Rabbit, Run by John Updike (novel #242)

There is this quality, in things, of the right way seeming wrong at first. ~ Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom

Rabbit, Run is the first of five in Updike’s “Rabbit” series, which follows the life of Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom. Rabbit has been described as the “middle-class everyman,” presumably of the
American 1950s.

 

Ugh…I hope not. I would borrow from another commentator, different author, different character. For me, Rabbit is “one of the most feckless characters in literature.

 

But before I comment further on this novel, I want to mention that in addition to being a Pulitzer-winning novelist, Updike was a distinguished literary critic. The following are his personal rules for literary criticism:

• Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.
• Give enough direct quotation—at least one extended passage—of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.
• Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy précis.
• Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.
• If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's œuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

I like these rules. They are fair and systematic. So, in deference to the author and the critic, I will attempt to review Rabbit, Run according to Updike’s rules.

 

Harry Angstrom, or Rabbit, a nickname picked up in childhood for a nervous flutter under his nose, is a married father of one, plus one on the way. He has an uninspiring job, demonstrating and selling kitchen gadgets. Rabbit was a big basketball star in high school and daydreams about his not-so-long-ago heroics. He reminds me of the characters from Springsteen’s Glory Days. His wife, is simple, alcoholic, and seven months pregnant.

 

So, I get the “everyman” designation. He has a deep sense of dissatisfaction; how could he not, following the world-saving exploits of the Greatest Generation, selling vegetable peelers, must have felt maddeningly impotent.

 

One evening, after work and getting his honey-do list from Janice…

Rabbit freezes, standing looking at his faint yellow shadow on the white door that leads to the hall, and senses he is in a trap. It seems certain. He goes out.

Meaning he runs. He intends to make it to the Gulf of Mexico and sleep on the sand, but he doesn’t have a map or much of a plan. He stops to ask directions, though Rabbit cannot say precisely where he is headed. He doesn’t get any helpful advice and prepares to leave…

[Rabbit] walks to his car door. He feels through the hairs on the back of his neck the man following him. He gets into the car and slams the door and the farmer is right there, the meat of his face hung in the open door window. He bends down and nearly sticks his face in. His cracked thin lips with a scar tilting toward his nose move thoughtfully. He’s wearing glasses, a scholar. “The only way to get somewhere, you know is to figure out where you’re going before you go there.”

 

Rabbit catches a whiff of whisky. He says in a level way, “I don’t think so.” The lips and spectacles and black hairs poking out of the man’s tear-shaped nostrils show no surprise. Rabbit pulls out, going straight. Everybody who tells you how to act has whisky on their breath.

I’m not very good at determining an author’s intent, and I’m not sure that Updike ever called Rabbit “every-man.” However, it does seem that he is trying to explain a dreadful ennui pervasive in mid-century American men. Did he achieve this? Powerfully, but I’m unconvinced that Rabbit was “every-man.” Most did not drive away, leaving wife and family.

 

I didn’t like Updike’s style of prose at first. There is never a break, never a pause. He doesn’t have chapters and only one or two blank passage of time sections. There might be a name for this, but I don’t know it. I’m certain this is not right, but it was almost like stream of consciousness by the omniscient narrator. I did grow more accustomed to his style, and I think it worked. It may have been intentional to show that life never lets up, leaving Rabbit feeling trapped.

 

I know this…I didn’t like Rabbit. I couldn’t even feel sorry for him most of the time. I just wanted to say, “Dude!?” An unlikeable character does not mean bad storytelling, but maybe Updike intended Rabbit to be at least a little likable. In that regard, for me, he failed. While reading this, I often thought of the eponymous character from Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March. Augie was immature and his own worst enemy, yet somehow, I liked him. He says of himself…

Lord, what a runner after good things, servant of love, embarker on schemes, recruit of sublime ideas, and good time Charlie.

Now that I’m done, I think I’ve written a fine review. Updike was a clever fellow.

 

My rating:  3 1/2 out of 5 stars

 

 

This novel was my read for the Classics Club Spin #40

 

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Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman by Richard P. Feynman

I have to understand the world you see. ~ Richard Feynman

Richard P. Feynman was a Nobel Prize-winning American theoretical physicist. Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman might be described as an autobiography, but I believe it is more of a memoir. In the introduction, another scientist, Albert R. Hibbs, describes Feynman as having…

Indignant impatience with pretension and hypocrisy…

Indeed. He was a fascinating man, so much more than a physicist, and so unintimidated in pursuit of unlocking the secrets of the universe.

 

The title is taken from an early Princeton experience: He was invited to a formal social event. When asked if he wanted cream or lemon in his tea, being unfamiliar with tea protocol, he said he’d take both. The hostess laughingly replied…

Surely you’re joking Mr. Feynman!

After his student days, he describes his work on the Manhattan Project, where he associated with some of the great scientific minds of the 20th century. He asserts that he was not very distinguished yet, but he did make some substantial contributions. He was a constant challenge to the censors, who reviewed incoming and outgoing mail. The censors thought he was sending unauthorized coded messages to his wife, that were completely innocent, so to confound the censors, he developed code to hide his everyday communication with her that would not arouse suspicion. He also became a safecracker. This to access data and research if the proper custodian was out of office. Also, he just loved the challenge.

I love puzzles. One guy tries to make something to keep another guy out; there must be a way to beat it!

I was in the military and later a defense civilian. I worked with contractor scientists and classified information. I can appreciate that Feynman must have driven the government bureaucrats crazy.

 

He never faced a puzzle he couldn’t solve and never let his lack of knowledge deter him. When planning a trip to Brazil, he simply decided to learn Portuguese. While in Brazil, a trip to Japan became necessary, so he learned Japanese from a Brazilian woman. He also liked Samba music and learned to play the samba drums well enough to be part of several bands in Brazil.

 

At another point in his eclectic life, he befriended an artist. When they discovered some communication barriers due to their different fields, they traded art lessons for physics lessons. Feynman became an artist of some distinction under the pseudonym Ofey. Of his art career, he said…

It’s fun to be in a different world!

These, and many other stories, demonstrate what I found to be his most impressive quality. If he didn’t understand something – he’d learn it.

 

While contemplating physics problems, he would walk outside his city home. His odd behavior drew the attention of the police.

On earlier occasions I was often stopped by the police, because I would be walking along, thinking, and then I’d stop – sometimes an idea comes that’s difficult enough that you can’t keep walking: you have to make sure of something. So I’d stop, and sometimes I’d hold my hands out in the air, saying to myself, “The distance between these is that way, and then this would turn over this way…”

 

I’d be moving my hands, standing in the street, when the police would come: “what is your name? Where do you live? What are you doing?

They eventually got used to him.

 

He tells how he wanted the experience of having a hallucination.

I had once thought to take drugs, but I got kind of scared of that. I love to think, and I don’t want to screw with the machine.

He opted for a clinical sensory deprivation lab, which produced his desired experience.

 

And the final chapter: "Cargo Cult Science", I nearly stood and cheered. Published in 1985, it is as relevant today as ever. He exposes lazy, faulty, invalid studies, falsely called science, that do not tolerate scrutiny. I cannot do it justice here.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself.

He opines that scientists must have

…extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you’re maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist.

And also…

It is very dangerous to have such a policy in teaching – to teach students only how to get certain results, rather than how to do an experiment with scientific integrity.

This book was a departure from my usual reading. It was a gift from a colleague upon my retirement. I thoroughly enjoyed it. What a remarkable man.

 

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The Dark Tower: The Dark Tower series #7 by Stephen King (novel #241)

NOW COMES ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER! I HAVE BEEN TRUE AND I STILL CARRY THE GUN OF MY FATHER AND YOU WILL OPEN TO MY HAND!

The Dark Tower is #7 in Stephen King's eight-volume The Dark Tower series. It is a dark fantasy set in Earth’s future, where physical and metaphysical laws are significantly altered. There is some collective memory of the old world and occasional portals between the old and new; characters do not refer to different “worlds” but different “whens”. This is the final novel in the series…sort of. The story reaches its climax and conclusion with this volume, and I believe King intended it to be final. But then, I don’t know if it was fan interest or the author’s, but he wrote another volume, which takes place between volumes 4 and 5, unofficially volume 4.5.

 

Roland Deschain is a Gunslinger, not so much a description as a title or profession: a knightly order trained in personal combat to be defenders of justice. Roland is the last of the gunslingers; more precisely, he was. He is on a quest to find the Dark Tower and to set something right that has somehow gone horribly wrong in the world that moved on.

 

In volume #1, Roland was alone pursuing the man in black. In volume #2, he picks up two companions from a different when: 20th-century America. He encounters Eddie, a former drug addict, and Susannah, a former schizophrenic and double-leg amputee. Eddie and Susanah fall in love and become Roland’s companions and gunslingers in training. In volume #3, the three risk great peril to add one more to their group, a boy named Jake, also from the 20th century. Volume #4 is a flashback telling part of Roland’s backstory. Volume #5 is a detour from the quest when they assist a farming community harassed by evil and dangerous beings. The very end of volume #5 leaves a cliffhanger: Susannah, pregnant with an unnatural child. She leaves her companions and travels to a different when to deliver the child. In volume #6 Susannah delivers her “baby” with terrifying affect, while Roland and Eddie hunt down an author in Maine named Stephen King. King hates the term meta-fiction, but there it is. Meanwhile Jake and Oy are on Susannah's trail in New York. Both missions are crucial to the quest, which is tantamount to saving the universe.

 

In the Dark Tower, the five companions: Roland, Susannah, Eddie, Jake and Oy a dog-like creature fiercely loyal to Jake are reunited back in Roland’s when. They all sense the Dark Tower is near, as well as the end of their quest. These companions are known as ka-tet in Roland’s ideology/religion: a group of individuals fated together as one pursuing a common purpose.

 

When they are first reunited. There is a marvelous moment that the reader has been yearning for:

    “Hile, Jake,” Roland said.

    “Hile, Father.”

    “Will you call me so?”

    Jake nodded. “Yes, if I may.”

    “Such would please me ever,” Roland said. Then slowly – as one performs an action with which he’s unfamiliar – he held out his arms. Looking up at him solemnly, never taking his eyes from Roland’s face, the boy Jake moved between those killer’s hands and waited until they locked at his back. He had had dreams of this that he would never have dared to tell.

As they draw nearer to the Dark Tower, the perils grow greater, threatening not only the quest, but the survival of the ka-tet.

 

My rating for The Dark Tower individually is…

 

4 out of 5 stars

 

 

 

But, none of the individual volumes stand very well on their own, so I’ll now try to summarize my feelings for the entire series. Yeah, I’m not going to read volume 4.5. I’ve been to the Dark Tower now, and I don’t care to return to a back-story detour from the past. May it do ya fine.

 

But goodness, this is a daunting task. First, I really enjoyed it. Though, I didn’t quite love it, not as I did my only other experience with King, The Stand. The Dark Tower series is very long, and I think it suffered a bit in that. I know King wanted to write an epic fantasy, and he surely did, but at times it felt a bit contrived. I don’t believe he plotted out the entire story before writing, but rather wrote “as it came to him”. And it felt like that. I know that’s his process, though my words are surely a gross oversimplification, so my insignificant observation isn’t worth much and certainly isn’t a criticism. It just wasn’t always completely satisfying for me.

 

One of the advantages of reading classics is that it is mostly dead authors. Ugh! that sounds terrible. What I mean is, if I call Dickens a talentless hack, he’s never going to read my words so I can’t offend him. By the way, I love Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities is my #1 all-time favorite novel. But I experience a little trepidation when reviewing living authors because there is a slim chance they’ll read my review. I had that happen once. So Sai King, if you happen to read this…I love you man. The Stand is one of my top 10. No really. Check out Wanderer’s Top 100. And The Dark Tower #7 is in the Top 100. We good? Cool!

 

For the Dark Tower SERIES…

 

4 out of 5 stars

 

 

But I’ve a bit more to say. King says Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings was part of his inspiration. I believe that was mostly evident in just the epic fantasy part, but there were some very specific allusions: the dark tower itself, several glass orbs with communicative powers, a minor character named Thorin, a family named Took, and the hero of the tale loses not one, but several fingers, and others I’m certain I’ve forgotten.

 

Another inspiration was the spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leonne, and the man with no name portrayed by Clint Eastwood. I recommend if you read The Dark Tower series to just go ahead and envision Eastwood as Roland.

 

Perhaps the most explicit inspiration is the poem by Robert Browning Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. The poem is included in an appendix to volume 7.

 

King mentions many other authors and/or their works in his narrative. Volume 7 alone included references to: Ray Bradbury, C.S. Lewis, Richard Adams, John Fowles, J.R.R. Tolkien, John Updike (who I’m reading next), and H.P. Lovecraft. I love that King does this.

 

In the beginning of the series, the apparent villain is the man in black whom Roland is pursuing. He is a recurring villain in many of King’s writings and is also known as Randall Flagg, Walter o’ Dim, the Walking Dude, and many other names. He is a wicked sorcerer, always smug and almost always smiling. Ya learn to hate this dude. But he is the mere under-villain and servant to the Crimson King. They’re a little like Saruman and Sauron.

 

King includes two separate epilogues. In the first, there is a reunion of several characters who, we’ll just say completed their part in the tale before the finish. King writes a beautiful summary to their lives:

 

And will I tell you that these three lived happily ever after? I will not, for no one ever does. But there was happiness.

 

And they did live.

 

Now the second epilogue: I wish King had not included it. The final chapter of volume 7, and hence the series does not offer complete closure. At first, I was incredulous, not yet knowing the content of the second epilogue, but thankfully, I put the novel down for the night and by the time I picked it up the next day, I’d grown to love the ending. I could imagine the rest as I like, and it was…sorta clear…that all would be well. So, even though I said I’d wished King hadn’t written the second epilogue, I also think it was brilliant. He gently scolds the readers whom he knew would demand to know “what happened after that?” King rather reluctantly gives them what they want. It was very clever, cuz I’m sure he was right. There would have been many angry betrayed fans.

 

I don’t suppose I could convince you to just skip this section? Trust me; better that way.

 

Finally, I’m glad to have read this and I will definitely read more by Stephen King. Any suggestions? Thank ya fine.

 

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Recap of Novels 231 – 240

Average rating of novels 231 – 240:  3.7 stars (out of 5)

 

 

231.   ★★★½             Dandelion Wine

232.   ★★★★             For Whom the Bell Tolls

233.  ★★★½              Hangover Square

234.  ★★★★              The Day of the Jackal

235   ★★★½              The Dark Tower #1
236.  ★★★½              The Dark Tower #2
237.  ★★★½              The Dark Tower #3

238.   ★★★★             The Dark Tower #4

239.   ★★★★             The Dark Tower #5

240.  ★★★½              The Dark Tower #6

 

 

Favorite: Wizard and Glass: The Dark Tower #4

 

Least Favorite: The Wastelands: The Dark Tower #3

 

Best Hero: The Gunslinger; Roland Deschain from the Dark Tower Series

 

Best Heroine: Susannah Dean from the Dark Tower Series

 

Best Villain: The Jackal from The Day of the Jackal

 

Most interesting/Complex character: Roland Deschain

 

Best Quotation: Fault always lies in the same place, my fine babies: with him weak enough to lay blame. ~ Cort, the Gunslinger’s teacher

Classics Club Spin #40

It is time for the 40th edition of the Classics Club Spin – List 20 books from my CC TBR, by Sunday, February 16; the mods will then pick a random number, and I have until April 11 to read the corresponding book.

 

My spin list:

 

1. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

2. The Counterfeiters by Andre Gide

3. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy by Jon le Carré

4. Rabbit, Run by John Updike

5. The Magus by John Fowles

6. Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens

7. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

8. The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder

9. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

10. The Ballad of the Sad Café by Carson McCullers

11. Grendel by John Gardner

12. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

13. Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

14. Cool Hand Luke by Don Pearce

15. The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier

16. Tess of d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

17. Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu

18. Kim by Ian Fleming

19. Post Office by Charles Bukowski

20. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

 

I don’t have strong feelings about any of these. I suppose I’m hoping for Cool Hand Luke or Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy. Nothing I know enough about to dread on this list.

Song of Susannah: The Dark Tower series #6 by Stephen King (novel #240)

I’m nothing but Roland of Gilead’s [expletive] secretary. ~ spoken by fictional Stephen King, self-inserted into this novel by the real Stephen King

Song of Susannah is #6 in Stephen King's eight-volume The Dark Tower series. It is a dark fantasy set in Earth’s future, where physical and metaphysical laws are significantly altered. There is some collective memory of the old world and occasional portals between the old and new; characters do not refer to different “worlds” but different “whens”.

 

Roland Deschain is a Gunslinger, not so much a description as a title or profession: a knightly order trained in personal combat to be defenders of justice. Roland is the last of the gunslingers; more precisely, he was. He is on a quest to find the Dark Tower and to set something right that has somehow gone horribly wrong in the world that moved on.

 

In volume #1, Roland was alone pursuing the man in black. In volume #2, he picks up two companions from a different when: 20th-century America. He encounters Eddie, a former drug addict, and Susannah, a former schizophrenic and double-leg amputee. Eddie and Susanah fall in love and become Roland’s companions and gunslingers in training. In volume #3, the three risk great peril to add one more to their group, a boy named Jake, also from the 20th century. Volume #4 is a flashback telling Roland’s backstory. Volume #5, Wolves of the Calla, is a detour from the quest when they assist a farming community harassed by evil and dangerous beings. The very end of volume #5 leaves a cliffhanger when Susannah, pregnant with an unnatural child, leaves her companions and travels to a different when, late 20th century America to give birth.

 

Susannah is possessed by Mia, a minor demon who made a sort of reverse Faustian bargain to exchange her immortal being to become a mortal woman in order to have a baby. Mia needs Susannah, a fully human host, to carry the baby until the moment of delivery when the baby will be transferred from Susannah to Mia. Initially, Susannah fears the baby is a monster, but she learns it is the very human offspring of herself and Roland, though her pregnancy came about quite unnaturally.

 

Meanwhile, Roland, Eddie, Jake, and newly recruited gunslinger Father Callahan attempt to follow Susannah. Actually, Roland and Eddie intend to pursue Susannah, to 1999, while Jake and Callahan travel to 1977 to conduct business regarding their quest. However, the two pairs are sent to the other’s intended destination at the critical moment of passing through the portal. The gunslingers persevere and carry on, determined to do their best. This is particularly hard on Eddie, who is desperate to follow Susannah, but he soldiers on trusting Jake and Callahan to rescue his beloved.

 

In many ways, this was my least favorite volume thus far. It gets very weird; well, a King novel that isn’t weird would be weird, but this feels very contrived. I will spare further critique until I review the series as a whole.  In other ways, this volume was very good. The previous volume, Wolves of the Calla, hinted at a bit of metafiction, which comes full force in Susannah’s Song. It also contains very clever author self-insertion. King writes himself into the tale, every bit the best-selling author he is. Roland and Eddie travel to 1977 Maine on the quest business I mentioned. While there, they learn that Stephen King lives nearby and that he has written about Callahan, the newest member of their company. Callahan is in a different King story: Salem’s Lot. They find King and learn that he has written, but not yet published the beginning of The Dark Tower and created the character Roland of Gilead. He hasn’t gotten to Eddie yet. He tells them…

Yeah, The Dark Tower, it was called. It was gonna be my Lord of the Rings, my Gormenghast, my you-name-it.

And…

…you started to scare me, so I stopped writing about you.

Meeting his fictional creation in the flesh was rather disturbing to King, but Roland and Eddie convince him that he must complete The Dark Tower series. It was very clever and a bit confusing.

 

My rating: 3 ½ out of 5 stars

 

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Wolves of the Calla: The Dark Tower series #5 by Stephen King (novel #239)

As always, he [Roland] was never so happy to be alive as when he was preparing to deal death. Five minutes of blood and stupidity.

…he always felt sick afterwards.

 

Wolves of the Calla is #5 in Stephen King's eight-volume The Dark Tower series. It is a dark fantasy set in Earth’s future, where physical and metaphysical laws are significantly altered. There is some collective memory of the old world and occasional portals between the old and new, but characters do not refer to different “worlds” but different “whens”.

 

Roland Deschain is a Gunslinger, not so much a description as a title or profession: a knightly order trained in personal combat to be defenders of justice. Roland is the last of the gunslingers. He is on a quest to find the Dark Tower, and to set something right that has somehow gone horribly wrong in the world that moved on.

 

The precise meaning or mission of gunslingers is revealed gradually through this series. From volume 5:

He [Eddie] knew from Roland’s stories (and from having seen him in action a couple of times) that the gunslingers of Gilead had been much more than peace officers. They had also been messengers, accountants, sometimes spies, once in a while even executioners. More than anything else, however, they had been diplomats.

Roland himself explains more succinctly:

Fighting for those who can’t fight for themselves is our job.

In volume #1, Roland was alone. In volume #2, he picks up two companions from a different when: 20th-century America. He encounters Eddie, a former drug addict, and Susannah, a former schizophrenic and double-leg amputee. Eddie and Susanah become Roland’s companions and gunslingers in training. In volume #3, the three risk great peril to add one more to their group, a boy named Jake, also from the 20th century. Volume #4 Wizard and Glass was a flashback and Roland’s backstory.

 

Volume #5 returns to the quest, but only briefly. The gunslingers are forced to detour when they encounter a farming community harassed by evil and dangerous beings. According to their code, the Gunslingers must render aid and succor. The Calla is the farming community of Calla Bryn Sturgis, and the enemy is the Wolves: not actual wolves but seeming humans behind wolf masks.

 

The odds seem impossible, and there is a traitor in their midst, but Roland is undeterred.

As always, he was never so happy to be alive as when he was preparing to deal death. Five minutes of blood and stupidity.

 

…he always felt sick afterwards.

Besides the looming battle, an important sub-text is present. Susannah is in a delicate condition: she doesn’t show because the “chap” within her is an unnatural and evil being that will likely destroy her once released. At the critical moment of battle his arrival seems imminent, but Susannah forces it to wait by force of will. Shortly after the fight, she leaves her fellow Gunslingers and travels to a different when…the story of the next volume, Song of Susannah.

 

I’ve spoken of the four companions or the four Gunslingers: Roland of Gilead, Eddie Dean, his wife Susannah, and a boy Jake Chambers. There is one more companion I’ve not mentioned thus far: Oy, a doglike creature called a Billy Bumbler from Roland’s when. Oy becomes Jake's fiercely loyal companion. Billy Bumblers mimic human speech, but Oy demonstrates particular intelligence. His speech often conveys meaning beyond just mimicry.

 

I think a new gunslinger is joining the quest. The gunslingers encounter Father Callahan in Calla Bryn Sturgis. He is from 20th-century America but has taken up ministering to the folk of the Calla. This volume involves some traveling between different whens, and Callahan discovers a book of fiction by Stephen King from the 20th century. Callahan is disturbed to find that Salem’s Lot tells his story, causing him to question his own existence.

 

Thus far, I’ve rated each volume of the series individually and I will stick with that until the end, but I’m forming an opinion for the whole as well. This volume can probably stand on its own better than the others, though there is a maddening cliffhanger: what is to become of Susannah? But again, on its own, Wolves of the Calla is very exciting, very satisfying, and at the same time piquing my interest for more.

 

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

 

 

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