the overall-ed performance in the play.
(That did sound like an insufferable costume to have to wear, and an insufferable play to be in.) And I hope he will write some more on that novel he's got going in the sawdust box.
Penrod is a hilarious and interesting character. In many ways I can identify with him, but in many ways I can't. For instance, the anguishing boredom he feels in the classroom, described in so much detail in chapter 7. I wasn't a good student, either, being every bit as lazy and irresponsible as Penrod, but I don't think I was ever bored in my life. I have always been able to find something of interest around me, even if it might seem the epitome of the mundane to someone else. And though irresponsible, I wasn't mischievous (I wouldn't have dipped poor Victorine's hair in the inkwell).
How about you? Were you ever bored? Mischievous?
I encountered one sentence in Chapter 7 that I have no earthly idea what it's talking about:
"In a Drug Emporium, near the church, he purchased a five-cent sack of candy consisting for the most part of the heavily flavoured hoofs of horned cattle, but undeniably substantial, and so generously capable of resisting solution that the purchaser must needs be avaricious beyond reason who did not realize his money's worth."
Apparently, judging from the passage a few sentences later, this is describing jaw breakers, though I can't see how.
And on a related note, I've never understood what the peculiar-sounding expression "must needs" means, as in "...the purchaser must needs be avaricious beyond reason...." I've encountered that so many times, and once tried to look it up, but didn't succeed. Would the phrase here mean the same as "the purchaser
would need to be avaricious beyond reason..."? Or does it have a different shade of meaning ?