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couldn’t be farther from Does the second sentence in the following context mean "but her subjects (i.e. Jewish women) are very different from Warhol's subjects"? Context: The insertions of her own icons have immediate parodic qualities. Yet, it is in the selection of her subjects, Jewish women, that couldn’t be farther from what Warhol would select.
Mar 12, 2017 11:05 AM
Answers · 2
1
Yes. Or, rather, yes: what you say is what the sentence is INTENDED to mean. And that's what most readers will get from it. However, the sentence *doesn't actually mean anything* as it is written. The sentence's grammar and logic are mangled and broken (plus, its punctuation is a little off, too). So that makes it harder to understand. I've found the original source on Google books, but that doesn't tell me exactly what the author was trying to say. In any case, the following fixes (which are all close enough in meaning not to matter much) would be the kinds of corrections that an editor *should* have suggested for this writer before publishing this book: "Yet it is in the selection of her subjects--Jewish women--that she couldn't be farther from Warhol." "Yet it is her subjects--Jewish women--that couldn't be farther from what Warhol would select." "Yet the selection of her subjects--Jewish women--couldn't be farther from that of Warhol." Take a look at those corrections, and see whether you can deduce the meaning any more easily than with the (broken) original.
March 12, 2017
1
Spot on! Yes. Warhol generally focused on consumerism and celebrity as his subject matter (not for example, Jewish women). It is more common to hear or read the phrase 'further from the truth', as farther should be attributed to physical distance, while 'further' relates to both literal and figurative meaning. You do hear and read people write 'the above' though. Hope this helps!
March 12, 2017
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