13 September 2012

Meticulousness taken too far


The quote above comes from The Erasers by Alain Robbe-Grillet. I rather liked the book, what with all the undercurrents running through it and all that. So why nitpicking?

Still, it must take a heck of a meticulous person to put a clip back in place in a revolver... properly, too.

12 comments:

the sad red earth said...

"The proper functioning of the mechanism" sort of tells you the writer doesn't know what he's talking about- and doesn't much care.

Dick Stanley said...

Excellent catch. Very funny. So much for verisimilitude. But, you know, most of his readers probably don't know shat from Shinola either.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

True. I would have missed it too, but the book mentions that revolver about fifty times.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Indeed. I should have noticed this giveaway. Thanks.

VickieSALT said...

Just came back from a vacation to the US southwest where at a gunslinger show I saw a man loading his revolver with a round clip holding 6 shots. Something sexy, the way it worked.

Francis Sedgemore said...

Square peg in a round hole, eh? Genius!

SnoopyTheGoon said...

I believe that in this case the thingy that is being loaded is not called "clip" - rather a "cylinder".

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Well, let's be charitable. A good writer he still is, and most probably his only acquaintance with firearms was seeing them on French cops...

Dick Stanley said...

Precisely. A pre-loaded cylinder. Hardly new. Cavalry carried similar things in the Civil War.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Right. I suspect, though, that not every gun model took a preloaded cylinder.

David All said...

As my oldest friend, recently reminded me after showing her two handguns; you never put bullets in a gun unless you are about to shoot it.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

The IDF saying is that a gun without bullets in it is as good as a broom. On the other hand, you are supposed to take the clip out when in populated area.