Short Fiction · Chapter
The Vitagraphoscope explained
This chapter presents a series of disconnected vaudeville-like scenes, including an artist's struggle and a chance encounter, a beach scene in Nice where a woman writes 'Isabel' and a man writes 'Anchuria', and a tropical grave-tending scen
What happens
This chapter presents a series of disconnected vaudeville-like scenes, including an artist's struggle and a chance encounter, a beach scene in Nice where a woman writes 'Isabel' and a man writes 'Anchuria', and a tropical grave-tending scene. Interspersed is a letter from an insurance company thanking Frank Goodwin for recovering embezzled funds and congratulating him on his marriage to Miss Wahrfield.
Themes in this chapter
Deception and Appearance vs. Reality
The vaudeville format itself is about surface-level entertainment without deeper resolution, and the letter reveals hidden truths about the embezzlement and Wahrfield's suicide.
Love and Romance
The letter congratulates Frank Goodwin on his marriage, and the final scene shows a couple walking close together in a tropical setting.
Characters to notice
- Frank Goodwin
Addressee of the insurance company letter; praised for recovering $100,000 and congratulated on his marriage to Miss Wahrfield.
- Ives
The artist in the first scene, depicted as dejected and struggling, who throws a sausage that hits a newcomer.
Key passages
“The Vitagraphoscope Vaudeville is intrinsically episodic and discontinuous. Its audiences do not demand dénoûements. Sufficient unto each 'turn' is the evil thereof.”
The vaudeville show is made up of separate, unrelated acts, and the audience doesn't expect a proper ending for each one.
Sets up the chapter's structure as a series of vignettes.
“The beauty of her face is audacious; her languid pose is one that you feel to be impermanent—you wait, expectant, for her to spring or glide or crawl, like a panther that has unaccountably become stock-still.”
Her face is strikingly bold, and her relaxed posture seems ready to change at any moment, like a panther that has suddenly frozen in place.
Describes the woman on the beach with a predatory, tense beauty.