Matt: Why point out that
the vane is "stiff"? Are some vanes droopy? It seems like an entirely
superfluous adjective. If VN needed something there for meter's sake, he could
have as easily chosen a color or another, more useful, pathetic
modifier..
JM: It just occurred to me that
VN's adjective is a clever and synthetic rendering to
emphasize the difference bt. the motion of a vane ( it is not still: its motion
suffers and shows the change of direction of the wind, aso) and the relative
immobility of the TV antenna (the Lolita hurricanes are carried inside
to be watched in a TV-screen). The mockingbird is perched on TV-antennae,
not on a real vane?