A.Stadlen [to Bruce Stone's "If you include both the start and end dates of this interval, you should get 56 days: 9/22 - 9/30 (9 days), 10/1 - 10/31 (31 days), 11/1 - 11/16 (16 days). ] But that is not the normal meaning of "56 days ago", surely? And why does VN so emphasize 52 (in Appel's notes)?

Today I was reading about Robert Browning's "The Ring and the Book" and how every character, who narrated and evaluated the Count's murder of his adulterous wife, told a different story, all the while believing that their version was the only true one. (I was enjoying a re-encounter with JL Borges, in his untranslated to English "Lectures on English Literature." He observes, en passant, that "Shakespeare wrote a tragedy in which a specter announced to a young man that his mother was an adulteress and a murderer." It makes sense...It all depends on the adopted point of view).