Midway through Stop All the Clocks, the cheeky and elusive debut novel from Noah Kumin, we encounter something unexpected in a sci-fi-inflected conspiracy thriller: a parable about poetic interpretation. At issue is a poem by W. H. Auden, the one that begins:
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
The poem, we are told, “had originally appeared in a verse play, The Ascent of F6, and served as a mock eulogy for the play’s villain.” Since then, however, “the standards by which it could have been judged as a parody...had eroded.” Now, readers take it seriously—seriously enough that Auden’s lines played a central (and earnest) role in the funeral scene in the 1994 rom-com Four Weddings and a Funeral. And yet, though mistaken, such readers may have stumbled upon a deeper truth than that of which the poet was aware.
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