Done. The prior base audit was stale (it diffed `0001→0034` and wrongly assumed the committed text was still 0034); I verified by hash that the committed text is snapshot **0066**, re-ran against the true arc `0001→0066` (covering the eleven unaudited later rounds), preserved the old file as `chapter_24.genericization_round1.md`, and wrote the completed audit to `output/critiques/claude/chapter_24.genericization.md`. Here is that document:

---

# Audit: Regression-to-the-Mean / Genericization — Chapter 24 ("First Snow")

id: genericization_regression | owner: claude | tier: risk
trigger: sample:every-4th-chapter (24)
output: output/critiques/claude/chapter_24.genericization.md

## Diff basis (re-run — the prior base audit was stale)

The prior base audit diffed `0001 → 0034` and asserted the committed text was "byte-identical to snapshot 0034." That is no longer true, verified by hash:

- Committed `output/chapters/chapter_24.md` = snapshot **0066** (`after_clarity_current_round3_repairs`), sha256 `39b02ced…`.
- Snapshot 0034 = sha256 `7e09bc65…` — a different, superseded file.

Eleven rounds ran after 0034 and were never audited: `characters_wrong` r1–r3 (+mechanical) and `comedy` / `positive_prose` / `purple_prose` / `clarity` **current-regression** passes. Those late "regression-repair" and character passes are the highest-risk zone for fresh smoothing, so this re-run diffs the true arc and gives that delta a dedicated pass:

- Pre-revision: `…chapter_24.0001…auto.md` (first auto draft, 5,131 words)
- Post-revision: committed text = snapshot 0066 (4,508 words) — a **12% cut**
- Worked paragraph-aligned through every hunk `0001→0066`, plus a separate sweep of the unaudited `0034→0066` delta.

Reference frame: reading guide §2/§4/§5/§8, Ch24 chapter card, voice cards, `output/tics.md` rows `24 draft`. Line numbers below are the committed text unless marked `(0001)`.

## Critique-stance finding, up front

I went looking, skeptically, for the regression signature — *less specific + more exaggerated*, the portrait fading while the caption shouts "important" — and the arc runs hard the other way. Across the full `0001→0066` diff, **zero** significance-statements were added anywhere; the 12% cut is almost entirely removal of aphoristic caption, announced care-move, dialogue-diagnosis, and weather-thesis, with every book-rooted concrete detail preserved and several sharpened. The two most postcard-prone lines in the chapter — snow-as-value-lesson and the earned-stay thesis restated through weather — are the two that were deleted. The post-0034 rounds I newly audited *added* unflattering character texture (June's "pity" beat, her prickliness with Theo) rather than smoothing it away. That does not by itself prove the chapter isn't generic on its own terms, so I checked book-specificity separately (§ below); it holds 8/8.

Book-rooted preserve-list (task-binding) — 8/8 intact, none genericized:
`After Class` (ln11,19,23,41,49,85,113,139) · two underpaintings (label ln23; Ruth ln51) · blue/cobalt dish (ln35–43,79) · opening-night after-hours list — `Park, J. – Brennan, T. Last slot` (ln117,133) · faced-in Week-3 study (ln91–107) · CHECK-OUT clipboard/columns (ln85) · dirty rinse-water jar w/ cobalt lid (ln163) · $800-by-Thursday (ln163,175).

---

## Category verdicts

### 1. Concrete details — HELD

Every named object, number, and idiosyncratic physical fact survives. The strongest REGRESSED candidate — the one place a sharp particular flattens to a duller noun:

- PRE (0001 ln29): *"He'd have built Sam **a paragraph** a month ago: pentimento, the record of getting a thing wrong on purpose, the sermon. **Instead he let four words carry it** and went to top off a water jar that didn't need it."*
- POST (ln29): *"He'd have built Sam **an explanation** a month ago: pentimento … the sermon. **Now** he went to top off a water jar that didn't need it."*

Two losses: the motif-noun "paragraph" flattens to "explanation," and the clever count "let four words carry it" (≙ "It's meant to lean") is gone. **Legitimate, not regression**: (a) "paragraph" as Theo's unit-of-over-explanation is a controlled motif kept and *concentrated* at ln73 (*"I had the paragraph loaded … carrying paragraphs around in my pocket all night"*) — density-thinning, not fade; (b) no inflation replaces it (the swap is plainer, failing the *more-exaggerated* half); (c) "four words" is self-admiring cleverness the reader can still perform against the visible line. Same ruling at ln143 (*"the paragraph she could watch him not reaching for"* → *"the answer …"*).

The one genuine specific-image casualty in the arc, flagged and cleared: a mid-arc gain the prior audit had praised — *"the Hallorans standing by Odile's office door with their gloves still on, not touching the wrapped drawings"* (snapshot 0034) — was **reverted** in the committed text to *"the wrapped drawings waiting by Odile's office door. The Hallorans were still downstairs until eight"* (ln113). The gloves detail is lost, but it was **continuity-impossible**: Theo sent the Hallorans to *"a decent bar on Orchard"* until eight (ln83), so they cannot also be upstairs at Odile's office door. This is a mandated continuity fix (criterion 6), and versus the pre-revision draft (*"the Hallorans parked wherever collectors go to wait for permission to want a thing"* — an art-world witticism) it is a net move toward plain continuity-correct fact, not a faded specific. Logged as watch-only below.

### 2. Images & figuration — HELD

Riskiest figuration *loss* (odd image → stock gesture):

- PRE (0001 ln57): *"**Ruth nodded like a receipt**, said, 'It's the best thing on the wall,'"*
- POST (ln57): *"**Ruth nodded once**, said, 'It's the best thing on the wall,'"*

"Like a receipt" is the more idiosyncratic image; "nodded once" is stock — a downgrade on the figuration axis alone. **Legitimate**: the simile is semantically opaque (a receipt does not nod — cleverness over image), and the clerical/ledger register is over-subscribed in this exact chapter (ledger, CHECK-OUT form, records, "itemize," "buyers, shippers, callbacks") and under standing thinning orders per `tics.md`; cutting a decorative clerical simile is register hygiene. No inflation added.

Held because the scene-grown images that carry the chapter were kept or **sharpened**, not swapped for stock:

- PRE (0001 ln19): *"the first drawing surfaced under the last one, **a room remembering an earlier version of itself**. Her half went down into umber … **the dark she'd built up until the room needed a way out of itself**."*
- POST (ln19): *"the first drawing surfaced under the last one. Her half went down into umber around the doorway that used to be a stain, **the dark built up until the doorway cut a hard edge through it**."*

Two figures deleted — the underpainting-metaphor (*"a room remembering…"*, which also respects reading-guide §4's ≤once/act cap; the literal pentimento fact is kept) and the room-personification (*"needed a way out of itself"*) — and replaced by a concrete optical fact in June's painter-eye. Specificity up, figuration de-generic'd.

### 3. Character texture — HELD

No character flattened into likable competence or generic villainy. The two nuance-bearing cuts I weighed hardest, and the countervailing texture the late rounds *added*:

- PRE (0001 ln43): *"and Mara, **who two months ago would have translated that into a warm paragraph about how Luis always understood a space**, closed her mouth and let the dish sit there **saying exactly what Luis wanted it to say and nothing extra**."*
- POST (ln43): *"and Mara **had already opened her mouth. She closed it** and let the dish sit there, **exactly where Luis had wanted it**."*

Named arc → shown gesture. **Legitimate**: the excised clause is announced-arc narration (§5 bans captioning care moves) re-invoking the Mara-cites-Luis motif that `tics.md` logged capped; the *behavior* (she starts to over-host, catches herself) is preserved intact.

- PRE (0001 ln129): *"reaching through a ledger instead of a sentence was **the last move of a woman who had never once said a true thing straight when she could arrange an object to say it for her**."*
- POST (ln129): *"**she had put the proof on a page instead of in a sentence**."*

Odile's character-thesis cut to plain contrast. **Legitimate**: it is narratorial poaching of Odile's aphoristic register (her quotability is capped; the epigram voice is reserved for her), and the trait is *enacted* — she turns the binder to the page rather than saying it. The reveal is **not** softened toward sympathy: *"no apology after it,"* *"I'm retiring, not dead,"* and June's refusal (*"It worked, and I got a life out of it, and it still wasn't yours to run"*) all survive; the frail-mentor size-cue *"a small woman folding the cardigan closer"* (0001 ln137) was *removed*, a genericization risk avoided.

Anti-regression evidence from the unaudited delta: the post-0034 rounds **added** contradictory, unflattering interiority that did not exist at 0034 — the whole *"For a second, pity was the easier word … the word stayed in the room because he had still hidden it from her"* paragraph (ln101), and June's edge with Theo (*"'Don't hand me the thing you hid and call it mine.' … She heard the edge in her own voice then, the stockroom word still not gone,"* ln145–149). Character passes deepened the thorniness rather than smoothing it.

### 4. Dialogue particularity — HELD

The one substantive dialogue rewrite runs toward *more* particularity:

- PRE (0001 ln7): *"Sam Rivera, who took it black and **said the radiator sounded like it was trying to leave the building**, and she was laughing"*
- POST (ln7): *"Sam Rivera, who took it black. The radiator knocked. Sam tapped the cover once and said, **'Air in the east riser,'** and she was laughing with the cup still only half full."*

A general comic paraphrase became a direct, voice-marked installer's diagnosis in Sam's own mouth, plus concrete stage business — serving the §2 plain-speech floor and Sam's voice card. Riskiest dialogue *loss*: Theo's *"'Like the room can hold it,'"* (0001 ln69) was cut; **legitimate** because the retained lines are plainer and more direct (*"They know we didn't start clean. Nobody needs the rest."*) and *"the room can hold it"* was the more abstract of the two. No fumbling, voice-marked line was polished into an interchangeable well-formed one.

### 5. Inflation accompanying the fade — HELD (cleanest category)

Where regression would announce itself, it is conspicuously absent: **zero** significance-language added across the whole arc; the revision systematically *removed* the "shout louder" layer.

- PRE (0001 ln153): *"She watched it fall … **and thought, without meaning to, that snow is the cheapest lesson in value a painter ever gets. It only reads against the dark.** Over the lit storefronts you couldn't find it at all. **It was falling just as hard there. You only needed something dark behind it to know.**"*
- POST (ln161): *"She watched it fall through the one lit cone and vanish into the dark parts of the street. Over the lit storefronts she couldn't find it at all. It was falling there too; the glare swallowed it. **She had to look where the street went black.**"*

The on-the-nose painter-thesis (weather-as-meaning, §4-banned) is deleted; the concrete perception that *implies* it is kept.

- PRE (0001 ln155): *"an eight-hundred-dollars-by-Thursday problem, **and the snow found every place the sweater wasn't and melted there and got her wet, which is what snow does to a person who's made exactly the choice June made, and was right to make, and is going to be cold about it anyway until spring**."*
- POST (ln163): *"an eight-hundred-dollars-by-Thursday problem. **Snow found every place the sweater wasn't and melted there.**"*

The earned-stay thesis restated *through* weather (§4) is stripped; the material fact ($800, sweater-not-coat, melting snow) stays.

Riskiest cut in this category — an explicit *anti*-art-healing thesis, whose removal could theoretically let the beat drift generic:

- PRE (0001 ln101): *"… **The painting didn't fix that. It wasn't trying to. It was only the record that the looking had been real**, hung in a stockroom facing a wall …"*
- POST (ln101–103): *"… the word stayed in the room because he had still hidden it from her. That was the ache … He had looked at her like this, carefully, at value, with no need for her to turn around, **while he was deciding for her what she could stand to know.**"*

**Legitimate**: the replacement *enacts* the same refusal harder — the painting yields ambivalence and grievance (pity vs. *"the edge was harder than pity,"* *"he had still hidden it from her"*), not cure — so the value survives as behavior, and no compensating inflation appears. The single specific casualty here is the *"Asha's cracked-open phone call"* Ch09 backward-callback; it was not swapped for anything more important-sounding (the replacement is shorter and plainer), it is a terminal chapter so there is no forward continuity hazard, and it went under an explicit de-purpling order (criterion 6).

### 6. Legitimate-edit check — PASS (no flag survives it)

Every cut maps to an explicit order, a reading-guide ban, or a `tics.md` repair, and the structural changes map to continuity needs:

- `whole`-family removed (*whole night / apartment / thing / confession / architecture*) — `tics.md` ln413.
- Weather-thesis lines cut — §4; `tics.md` ln414.
- Dialogue-diagnosis removed: *"That was the sentence"* (0001 ln43), Priya delivery-caption (0001 ln45), *"Plain, no cushion under it"* (0001 ln131), *"the flat agreement with no* but *bolted to its back"* (0001 ln133) — §2 zero-tolerance; `tics.md` ln415.
- Portrait caption *"painted side keeping its own counsel"* (0001 ln91) removed — previously-repaired, `tics.md` ln360.
- Announced care-moves cut: Theo *"making himself necessary so quietly it read as standing still"* (ln11) and *"held the door for the collectors by keeping it shut, the version of door-holding he was learning"* (ln83); Mara *"would bring food to a house fire"* (ln35); Sam *"leaving it one person wider than he'd found it"* (ln31) — §5; each behavior is enacted in the same chapter.
- Continuity fixes (post-0034 delta): Sam `he`→`they` / `a man`→`someone` (voice card: Sam is they/them); Odile and the Hallorans relocated downstairs to the send-off to resolve the impossible "upstairs at the office door" vs. "sent to a bar until eight" blocking.

No flagged loss is a loss of *value-bearing* specificity once checked against the guide.

---

## Book-specificity verdict (task focus)

Does this ending belong to *Eight Tuesdays* specifically, or could it be any warm art-class romance? **Specifically this book — and the revision widened the gap.** The generic-ending defaults an editing model drifts toward are exactly what got deleted, and the eight preserve-list anchors are not decoration but the convergence of the whole book's plants (opening-night list ← Ch01 coat-still-on; blue dish ← Ch18 tether; $800 Thursday ← Ch20 Kessler; Week-3 study ← Ch07/16; CHECK-OUT + water-home ← Ch12/23), so genericizing any of them would also be a payoff/continuity failure.

- **Found-family:** no "these people had become her family." Every payoff is welded to an owned care-move and a named object — empanadas + blue-dish routing, Luis sliding the dish *four inches* into the sightline, too-milky coffee + "April," off-level flyer tape, "Air in the east riser," Ruth's two-word read. Un-portable.
- **Romance:** closed-door; consent shown, not captioned (*"his hands staying where they were,"* after the *"hers to give and hers to end"* gloss was cut); dry (*"she liked him so much in that second it was faintly annoying"*). No swoon abstraction.
- **Art-healing:** the explicit *"the painting didn't fix that"* thesis is gone and its refusal is *enacted* (pity / harder-than-pity / grievance); the stay is costed in $800 / Ridgewood / Kessler-in-March, not "art saved her."
- **City/snow:** Orchard Street, the freight door, the L, Ridgewood; the snow reads *against the dark* as optics and lands on the rinse-water-jar lid and the wrong sweater — the single most postcard-prone line (snow-as-life-lesson) is the one cut. Earned-stay test (§8) passes: the last image is her train, her debt, and the folded page she hasn't decided about — she leaves under her own power, not for a boyfriend.

## REVISION ORDERS

None. No category REGRESSED; there is no pre-revision specific to restore and no compensating inflation to strip (category 5 added none across the full arc).

Two items logged **watch-only, not orders** (no restoration warranted now):
1. `paragraph → explanation/answer` (ln29, ln143) — acceptable motif-thinning while the "paragraph" motif stays concentrated at ln73. Re-open if a future touch dilutes it further or re-expands significance-language around these points.
2. Reverted "gloves still on, not touching the wrapped drawings" image (ln113) — a real specific lost to a mandatory continuity fix. If the Hallorans' downstairs blocking is ever revised, restore a concrete Halloran detail here rather than the current plain statement.

## OVERALL: HELD
