[Carl Copeland]

Originally Posted by Matt Q

I had the spoken part in and then out of italics, but eventually decided I didn't need it. I'll be interested if others had the same problem you did. I am trying to workout in what way you found it ambiguous, misread it.

I did warn you that it was one of my characteristically perverse misreadings.

Originally Posted by Matt Q

"Daniel, he hears them hiss" seems an odd construction if it's read in the sense of "The man from Del Monte, he say yes" (that's from a British ad). Is that how you heard it?

Or “Mistah Kurtz—he dead.”

Originally Posted by Matt Q

I'm not sure italics/speech marks would make a difference.

Quotes would do it for me, but don’t add them on my account.

Originally Posted by Matt Q

Isn't the "whose" in "Daniel, whose fishhook claws ...", ambiguous until you read beyond the line break anyway?

I took “them” to be the antecedent of “whose,” since it’s closer, and I don’t see Daniel as having fishhook claws, but that misreading was derailed by the question mark. I just have to do a little more backtracking and head scratching than your average Spherean aesthete.