Satan’s Hearse
Colin uses the name “Satan’s Hearse” to refer to his Oldsmobile, in which he and Hassan take their road trip. The car itself is not especially remarkable, except that it carries Colin and Hassan to…
read analysis of Satan’s Hearse
The Hole in Colin’s Gut
When Colin was young, his father brought home a book about a circle with a missing piece. Colin did not understand the book as a metaphor at the time, but after Katherine XIX breaks up…
read analysis of The Hole in Colin’s Gut
The Archduke Franz Ferdinand
The Archduke Franz Ferdinand was a not particularly important or well-liked Autro-Hungarian aristocrat while he was alive, but his assassination in 1914 was used as justification by his relatives to start the conflict that would…
read analysis of The Archduke Franz Ferdinand
Anagrams
Colin, who is very good with language, is an expert at making anagrams. He can take almost any word or phrase, rearrange the letters, and come up with other words or phrases that use…
read analysis of Anagrams
“Eureka” Moments
As a child, Colin read a story about how Archimedes took a bath one day and discovered that volume could be measured by water displacement. When an object is placed in a body of water…
read analysis of “Eureka” Moments
The Theorem
One of the reasons Katherine XIX dumps Colin the night after their high school graduation is that he is preoccupied with the question of how to turn from a child prodigy into an adult genius…
read analysis of The Theorem
