|
Grex > Books > #99: The Spring Mysterious Quote item | |
|
| Author |
Message |
scott
|
|
The Spring Mysterious Quote item
| 
Mar 23 17:36 UTC 2001 |
Welcome to the Spring "Mysterious Quote" item. In this item, somebody
(usually whoever won the last one) enters a quote from a novel or other book.
Other people try to guess the author. That's about all the rules, I think.
|
| 215 responses total. |
scott
|
|
response 1 of 215:
|
Mar 23 17:44 UTC 2001 |
Since remmers gave me the option to enter the next quote, and because I had
a neat quote standing by, here it is:
" The room contains a few dozen living human bodies, each one a big sack of
guts and fluids so highly compressed that it will squirt for a few yards when
pierced. Each one is built around an armature of 206 bones connected to each
other by notoriously fault-prone joints that are given to obnoxious creaking,
grinding, and popping noises when they are in other than pristine condition.
This structure is draped with throbbing steak, inflated with clenching air
sacks, and pierced by a Gordian sewer filled with burbling acid and compressed
gas and asquirt with vile enzymes and solvents produced by the many dark, gamy
nuggets of genetically programmed meat strung along its length. Slugs of
dissolving food are forced down this sloppy labyrinth by serialized
convulsions, decaying into gas, liquid, and solid matter which must all be
regularly vented to the outside world lest the owner go toxic and drop dead.
Spherical, gel-packed cameras swivel in mucus-greased ball joints. Infinite
phalanxes of cilia beat back invading particles, encapsulate them in goo for
later disposal. In each body a centrally located muscle flails away at an
eternal, circulating torrent of pressurized gravy. And yet, despite all of
this, not one of these bodies makes a single sound at any time during the
sultan's speech. It is a marvel that can only be explained by the power of
brain over body, and, in turn, by the power of cultural conditioning over
the brain."
|
bhelliom
|
|
response 2 of 215:
|
Mar 23 18:16 UTC 2001 |
<blinks>
|
other
|
|
response 3 of 215:
|
Mar 23 21:03 UTC 2001 |
Sounds like Douglas Adams' style.
|
orinoco
|
|
response 4 of 215:
|
Mar 23 21:46 UTC 2001 |
That it does. Also a little like Tom Robbins, but I don't think it's him.
|
tpryan
|
|
response 5 of 215:
|
Mar 23 22:06 UTC 2001 |
Interesting to read, since I am now listening to Mr. Methance.com
CD.
|
mcnally
|
|
response 6 of 215:
|
Mar 23 23:09 UTC 2001 |
That's Neal Stephenson, from "Cryptonomicon".
|
scott
|
|
response 7 of 215:
|
Mar 23 23:36 UTC 2001 |
That was quick. Yes, Stephenson, so mcnally is up next.
|
mcnally
|
|
response 8 of 215:
|
Mar 24 00:47 UTC 2001 |
As it happens, I ran across a quote last night that I thought was
suitable, although I suspect the author may be quickly identified..
Anyway:
"When I was young, I went to the theater at the nearby shopping
center and watched a movie about a talking Volkswagen. I believe
the little car had a taste for mischief but I can't be certain,
as both the movie and the afternoon proved unremarkable and have
faded from my memory. <H> saw the same movie a few years after
it was released. His family had left the Congo by this time and
were living in Ethiopia. Like me, <H> saw the movie by himself
on a weekend afternoon. Unlike me, he left the theater two hours
later, to find a dead man hanging from a telephone pole at the far
end of the unpaved parking lt. None of the people who'd seen the
movie seemed to care about the dead man. They stared at him for a
moment or two and then headed home, saying they'd never seen anything
as crazy as that talking Volkswagen. His father was late picking
him up, so <H..> just stood there for an hour, watching the dead
man dangle and turn in the breeze. The death was not reported in
the newspaper, and when <H> related the story to his friends,
they said, "You saw the movie about the talking car?"
|
goose
|
|
response 9 of 215:
|
Mar 25 01:18 UTC 2001 |
Beady?
|
bdh3
|
|
response 10 of 215:
|
Mar 25 02:23 UTC 2001 |
What?
|
mcnally
|
|
response 11 of 215:
|
Mar 25 03:57 UTC 2001 |
re #9: heh.. not unless the Chicago stuff is all a cover story..
|
rcurl
|
|
response 12 of 215:
|
Mar 25 07:05 UTC 2001 |
Spring 2001 agora 17, The Spring Mysterious Quote item, has been linked
to books.
|
carson
|
|
response 13 of 215:
|
Mar 25 07:10 UTC 2001 |
(and to the games conference, although I forget the item number.)
|
arianna
|
|
response 14 of 215:
|
Mar 25 21:42 UTC 2001 |
agora 17 <--> poetry 245
|
gelinas
|
|
response 15 of 215:
|
Mar 25 22:57 UTC 2001 |
{I need to forget this item in agora.}
|
ignatz
|
|
response 16 of 215:
|
Mar 26 04:32 UTC 2001 |
i would like to state that these are much larger than "quotes" nd in
actuality they are whole paragraphs. let me remind you a quote is not a
paragraph, but a single sentence.
|
md
|
|
response 17 of 215:
|
Mar 26 12:15 UTC 2001 |
But the Mysterious Quote item is supposed to give you enough of a
sample of the writer's prose for you to tell who it is, either from the
style or the subject matter or from other clues. It shouldn't be
something you recognize merely because it's famous, but it shoudn't be
obscure and without any identifiable characteristics, either. Harder
than you think to find such quotes.
|
remmers
|
|
response 18 of 215:
|
Mar 26 13:46 UTC 2001 |
Right. I think by "quote" here we mean "quoted passage", which can
in principle be of any length. I don't think the game would work
if restricted to one-sentence quotes.
|
remmers
|
|
response 19 of 215:
|
Mar 26 13:50 UTC 2001 |
Also, I have no clue who the author of the quote in #8 is. I assume
the movie referred to is Disney's "The Love Bug" from 1969. If the
author was a kid at the time, that would make him or her around 40
now. So definitely a contemporary author, fairly young.
|
johnnie
|
|
response 20 of 215:
|
Mar 26 13:54 UTC 2001 |
David Sedaris
|
brighn
|
|
response 21 of 215:
|
Mar 26 14:19 UTC 2001 |
If it weren't for the age of the author and the location of the scene, I'd
guess Marquez. Seems his style of existentialism.
(BTB, I've never heard "quote" used in a way that would imply such a length
restriction. I thought the terms "quotable" and "quotation" were much more
common. Maybe that's my educational background, but academic sources use
paragraphs as quotes all the time -- and call them that... go read a style
manual.)
|
mcnally
|
|
response 22 of 215:
|
Mar 26 22:37 UTC 2001 |
#20 is correct, the author in question is David Sedaris. It's from his
book "Me Talk Pretty One Day", though it may also have been used in one
of the monologue pieces he does for the public radio show "This American
Life."
I'm not quite sure what to make of the book. Sedaris can be quite funny
in smaller doses, but his unpleasant alternating nastiness and whininess
are too much for me when reading an entire collection of his pieces at once.
|
goose
|
|
response 23 of 215:
|
Mar 26 23:58 UTC 2001 |
Darn, that book is sittin gin my to be read pile right now. I like his stuff,
Naked was my first exposure to his writing, which is much like his NPR work.
|
mcnally
|
|
response 24 of 215:
|
Mar 27 00:12 UTC 2001 |
(It's not just "much like" his NPR stuff -- I've heard several of the
pieces from "Naked" and "Me Talk Pretty One Day" broadcast verbatim
on "This American Life.")
|