Penrod is so referential as to be almost a work of postmodernism—assuming Tarkington could have imagined such a thing with modernism itself just beginning to steamroll over him.

On the Tuesday after Miss Pettigrew's funderal Mr. Conrad Rackley returned to Neely in a rented truck thecab of which he shared with a pair of Masseys who we did not know for Masseys right off but who we recognized as relations on account of a common chinlessness, which is apparently the predominant Massey trait in the West Virginia end of Kentucky.

It was late July and there was a hint of bedraggledness to the landscape.

Ye had to watch no to step in mud or a puddle or else in jobby, dogs were aye doing jobbies, or else ye watched for broken glass.