Audit written to `output/critiques/claude/chapter_14.comedy_doctor.md`. The full audit:

# Comedy Doctor — Chapter 14: Catalogs (round 1)

Register audited against: warm, precise, lightly comic; character/situation-sourced; adult romantic pressure inside ordinary work for a reader who wants wit in the work, not sitcom banter. Chapter function: dread inside competence — comedy must release awkwardness without blunting the catalog danger.

INVENTORY:

1 — "moved the clipboard to the far end of the table so that the next mistake would at least require a walk" (l.3) — mechanism: deflation / self-administered logistics penalty — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (the repeating error is November 17, the kiss date, in his own handwriting) — dramatic work: kiss intrusion rendered as competence failure; opens dread-inside-competence — workshopped: no

2 — "eighty-nine cents of it, faint as a watermark" (l.5) — mechanism: repetition-with-variation (Ch13 chicken-thigh ghost, now "if you knew where it lived") — source: situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: keeps June's memory panel alive without re-summary — workshopped: no

3 — nine-option size card torn at eleven; "She had texted back a thumbs-up at 11:05. He stopped interpreting it after midnight." (l.9) — mechanism: escalation + deadpan timestamp precision — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: post-kiss interpretation anxiety displaced into sizing; the packet-required too-useful list, cut down on page — workshopped: no

4 — "Forty means cardstock. What weight? I am not saying 'normal' to the Queens printer on my lunch break." (l.11) — mechanism: specificity overload / vendor-dread escalation — source: character (Ben) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (flyer thread; new Ben shape, not the spent clock/"not a personality"/slide-deck family) — dramatic work: the thread treating the photo as ordinary is the pressure — workshopped: no

5 — "Don't crop them apart this time, P." / "Cropping nothing. This sells the class." (l.11) — mechanism: callback (Ch13 crop-into-separate-boxes) + brisk deflection — source: situation/character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: the photo becomes public proof in motion — workshopped: no

6 — "as if it were a delivery manifest" … "that was the problem with it as evidence: it was good." … "He typed *80lb matte* for Ben" (l.13–15) — mechanism: deadpan professional posture + timing reversal — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Theo answers the answerable question and dodges the real one — workshopped: no

7 — "He noticed the cuff before the coffee. That told him what order his attention was running in today." (l.17) — mechanism: self-surveillance deadpan — source: character — funniness: 1 — portable: no — dramatic work: desire tell via attention order — workshopped: no — **BLOCKING**: the first sentence is the joke; the second explains it and kills it

8 — "I'm keeping it." / "It's umber." / "It's a decent brown. Raw umber holds its value." … "For some other emergency." (l.27–31) — mechanism: deflection-visible-as-deflection; feeling displaced into pigment appraisal (her card: value, decent, craft nouns instead of feeling words) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: June keeps the kiss's physical evidence without saying so; taking the jar anyway admits future emergencies — workshopped: no

9 — "the alternative conversation had no agenda, no end time, and no chairs." (l.33) — mechanism: register collision (meeting logistics applied to feelings) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (chairs are this chapter's literal stock and pay off at the exit) — dramatic work: plants the chairs material item 21 cashes — workshopped: no (host clause "He let that be the whole conversation" flagged in order 4)

10 — "Still the best thing in the room. Don't tell your panel I said the tape's carrying it." / "The tape knows." (l.43–45; setup l.7 "the tape had become something he noticed too quickly") — mechanism: repetition-with-variation on Tuesday's praise + two-word deadpan acceptance — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (DECORATOR'S WHITE. FLAT. is this book's object) — dramatic work: the post-kiss flirtation conducted entirely through a work object, charge intact, no "what are we" — workshopped: no. Checked against the Ch08 secret-object-personification freeze: that family is narration personifying the hidden portrait/folder; this is one dialogue volley about non-secret objects. Distinct, pass, watch.

11 — "Nine." / "Show me the dead seven sometime." plus "I was trying to account for sight line, rack fit, and whether we wanted the…" "No. I cut it down." (l.49–57) — mechanism: cringe + compression tag + self-arrest — source: character (both) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Theo caps his own optionality (the Ch12/Ch13 June-caps-Theo volley arrives mutated, not repeated); "sometime" books a future — workshopped: no

12 — "Sixteen-by-twenty reads like a statement. Twelve-by-sixteen reads like a room you actually left at nine forty… Nobody gets to sprawl." / "Okay … You're right about the sprawl." (l.59–61) — mechanism: rehearsed verdict, composed in-fiction (the Wednesday-midnight promise to arrive with an opinion is on the page) — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: opinion-instead-of-menu is an arc beat; June's echo accepts him, not just the size — workshopped: no (symmetry is the character's, shown being built)

13 — "he found that he was fine with unsolved. Unsolved meant more Thursdays." (l.63) — mechanism: understatement / motive confessed by inversion — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: avoidance and wanting in one move — workshopped: no

14 — "the label's going to be a refusal with my name under it" (l.69) — mechanism: wry self-diagnosis — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: converts the Ch13 title refusal into this chapter's goal (label language), which is what the trap needs — workshopped: no

15 — Odile: "Labels are not apologies." / "Then you were roughly right." / "What do I write, you are about to ask. Fewer words than you are planning." capped by "and that was the entire visit." (l.71–83) — mechanism: economy, preemption, echo-grading of June's hedge — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: Odile plant #5; she arms the trap speaking only true partials — workshopped: no (licensed) — **VERDICT-LEVEL**: three sharp lines against the packet's explicit "one or two sharp true lines at most"; see order 3

16 — "She loans nothing. There's a sign about it in her head." (l.99) — mechanism: incongruity via intimate knowledge — source: character — funniness: 2 — portable: no (gallery signage world; how he knows her head is reread-pointed) — dramatic work: marks the loan as anomaly, feeding June's "Does she do this?" and Theo's dread — workshopped: no — weakest survivor: earns its keep on dramatic work more than laugh

17 — "She let someone get away with *Untitled*." / "The parenthesis was probably Odile's condition." / "*Untitled (Stove)* is a title wearing a fake mustache." / "The checklist in back still files it under Stove." (l.107–113) — mechanism: escalating volley — incongruity, figure, deadpan filing deflation — source: character (both voices distinct) — funniness: 2 — portable: no (needs Odile's catalog and her condition; the mustache rhymes with a book about things refusing their names — two cover stories deep) — dramatic work: teaches label doctrine and ends flat instead of topping itself — workshopped: no, though "fake mustache" is the chapter's quotability ceiling; nothing should be added near it. "Files it under" checked against the spent clerical register: literal checklist mechanics in dialogue, not a narration figure — pass

18 — "This the famous one?" / "*Winter Kitchen.* It was on a postcard for a while." / "Mm." plus "the two seconds she gave anything she respected" (l.117–123) — mechanism: dramatic-irony mutual underplaying (the reader knows it is her origin painting; both pretend it is trivia) — source: character+situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: invocation 2/5, new meaning added — the origin painting met as a work object, reverence withheld on both sides — workshopped: no ("That was the whole ceremony" stamp flagged in order 4)

19 — "I want the bad examples too. The bad ones teach the fence line." (l.129) — mechanism: inverted pedagogy tag — source: character, but the idiom is off her card — funniness: 1 — portable: no — dramatic work: justifies taking the full stack, which the trap requires — workshopped: no — **BLOCKING**: "fence line" is nobody's word in this book; June's lexicon is edge/value/exact, and "edge" is sitting right there

20 — "You're bagging them like produce." / "I'm bagging them like nine pounds of someone's career." (l.139–141) — mechanism: echo-retort; deflation answered with true weight — source: character (both) — funniness: 2 — portable: no — dramatic work: names the transfer's real freight at the exact arming moment; sharpens the handoff instead of softening it — workshopped: no (echo-retort is speech, not composition)

21 — "Six p.m. chairs or nine forty chairs?" / "Both. I'll count both before Tuesday." (l.149–151) — mechanism: code-formation callback (chairs + the two-times problem built across the chapter) — source: character+situation — funniness: 2 — portable: no (six p.m./nine-forty means nothing outside this book) — dramatic work: the unsolved joint piece becomes their private language; the exit lands on pressure, not a punchline — workshopped: no

DISTRIBUTION CHECKS (work shown):

- **Density:** 21 items across ~3,300 words fits "lightly comic." Placement is the chapter's best calibration call: the stockroom paragraphs (l.85–91), the wrong-explanation rationalization (l.103), and the gap-on-the-shelf ending (l.155–157) are joke-free. The catalog danger is never joked at, and the inventory-failure close stays sharp. Not OVERSWEETENED — item 20 is the test case and it adds weight rather than dissolving it.
- **Mechanism variety:** deflation, escalation, callback/repetition-with-variation, register collision, deadpan, cringe/self-arrest, dramatic irony, echo-retort, preemption, understatement. No mechanism exceeds 5/21. Not MONOTONOUS at item level; the one repeating shape is the narrator-stamp capper "the whole conversation / the entire visit / the whole ceremony" (l.33, 83, 123) — three instances of one syntax is a tic forming, and it is the chapter's only overlay-shaped habit (order 4).
- **Source:** no freestanding narrator-overlay item; everything routes through Theo's logistics idiom, June's craft-noun deflection, Ben's planning wound, or Odile's economy.
- **Cringe:** none. Longest volley is two exchanges; no quotation-stacking, no sitcom rhythm. Followability holds — every exchange above can be paraphrased as what each party asked, learned, or refused.
- **Ch13 spent-texture inheritance (focused check):** every carried logistics bit shows a new mechanism or new pressure. Dates → kiss-date error loop, not scheduling comedy. Panel sizes → post-kiss interpretation anxiety and self-capping, not list optionality. Solvent → inverted: removal offered, declined, mark kept. Flyer → the photo now arrived, good, and treated as ordinary. Dry-checking → compulsive re-verification as displacement. "Wet work" and "top rack" phrases: absent. PASS.
- **Tracker checks:** `Winter Kitchen` 2/5, new meaning, within cap. June-caps-Theo-optionality (2/2, resting): mutated to self-capping, not a third instance. Recognitional "the way a person" (0 allowed): nearest is "the way it went to light switches in his own apartment" (l.85) — self-specific habit, not the banned generic-person shape. Ben spent shapes: not reused. Refusal-to-conclude family (0 allowed): "He let that be the whole conversation" (l.33) brushes the family's edge — folded into order 4. New chapter-born runner: chairs (4 instances, varied, arc-complete as private code) — log to tics; it must recur for the joint piece (Ch25 territory), so no decorative use in Ch15–16.
- **Mechanical gate cross-check:** 0 BANNED/open. Comedy-adjacent WATCH hits inspected: breath (l.47 laugh receipt — order 5); dramatic ellipses ×2 (l.55, l.69 — both character self-interruption, licensed by both voice cards); "finally" (l.11, literal arrival of the photo); "weight of" (l.87, literal nine catalogs).
- **Note on the focused-check phrasing "size-card/footnotes exchange":** the chapter has no footnotes element; the referent is the index card's rack-fit/wall-math notes, audited as items 3, 11, 12.

REVISION ORDERS:

1. **(Item 7, blocking, funniness-1)** Cut "That told him what order his attention was running in today." Let "He noticed the cuff before the coffee." stand alone — the order of nouns already carries the diagnosis.
2. **(Item 19, blocking, funniness-1)** Re-source the idiom into June's voice card (edge/value/exact; never fence): e.g., "The bad ones show you where the edge is." Or end the speech at "I want the bad examples too." Do not soften the want — she still takes all nine.
3. **(Item 15, verdict-level: packet cap "one or two sharp true lines at most"; Odile carries three)** Cut the echo-grading reply. June: "That's roughly what I was saying." — Odile does not grade it; she proceeds directly to "What do I write, you are about to ask. Fewer words than you are planning." Keep "Labels are not apologies" and the fewer-words line (both packet-sanctioned in function). Declining the volley is also more her: she arranges, she does not banter.
4. **(Distribution: one capper syntax ×3, plus refusal-to-conclude adjacency)** Keep "and that was the entire visit" (l.83) — it lands Odile's economy. Recast l.33's head clause away from "He let that be the whole conversation about Tuesday" (e.g., "Neither of them said anything else about Tuesday, because she seemed to want it that way, and because the alternative conversation had no agenda, no end time, and no chairs."). Recast l.123 to let the action carry the gratitude: "…and opened it straight to the back matter, hunting columns. He was grateful to her for it." — drop the ceremony stamp.
5. **(Item 10 receipt, l.47)** "She gave up one breath of a laugh" — breath family is hard-capped by reading guide §6, and "The tape knows" does not need its audience narrated. Replace with plain action: "June laughed once and came over to the trestle table…"

VERDICT: CLEAR — 19 of 21 items at funniness-2, all character/situation-sourced, none portable, mechanisms varied, and the comedy goes silent exactly where the danger lives. Strongest item: "You're bagging them like produce." / "I'm bagging them like nine pounds of someone's career." — the chapter's whole job (helpful and wrong at once) done in one volley. Weakest surviving item: "She loans nothing. There's a sign about it in her head." — survives on anomaly-marking duty more than laugh. The two funniness-1 items (orders 1 and 2), the Odile sharp-line overage (order 3), the tripled capper (order 4), and the breath-laugh receipt (order 5) are blocking under the standing rule; the chapter is not committable until they are repaired.

CLEAR
