Say What, Now?
For information’s sake, a highball is a drink combination of alcohol and a non-alcohol mixer like soda water or a soft drink. Caution: knowing this does not make the following metaphor particularly clearer. This is a case of a metaphor that seems perfectly clear, but upon closer examination only gets fuzzier as to its actual point of comparison. Still, it’s pithy.
“If seduction is a highball, unhappiness has got to be the booze.”
The Moon
The moon is a popular subject for similes and metaphors for writers ranging from a comparison to a “pizza pie” to “the killing moon will come too soon.” And here’s another example. Actually, two for the price of one:
“I didn’t see the moon at all until about 8:30 but suddenly, driving north on 81, there it was, deep & huge like it’d just risen, nearly full and red orange like a blood tangerine. It felt ominous”
Allusions: Service Pets for Metaphor
Literary and cinema allusions pervade the novel. Such allusions might be considered service animal for similes: a point of comparison, but not really the comparison itself. For example, the allusion to a certain movie is necessary to make the point, but it is not actually the thing to which “night” is being compared:
“Back at Dick’s, the night unfolds like the boozy Christmas Eve in Eric Rohmer’s film My Night At Maud’s.”
What Dick Isn't...and Is
The actual identity of “Dick” is a mystery wrapped in an enigma. For many readers, even after his identity was revealed, that remained so. Literary types, academics, critics, scholars and lovers of pop culture philosophy will be almost as familiar with the real person as the narrator. For the rest, he might as well be the personification of the type of described in this example. In fact, for probably the bulk of readers, he is just this thing…as exploited for dramatic effect by the writer:
“You know, I was picturing Dick before as a wicked, manipulative creature. But perhaps he’s keeping silent just to give us time”
Christmas
Christmas gets treated a little rough in the novel, but this particular metaphor is actually rather non-committal on whether it is to be a viewed as a positive or negative event:
“There were more Christmas songs on the radio, more Christmas decorations in every little town, as if Christmas was a cloud that descended on New York and feathered out across the West in broken strands.”
