One TC question from Manhattan test

[judykiki85]

Hello,

I am studying for GRE with all the manhattan prep books and I find it very helpful, that you for the great resources.
I took one of the manhattan tests and got this question wrong. I read over the explanation but still cannot understand, if anyone can help me on this question I would greatly appreciate it.

Although never one to (i) _______ life’s pleasures, only recently had Paul devoted himself entirely to (ii) _______pursuits. In years past, Paul had adeptly balanced his love of fine wine and women with (iii) _______career.


revel in
eschew
peruse


For the first blank, I chose the answer "revel in", since the sentence starts with "Although", I interpreted it as shift/pivot, so the meaning of the first part of the sentence contrasts with the meaning comes after comma.
Since the later part of the sentence says he devoted to hedonistic pursuits, shouldn't the first part of the sentence say that he didn't went for hedonistic pursuits?

Isn't although always a shift phrase? Whenever although is used in a sentence, I interpreted as pivot so it contrasts with adjacent phrase.

Please help me with this, thank you very much :)

[tommywallach]

Hey Judy,

The end of the sentence tells us that he used to BALANCE things. This will agree with the first blank. So we know that he was never one to "do something unbalanced". "Reveling" is pretty unbalanced. Reveling is what he's doing now. Better would be this:

Though never one to TOTALLY IGNORE pleasure, only recently had he begun to SERIOUSLY FOCUS on pleasure. In the past, he had balanced pleasure with A SERIOUS career.

Obviously I don't know what the actual answers are, because you didn't include them (in the future, it's always better to include all of them, so we can see).

Hope that helps!

-t

[judykiki85]

Hi Tommy,

Thanks for the reply.
Sorry that I didn't include all the answers, I thought I did :(
Here are the answers

Blank (i)
revel in
eschew
peruse

Blank (ii)
misanthropic
hedonistic
nefarious

Blank (iii)
a feckless
a nugatory

I chose "revel in" for the first blank and I still don't understand why the answer is eschew. Since there is a pivot "although" in the beginning of the sentence, shouldn't the first part of the sentence contrasts with the phrase after comma?

[tommywallach]

Hey Judy,

I did explain this already. But I can do it again.

We know he is balanced, so the first blank needs to be something unbalanced: either ESCHEW (give up totally) or REVEL IN (indulge totally). HOWEVER, it needs to contrast with the second blank, because we know he has BEGUN to do this thing.

Looking at our answer choices, the only one that makes sense is HEDONISTIC (total indulgence in pleasure), so now we need the first blank to be the OPPOSITE. Hence: eschew.

(You also still didn't provide the third answer for the last blank.)

-t