“His name, Tab Daniels, is the one he earned in high school, because he threaded fishing line back and forth across the headliner glued to the roof of his Grand Prix, festooned it with fishing hooks, and then proceeded to hang enough pull tabs onto those barbed hooks that the headliner finally collapsed onto him one seventy-mile-per-hour night.”
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I dunno if my reading comprehension sucks or what, but the writing style in this book feels really weird and clunky to me. This paragraph in particular has me stumped. I think it’s talking about a car with a sign on it decorated with fishing hooks and soda can tabs or something? I dunno. I feel like that’s wrong because it makes no sense. I have no idea what I’m supposed to be visualizing. The words don’t seem to match their definitions. Like it seems to imply that the sign or whatever collapsed because the “pull tabs” and fish hooks were too heavy, but those are not heavy objects, so… ??? Did it collapse on him while driving? From the weight or did he crash? I guess maybe he crashed, but then what does the fish hooks and pull tabs have to do with it. I’m so confused wtf.
Here are the definitions of the words that confuse me:
Headliner: a performer or act that is the star attraction on a program and typically performs last.
Grand Prix: any of a series of auto-racing or motorcycling contests forming part of a world championship series, held in various countries under international rules.
Pull tab: a ring or tab that is pulled to open a can.
by Artistic_Regard
7 Comments
Man, I’m with you. That’s almost entirely incoherent to me.
“something something Tab because tabs.”
I think your reading comprehension is fine. That paragraph is a mess
This paragraph reads like a fever dream.
Headliner is the material that covers the ceiling of a car. The dude put fishing hooks and pull tabs up there and one night while driving fast it came down on him.
I think it’s partially hard to understand just because it’s bizarre behavior with no explanation of their motivation.
In high school he strung up fishing line on the roof of his car, put hooks on the fishing line, and from the hooks hung a bunch of the pull tabs from beer/soda cans, so they called him Tab. There were so many pull tabs hung up on the roof of his car that it collapsed on him when he was driving 70mph.
Yes, it is a mess, but what headliner means in this context is the cloth lining the inside of the roof of a car. I’ve been in a few older cars where the cloth has started to come unstuck from the roof and sags down onto your head. The quote describes how he used to attach fishing line across that cloth and hung old style beer can pull tabs from it for some reason. Eventually the weight of the pull tabs caused it to pull loose and fall onto him while speeding.
Another definition of “headliner” is the cloth covering on the inside of a car’s roof. So if you’re sitting in a car and reach up it’s the cloth lining the ceiling above you.
A Grand Prix is the model name for a type of sedan made by Pontiac.
Pull tab is accurate, it’s the ring on top of a can of beer or soda you pull to open it.
So this dude owns a Pontiac Grand Prix sedan, he attached fishing line to the headliner, barbed fishing hooks to that fishing line, and then hung pull tabs off the hooks. He added so many hooks and pull tabs that their weight caught the glue securing the headliner to the ceiling of the car to fail and the whole mess fell onto his head one night while he was driving.