Just to provide some context: The people who are laughing have been living for decades in a department store and only emerge when the store is closed; in order not to be heard by the night watchman, they only speak in whispers, so this is how they laugh. "Evening Primrose" is a brilliant short story, and the simile, I think is wonderfully precise.
Just to provide some context: The people who are laughing have been living for decades in a department store and only emerge when the store is closed; in order not to be heard by the night watchman, they only speak in whispers, so this is how they laugh. "Evening Primrose" is a brilliant short story, and the simile, I think is wonderfully precise.
Sounds like something from the Bulwer-Lytton contest!
I'm trying and failing to parse that ridiculous simile. Obviously Collier spends more time in grasshopper Hades than I.
Maybe they're related to uselessness. ;->
Methinks Mr. Collier is trying just a leetle bit too hard here. "stridulating grasshopper ghosts ?"
Donnez-moi un break.
"Their laughter was like the stridulation of the ghosts of grasshoppers."
– John Collier, "Evening Primrose", Fancies and Goodnights