What is meant by the phrase:1."take sth the other side of the curtain"2. "give an aspect to"3...?

[davidmich]

Here Hitchens’s uses the phrase “thank me in broken tones”.

http://www.powells.com/review/2004_11_02

Wodehouse: A Life
by Robert McCrum

The Honorable Schoolboy
A review by Christopher Hitchens

" …Devotees of this incandescently funny novel may quarrel with my brief summary here. Bertie needs to fail hilariously at least once, and to enlist the help of the invaluable Jeeves before he can bring off the coup. However, I can confidently expect some fellow sufferers to write in, and to thank me in broken tones for this confirming serendipity."
"

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@davidmich

Here Hitchens’s uses the phrase “thank me in broken tones”.

http://www.powells.com/review/2004_11_02

Wodehouse: A Life
by Robert McCrum

The Honorable Schoolboy
A review by Christopher Hitchens

" …Devotees of this incandescently funny novel may quarrel with my brief summary here. Bertie needs to fail hilariously at least once, and to enlist the help of the invaluable Jeeves before he can bring off the coup. However, I can confidently expect some fellow sufferers to write in, and to thank me in broken tones for this confirming serendipity."
"

Here’s the complete opening two paragraphs, which finally provide the context needed to understand.

I daresay that one can claim, without running overmuch risk of contradiction, to have been reading Frederick Taylor’s recent history of the obliteration of Dresden with no intention of looking for laughs. And yet when I reached page 46, I found myself open-mouthed with joy, and eager to share my mirth. Taylor carefully sets the scene of pre-war Nazi Saxony, and devotes several paragraphs to the unpleasing figure of Martin Mutschmann, the party gauleiter. From these passages I learned that Herr Mutschmann had left school at fourteen and had taken “various management positions in lace and underwear companies.” I at once laid down the book and wondered whom I should call or e-mail with this precious page reference.

Some of you who are still with me will already have caught my drift. In the climactic scene of The Code of the Woosters, Bertie confronts Sir Roderick Spode, the sinister bully who is “founder and head of the Saviours of Britain, a Fascist organization better known as the Black Shorts.” He reduces Spode to a jelly by disclosing that he knows the would-be dictator’s ghastly secret – his ownership of Eulalie Soeurs, a female underwear consortium. Devotees of this incandescently funny novel may quarrel with my brief summary here. Bertie needs to fail hilariously at least once, and to enlist the help of the invaluable Jeeves before he can bring off the coup. However, I can confidently expect some fellow sufferers to write in, and to thank me in broken tones for this confirming serendipity.

The actual use is “thank me in broken tones,” which makes much more sense. The meaning is similar to the definition of “in broken tones” given previously. The usage here is humorous. Hitchens is patting himself on the back for spotting this extremely obscure coincidence, and saying facetiously that others would thank him in the deepest and most abject terms for writing about it in this review. I’m not surprised that the result is obscure; Hitchens had a convoluted style, not so much in the ornateness of his language as in the twists of nuance he could put into a sentence. Those two paragraphs are good examples.

And they are excellent examples for the absolute need for context to determine meaning. While I could accurately guess at the meaning from your short excerpt, having the full text was necessary to confirm it and nail it down.

I keep falling back on the saying, “Context is Everything.” I really truly strongly believe that.

[pulykamell]

@Amateur_Barbarian

So ESL students are taught a non-standard set of shorthand abbreviations to help them communicate with English speakers who don’t know them?

I am not unfamiliar with ESL and I’ve never encountered this…

Huh. Apparently it is a thing with translator’s dictionaries, according to that, which explains my familiarity with the abbreviations. Had no idea they were non-standard. Lots of complaints online about them, it seems, and it does also seem to be connected with ESL.

[davidmich]

Thank you all. Very helpful.
davidmich

[bob_2]

"However, I can confidently expect some fellow sufferers to write in, and to thank me in broken tones for this confirming serendipity.

The author expects his audience to be so overcome by his erudition and perspiration that they will sob as they write to thank him. Actually of course, he thinks no such thing - is is written for humorous effect only.

[davidmich]

I’m still unclear about the precise meaning of “in broken tones”. Does it mean “emotional” or “cracked voice”?

[Shodan]

I think it means “in a cracked voice” because of emotion.

Is it possible that the phrase is “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain”? That’s a quote from The Wizard of Oz.

Regards,
Shodan

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@Shodan

I think it means “in a cracked voice” because of emotion.

Yes, he or she is so emotional that the words can barely emerge.

[davidmich]

Thank you all. The meaning is clear.
davidmich