Grandmother, parts 2296 - 2299

 2296. All of the articles seemed to have a structure of being composed of an excessive number of qualifying words, leading inevitably to contradictions and unanswered questions. Regardless of how confusing these articles were, he noticed right away that the guests of the resort, especially the Americans, were quite interested in these articles. 

 2297. The topics dealt with in the pages of the Sunday Times made up the majority of the content of the guests conversations, especially at dinner Sunday evening, and at breakfast on Monday morning. It was not all conversation however. Some of the guests were obsessed  with the crossword puzzle, and Coromo noticed that the puzzle, all by itself, represented an entire area of involvement practically equal to the sports section in its ability to hold the guests in its thrall.

 2298.  And so the reading of the Times became a peculiar pastime of our friend Coromo. During his time off and his breaks from work he would read through entire articles never having the slightest notion of what they were about. To understand this behavior you might picture a person attempting to learn a foreign language by reading books and never understanding even the pronunciation of the strange words, but confident that in time some insight would emerge.

 2299. Added to this reading of the Times was the practice of overhearing the conversation of the guests when they sometimes engaged in discussions of the articles he had tried to read. The combination of these two activities bore an odd sort of fruit and it happened that he would have rare moments of insight into what the news articles were about.