Landscape with Invisible Hand: List 2

by M.T. Anderson
This satirical novel interrogates art, prejudice, and what it means to be human. After Earth is invaded by aliens obsessed with 1950s culture, fifteen-year-old Adam and his family struggle to make ends meet. To earn money, Adam and his girlfriend Chloe package their romance as a reality show for the entertainment of the invaders.

This list covers the following chapters: "A Small Town Beneath a Hovering Luxe Cloud Complex"–"A Local Vuvv Compound."

Here are links to our lists for the novel: List 1, List 2, List 3, List 4

Here are links to our lists for other works by M.T. Anderson: Feed, The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing (Volume 1), The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing (Volume 2)
35 words 8 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. steeple
    a tall tower that forms the superstructure of a building
    You can see the town’s rendering sails, but also the Catholic church steeple and the rows of 1960s suburbans falling into disrepair.
  2. chic
    elegant and stylish
    It was chic to have an actual living person you could order around.
  3. epaulet
    an ornamental cloth pad worn on the shoulder
    Mr. Reilly greeted them pleasantly and gave them messages, even though they must all have been ringed and tingling with media that could deliver updates much more reliably than the old-world tech of a mouth and teeth, a guy in epaulets and gold-braided pants.
  4. turret
    a small tower extending above a building
    “See, the irregularity of the small turret coming out of the big tower—it provides some real architectural interest and a break in the regularity of the scale. And the stone surfaces are really convincing. You must have found a great algorithm for cut stone.”
  5. lichen
    a plant occurring in crusty patches on tree trunks or rocks
    They were dressed in high-end clothes like unclamped, casual vacuum suits, because that was the big thing in the fashion world, looking like you were about to carelessly jet off to another solar system, tra-la-la, and by noon tomorrow you’d be sitting at a resort under two suns, slamming back an oxygen-rich atmosphere mix with an alien hedge-fund manager who was nothing but a heap of intelligent lichen.
  6. chasm
    a deep opening in the earth's surface
    But then one of the kids in the group saw the weird angles in the flowering chasm that floated holographically around us.
  7. foyer
    a large entrance or reception room or area
    “They’re visiting from the SkyWay complex down in Hartford,” he lied kindly, as if we were other rich kids here in the foyer waiting for our rich aunt.
  8. rabble
    the common people or lower classes
    I was sure at any moment they were going to smoke us out and figure we were rabble, living on top of one another in a seventies junkbox down below.
  9. blather
    foolish gibberish
    For one thing, we couldn’t understand a word they were saying, since it was all private jokes and wealthy early-adopter sub-vuvv prep-school-blazer blather.
  10. intimacy
    a feeling of being close and belonging together
    But our intimacy had been public, and so our slow failure was going to be public, too.
  11. ottoman
    a low seat or a stool to rest the feet of a seated person
    My mother tosses the postcard in the air. It twiddles along for a minute through the air and lands on the brown ottoman, which enrages my mother because it didn’t fall fast enough or land hard enough.
  12. bodega
    small shop selling groceries, especially in a Hispanic area
    Security cameras show a bunch of white guys rampaging through a bodega, lifting up the Coke fridge and tipping it through the window, attacking the owner and his family...
  13. pundit
    an expert who publicly gives opinions via mass media
    On another channel, the pundits talk about how lazy humans are, and how if they’d just go out there and get jobs, they’d be much happier.
  14. barren
    providing no shelter or sustenance
    I don’t want the mountain to be barren, because I can’t face rock right now.
  15. crag
    a steep rugged rock or cliff
    The walls are secure on the crags.
  16. still life
    a painting of inanimate objects such as fruit or flowers
    “Sure,” says Mr. Reilly. “I have my fingers crossed. But I got to tell you, landscape is a hard sell with the vuvv. They think we paint still lifes. Fruit in a bowl and stuff.”
  17. patron
    someone who supports or champions something
    I have my imaginary visions of my success someday as a painter: a Manhattan gallery engulfed by my Gothic architecture—the opening of my newest show—arches and columns and turrets floating around wealthy patrons with their hair molded in cones or stars, women in chic sheaths carrying their dogs—no, their pocket pigs—in purses, and I’m sauntering around in a holographic shirt, eating alien flora panko-fried and saying, “Tad! Tad, I think you’ll particularly like this grotto. Duck through here.”
  18. ironically
    in a manner characterized by incongruity or unexpectedness
    “Ironically, they were painted for the great industrialists,” he says, “to show the beauty of the landscape they were ruining.”
  19. bulbous
    rounded and bulging
    Chloe and I go to a field near a big, bulbous discharge facility, and I try painting the landscape in fall.
  20. reconciliation
    the reestablishment of cordial relations
    It’s a good thing we laughed and made up. The vuvv who watch love the reconciliation.
  21. gouache
    a watercolor executed with opaque watercolors mixed with gum
    My gouache painting of Buddy Gui’s house—about a mile away from our house—shows his garage door open and all his chain-saw sculptures dragged out onto his driveway.
  22. awl
    a pointed tool for marking surfaces or for punching holes
    “The only way you could be any cuter, love-bucket,” says Chloe to me, “is if I drilled dimples in your cheeks.” She laughs sweetly. “With an awl, pumpkin. A really sharp one.”
  23. hack
    chop or cut away
    Buddy is hacking into a stump with his chain saw.
  24. indictment
    an accusation of wrongdoing
    “Is it a statement?” I say. “A hard-hitting indictment of society’s blindness?”
  25. recede
    become faint or more distant
    The unsold statues recede back into the darkness of the garage, pudgy arms held out in supplication.
  26. supplication
    a prayer asking God's help as part of a religious service
    The unsold statues recede back into the darkness of the garage, pudgy arms held out in supplication.
  27. canvas
    an oil painting on a heavy, closely woven fabric
    I slash at the canvas with my fingers spludged in gray. I wipe off my hand and pick up my brush again.
  28. hew
    make or shape as with an axe
    Instead, it looks like a human trying to hew a life and a belief out of nothing but dead wood—which is, in its own way, heroic.
  29. buttress
    a support usually of stone or brick
    The vuvv compound rises out of suburbia, a collection of towers, buttresses, and bulbs of green metal.
  30. tiff
    a petty quarrel
    She lashes out and knuckles my fingers hard.
    I shake my hand to deaden the pain. I explain, “Lovers’ tiff.”
  31. ample
    more than enough in size or scope or capacity
    “Our guests demand genuine tachycardia. And you,” it says, meaning me, “though your secretions are ample, we suspect they don’t arise from excitation. And they seem unlovely to your partner. I am saying, both of you are guilty of fraud.”
  32. fraudulent
    intended to deceive
    “You can prove your love is eternal; or you can admit it is not, and you can return all your year’s income from this fraudulent venture; or we can have our lawyers sue you for misrepresentation.”
  33. venture
    an undertaking with an uncertain outcome
    “You can prove your love is eternal; or you can admit it is not, and you can return all your year’s income from this fraudulent venture; or we can have our lawyers sue you for misrepresentation.”
  34. nonplussed
    filled with bewilderment
    “I am a specialist in human affection and its monetization. You’ve heard me: either display true love forever—impossible, as your constricted pupils and nonplussed micro-gestures demonstrate—or you give back the money our guests spent on you.”
  35. iamb
    a metrical unit with unstressed-stressed syllables
    Without the translation, the vuvv’s ode, its scratchy iambs and dactyls, sound like someone walking forcefully in corduroys.
    An iamb is a unit of poetry consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. A dactyl, on the other hand, is a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables.
Created on Mon Nov 05 10:51:47 EST 2018 (updated Mon Nov 05 11:21:29 EST 2018)

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