response 1 of 65:

Jul 8 16:40 UTC 1998

Okay, here's the first quote. It's from a work of fiction by a
contemporary American author:

        These are some of the things that Jeremy Pauling dreaded:
        using the telephone, answering the doorbell, opening mail,
        leaving his house, making purchases. Also wearing new
        clothes, standing in open spaces, meeting the eyes of a
        stranger, eating in the presence of others, turning on
        electrical appliances. Some days he woke to find the
        weather sunny and his health adequate and his work
        progressing beautifully; yet there would be a nagging
        hole of uneasiness deep inside him, some flaw in the
        center of his well-being, steadily corroding around the
        edges and widening until he could not manage to lift his
        head from the pillow. Then he would have to go over
        every possibility. Was it something he had to do? Some-
        where to go? Someone to see? Until the answer came: oh
        yes! today he had to call the gas company about the oven.
        A two-minute chore, nothing to worry about. He knew that.
        He *knew*. Yet he lay on his bed feeling flattened and
        defeated, and it seemed to him that life was a series
        of hurdles that he had been tripping over for decades,
        with the end nowhere in sight.

By the way, if folks are having trouble guessing an author, it's
nice to give hints and/or additional quotes. So I'll do so if
nobody guesses this author in a couple of days or so.

response 3 of 65:

Jul 9 04:37 UTC 1998

So?

response 5 of 65:

Jul 12 02:00 UTC 1998

It sounds like almost a sequel to The Catcher in the Rye, but I don't 
think J.D. Salinger wrote a sequel.

response 7 of 65:

Jul 14 05:13 UTC 1998

Summer agora item 55, the Myterious Quote, has been linked to books 72.

response 9 of 65:

Jul 14 15:18 UTC 1998

Not Saul Bellow.

Maybe it's time to give another quote. This one's from a different work
by the same author:

        He was based in London, as usual. From there he would make
brief           forays into other cities, never listing more than a
handful of           hotels, a handful of restaurants within a tiny,
easily                          accessible radius in each place; for his
guidebooks were
        anything but all-inclusive. ("Plenty of other books say how
        to see as much of a city as possible," his boss had told him.
        You should say how to see as little.") The name of Macon's
        hotel was the Jones Terrace. He would have preferred one of
        the American chain hotels, but those cost too much. The Jones
        Terrace was all right, though -- small and well kept. He
        swung into action at once to make his room his own, stripping
        off the ugly bedspread and stuffing it into a closet,
        unpacking his belongings and hiding his bag. He changed
        clothes, rinsed the ones he'd worn and hung them in the
        shower stall. Then, after a wistful glance at the bed, he
        went out for breakfast. It was nowhere near morning back
        home, but breakfast was the meal that businessmen most often
        had to manage for themselves. He made a point of researching
        it thoroughly wherever he went.

This quote is from a novel that was made into a movie.

response 13 of 65:

Jul 15 12:04 UTC 1998

You would guess right. Anne Tyler it is. The first quote was from
an earlier Tyler novel, _Celestial Navigation_.

Mark's up.

response 15 of 65:

Jul 19 14:28 UTC 1998

Sorry to take so long.  Here's a quote:

The English tutor's room was festooned with proofs of her forthcoming work on 
the Prosodic elements in English verse from Beowulf to Bridges.  Since Miss 
Lydgate had perfected, or was in the process of perfecting (since no work of 
scholarship ever attains a static perfection), an entirely new prosodic 
theory, demanding a novel and complicated system of notation which involved 
the use of twelve different varieties of type; and since Miss Lydgate's 
handwriting was difficult to read and her experience in dealing with printers 
limited, there existed at that moment five successive releases in gallery 
form, at different stages of completion, together with two sheets in page-
proof, and an appendix in typescript, while the important Introduction which 
afforded the key to the whole argument still remained to be written.  It was 
only when a section had advanced to page-proof condition that Miss Lydgate 
became fully convinced of the necessity of transferring large paragraphs of 
argument from one chapter to another, each change of this kind naturally 
demanding expensive over-running on the page-proof, and the elimination of the 
corresponding portions in the five sets of revises; so that in the course of 
the necessary cross-reference, Miss Lydgate would be discovered by her pupils 
and colleagues wound into a kind of paper cocoon and helplessly searching for 
her fountain-pen amid the litter. 

response 17 of 65:

Jul 19 18:59 UTC 1998

Yup, that was fast.  maeve's up.

response 19 of 65:

Jul 19 23:41 UTC 1998

Sounds like E. R. Eddison's _The_Worm_Ouroboros_, I think.

(If that's right, I *deserve* it.  I'm out of town for 4 days & miss
_Gaudy_Night_ by a few hours ...)

response 21 of 65:

Jul 20 13:18 UTC 1998

OK.  This isn't the kind of thing I'd normally ever have come across, but I
happened to.  We'll see if it's too obscure.  I'm starting with a slightly
less-than-representative sample, though possibly a pretty memorable one:

     I sat in my rocking chair, holding _The_Internet_Complete_Reference_,
     by Harley Hahn.  It is a large, thick paperback.  On the front cover
     are eight colors and five typefaces.  I opened the book.  In the
     first lines of the "Introduction," I read this:

        The internet is, by far, the greatest and most significant
        achievement in the history of mankind.  What?  Am I saying
        that the internet is more impressive than the pyramids?
        More beautiful than Michelangelo's David?  More important
        to mankind than the wondrous inventions of the industrial
        revolution?  Yes, yes and yes.

        I thought of how my love of books is challenged by books that
     look like this and contain sentences like these.  I closed it and
     turned it over.  More colors, more typefaces.  I sighed, reminding
     myself that I was looking for information, not wisdom.  Also, tiny
     numbers on the lower right corner reminded me that I had paid $29.95
     for the book.  I opened it again.

response 23 of 65:

Jul 20 17:10 UTC 1998

Heh.  No.  Quite a different type of bird, I'd say.  But given this particular
snippet, I can see where that guess comes from, John.  I'll quote more later.