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What do the highlighted parts mean in this piece of writing?

English Language & Usage Asked on May 7, 2021

From The Paris Review:

I was away from home and walking to a bar to celebrate something privately, and I paused on my way to watch the moon move, its blond glow shifting bonier as it tracked its path higher into the coppery blue. “Beautiful night,” said the bartender when I took a seat. “Beautiful night, beautiful moon,” I said. He poured my drink and an older gentleman on the stool to my right leaned toward me and asked with a sticky blue cheese voice, “What does a young woman like you think of the full moon?” I laughed.

Could anyone please throw light on what the highlighted parts mean?

One Answer

"its blond glow shifting bonier"

Like the sun, the moon glows different colors depending on how high or low it is in the sky. When the moon is very low in the sky, its glow is orangish; a little higher, it's yellowy or "blond"; and as it gets higher still, it becomes increasingly whiter, or "bonier" (i.e., more the color of bone). The narrator is communicating a fairly significant amount of time as passing by to observe the moon changing that much in color. The narrator is also somewhat personifying the moon, or its glow, by describing it as "blond" and "bonier," descriptors associated with human attributes, as opposed to simply describing it as "yellow" and then "whiter."

"sticky blue cheese voice"

I'm uncertain, but I have a couple of ideas:

If the writing is fairly recent, like since 2013, a new slang term for $100 bills is "blue cheese." That's because blue threads put into them in 2013 for anticounterfeiting purposes look quite like the blue veins found in blue cheese. With that in mind, "sticky blue cheese voice" could mean the "older gentleman" had an accent and manner of speaking that sounded rich, like a lifetime of wealth and privilege oozed out of his voice.

If this is older than 2013, a guess, which is just a guess, is that maybe it means the older gentleman sounded French, blue cheese (a.k.a., bleu cheese) being French. Another guess would be that, because blue cheese is also very smelly, some equating it to smelling like feet, maybe it means the older gentleman had bad breath. Or it could be a combination of the two: the older gentleman sounded rich and had bad breath. Or it could be neither.

It's not at all clear what's meant, but I would imagine it might become clearer reading on by learning more about this older gentleman, the description maybe being a hook the author employs, a mystery for you as the reader to figure out by reading on, thus enticing you to read on.

Correct answer by Benjamin Harman on May 7, 2021

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