Word: peachum
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Vries' new hero needs more than fruit. Ted Peachum is a budding aesthete and furniture mover in Pocock, Ill. He is also a parody of that familiar species, the small-town boy with big ideas and an ambition to rise above his station. Who can blame him? His father rereads comic books and hibernates like a bear, his aunt is known chiefly for canceling subscriptions and returning unused portions, and his grandfather contracted a venereal disease at a health...
...Peachum cannot flee this bunch fast enough; yet, pity the smug chuckler who patronizes this family: "You New York-Dutch-descended, probably wrong-Strauss-loving officer of some music society or civic uplift group," he snaps. "I'd like a peek at some of your Rorschachs, you old sofa-crack feeler, you. Slipping a palm furtively under cushions and into crevices as you fish for coins in other people's chairs in a fashion whose psychological symbolism is all too readily apparent, you cranny rummager, you wrong-Scarlatti admirer. You secretary-treasurer...
...Pocock is bound to attract the attention of Mrs. d'Amboise, a sculptor "who like all women of quality chewed her gum with her front teeth and rarely popped it within earshot of people with known academic degrees or season subscription boxes to the Opera." At 16, Peachum becomes Mrs. d'Amboise's model and a suitable future suitor for her ten-year-old daughter Columbine...