In an essay about inflection and tone in writing, “You’re Really Something,” Charles Baxter tells about a family trip to a tourist trap called Dinosaur World, where the affectless teen narrating the tram ride through “a trip back through time” adds a layer of unintended hilarity as the family rumbles along past tableaus of dilapidated dinosaurs, jaws agape, standing in fountains that shoot toilet-cleaner-blue-dyed water. The teenaged guide is baffled when the family bursts out laughing midway through the tour, ramshackle as it is, but laden with jump scares: “What, you’re not scared?” No, the family assures the teen, but not because the plaster on the T-Rex is crumbling and the jungle plants are plastic, but because the entire tour has been delivered in a flat monotone; the suspension of belief is nonexistent, because there was no belief to be suspended in the first place: “None of us at Dinosaur World expected to believe what we were seeing.
Mariners and Rangers argue over the way to tell a story, Mariners win 1-0
