[lit-ideas] Re: Serendipity - and other coincidence

  • From: David Ritchie <profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 08:47:36 -0800

On Nov 6, 2013, at 8:25 AM, cblists@xxxxxxxx wrote:

>> 
> 
> I now question that understanding. This scepticism is based on a passage 
> occuring several pages after the one quoted above, viz.:
> 
> "I would have served him as my mother did my father. Box his socks? I would 
> have knelt to wash his feet."
> 
> It seems clear to me that 'boxed socks' in this case does NOT mean 'socks in 
> cardboard boxes' - as it does not make sense that the protagonist's proffered 
> service is to place his socks in cardboard boxes. (That 'he/him/his' is 
> Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, by the way).
> 
> Looking up 'boxed socks' and 'boxing socks' on the Internet does not help.  
> Neither does consulting my dictionary.  I surmise 'folding socks together in 
> a particular ('interlocking'?) manner' - but what exactly ARE those 
> particulars? Anyone?


I think you should send this to the OED.  I'm imagining a squarish kind of 
folding, but I can't find a reference.  Maybe translated from the Russian?

David Ritchie,
not a sock boxer or even a sock boxer's mate in
Portland, 
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