn the language. Watch English films/television. Read magazines and popular novels in English. Write as much as you can every day, and ask someone whose English is better than your own to criticize the writing. A2K is a wonderful resource for those learning our language. Find a topic here that interests you and read the postings each day. Many of the postings are filled with spelling and grammar errors, so try to catch the mistakes that regular English speakers make. Post your own comment after thinking through the idea and carefully writing your post.

Well, this would be a headache for anyone to understand because it cannot be just read like regular English. It is more like trying to translate bad poetry, and every sentence is like a riddle that you have to solve in order to figure out what he is saying.

Not only that, but it is riddled with grammatical errors. Therefore, you are only likely to learn bad habits and make your English worse by reading this crap.

Kitty--



You want affection? Communication? You're out of luck. The Banks and Post Offices of this world are always closed for unnamed holidays.

Thank you for your suggestion,Asherman. I found this forum is really very helpful.I never thought I would meet so many warmhearted people here.

I got really baffled when I tried to understand this passage. Yet I gain my confidence again when hearing that even native English speakers would have the same feeling. Unfortunately, It's exactly the passage we were required to translate into Chinese. Maybe they thought a good translator should be able to translate anything in English. So, I have to keep working on it. Hope you can keep helping me.

Noddy,your explaination is reasonable and it inspired me. In this sentence he said he is a professional descendant and he's really proud of his family, so could it be possible that he means he's celebrating holiday in heart every day so the banks and post offices of heart are closed?

I don't believe the person who wrote thisactually understood the words he or she was using. A morganatic marriage is one in which the children do not inherit the social rank and titles of their father; so a "morganatic bloodline" is quite specifically one which does not carry any power or status, and is no more likely to "change maps and landscapes" than anybody else's bloodline.

(In past centuries there was an idea that only people who were of royal blood on both sides were fit to inherit royal titles. So in German-speaking countries, if a royal prince wanted to marry a "commoner", they contracted a "morganatic marriage", which unlike an ordinary marriage meant that the wife didn't aquire her husband's rank, and their children were disqualified from inheriting his titles. The most famous example of a morganatic marriage in recent centuries was between Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian empire, and Sophie Chotek.)

Thanks, syn. I thought of J.P. Morgan when I read that sentence. It's a good bet the writer did too.

Kitty--

Rather the hard, cruel world of business and finance closes every day for "holidays of the heart".

I agree with you, Noddy.
I have a few more questions.

1.Wealth is not after all the point. The genealogy is. That bridge-trick nexusThere are treats of high order, adventure like cash in the street.
Does treats of high order mean first class services? What does "adventure like cash in the street" mean? Is cash a verb?

3.We'll have a house on the Vineyard and a brownstone in the Seventies and a pied-à-terre in a world capital when something big is about to break.
Is there a place or a street named the Seventies? Is there a place named the East Seventies? Are they the same one?

Bridge trick is referring to a trick in the card game bridge, but he doesn't mean it literally, so it's anyones guess as to what he means.



Yes more or less



No, cash is a noun. People like to find free money in the street. He is using this as a metaphor, although his meaning is unclear to me.



The Seventies refers to the time period between 1970-1979

kittylh is being asked to translate passages from Stanley Elkin's The Making of Ashenden which was published in 1972.

"Seventies" may refer to a city district rather than the decade.

Kitty--

Bridge was a very fashionable game at the time and the upper class frequently played bridge for high stakes.

He feels that just as the luck of the cards is random--but winds up favoring some people over others--it was pure luck that brought his parents to a place where they could meet, marry and produce him.

Some "treats" are more delightful than others. Finding cash (money) in the street is delightful, a high-order, rarified, pleasant experience.

In New York City, the streets are numbered. At one time the brownstones (private houses) in the city blocks of the "seventies streets" were very fashionable residences for the economically well-to-do.

I Googled (images) Brownstone for you:

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=Brownstone+house&gbv=2

Thank you all! With your help, this passage is getting more and more clear to me. You are so wonderful!
New questions keep cropping out. Hope the following are my last questions about this passage.
1.Highish birth and a smooth network of appropriate connection like a tea service written into the will.
Does the author mean he got all these things like he got the tea service?

2.Let's enjoy ourselves, I say; let's have fun. Lord, let us live in the sand by the surf of the sea and play till cows come home. We'll have a house on the Vineyard and a brownstone in the Seventies and a pied-à-terre in a world capital when something big is about to break. (Put the Cardinal in the back bedroom where the sun gilds the bay at afternoon tea and give us the courage to stand up to secret police at the door, to top all threats with threats of our own, the nicknames of mayors and ministers, the fast comeback at the front stairs, authority on us like the funny squiggle the counterfeiters miss.) Re-Columbus us.
They said the nicknames to indicate their relationship with powers? or to make fun of the authority, to show contempt to them? fast comeback? What's the attitude of the author on authority? Look down upon?
And what does re-columbus us mean? Let us be Columbus again?

3.And may all our stocks rise to the occasion of our best possibilities, and our humanness be bullish too.
I know rise to the occasion means to be able to do what is required in an emergency. But when combining it with "of our best possibilites" I got confused. What does humanness be bullish mean? Be strong? or be kind?

4.They tend, however, to conform to a single physical type, and are almost always tall, tan, slender and blond, the girl from Ipanema as a wag friend of mine has it.
what is a wag friend? the girl from Ipanema is my wag friend?