Lemonworld

"Lemonworld" is really evocative -- it suggests something elliptical, self-contained, bright, cheerful, but also fundamentally sour. The idea reminds me of British summer estates in Woolf and Wilde. The narrator's a "college man" struggling with his sense of privilege against a backdrop of war and violence that he's largely unaffected by, but he's also unaccustomed to the "pricey" setting of the country retreat.

Flowers and "summer lovin' torture party" remind me of Mrs. Dalloway's Bourton estate, where a younger Clarissa struggles with her tempestuous feelings for Peter and Sally even as her intent to marry Richard grows clear as they throw open French doors and stroll through flower-gardens.

One particularly resonant passage: "Perhaps that summer she came to stay at Bourton, walking in quite unexpectedly without a penny in her pocket, one night after dinner, and upsetting poor Aunt helena to such an extent that she never forgave her. There had been some quarrel at home. She literally hadn't a penny that night when she came to them -- had pawned a brooch to come down. She had rushed off in a passion. They sat up till all hours of the night talking. Sally it was who made her feel, for the first time, how sheltered the life at Bourton was. ... Sally's power was amazing, her gift, her personality. There was her way with flowers, for instance. At Bourton they always had stiff little vases all the way down the table. Sally went out, picked hollyhocks, dahlias -- all sorts of flowers that had never been seen together -- cut their heads off, and made them swim on the top of water in bowls. The effect was extraordinary -- coming into dinner in the sunset. ... The strange thing, on looking back, was the purity, the integrity of her feeling for Sally. ... Absurd, she was -- very absurd. But the charm was overpowering, to her at least, so that she could remember standing in her bedroom at the top of the house holding the hot-water can in her hands and saying aloud, "She is beneath this roof ... She is beneath this roof!" ... She could remember going cold with excitement, and doing her hair in a kind of ecstacy... and feeling as she crossed the hall "if it were now to die 'twere now to be most happy." That was her feeling ... all because she was coming down to dinner in a white frock to meet Sally Seton!"

("I want to sit in and die...")

To be clear I'm not suggesting Matt wrote a song about Clarissa Dalloway -- I just think the parallels are nice :)