As he picked up the book again, Gerald’s synapses snapped him back to what had made him put it down minutes before and go into the kitchen: hearing his grandson talk of that woman. He looked down at the cover and realized that, in any edition, the book itself would always carry an ineradicable taint.
-- Narrator (1995 Golden Oldies: I paragraph 3)

Importance: Gerald’s book describes the very place where his horrific end with Lulu occurred. His infatuation with Homer’s Odyssey and desire to consistently visit its caves and waters was the driving force in Gerald and Lulu’s tragic voyage. The fact that his own grandson was involved with Lulu in any way brings his pain back to the surface, many years later.

Gerald had never thought of himself as owning these trees. He had husbanded, pruned, ministered to them for thirty years, mindful always that he was only a caretaker for a brief...
-- Narrator (1983 The Turnaround: I paragraph 1)