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Grex > Books > #99: The Spring Mysterious Quote item | |
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| Author |
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| 25 new of 215 responses total. |
brighn
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response 165 of 215:
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May 18 13:34 UTC 2001 |
woowoo =} I'll post something this evening, when I have a book handy.
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carson
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response 166 of 215:
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May 18 21:15 UTC 2001 |
(drat. good job, brighn.)
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brighn
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response 167 of 215:
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May 19 21:09 UTC 2001 |
A strange yelping sound punctuated the din of the machine. Anthony opened his
eyes again, and was in time to see a dark shape rushing down towards him. He
uttered a cry, made a quick and automatic movement to shield his face. With
a violent but dull and muddy impact, the thing struck the flat roof a yard
or two from where they were lying. The drops of a sharply spurted liquid were
warm for an instant on their skin, and then, as the breeze swelled up out of
the west, startingly cold. There was a long second of silence. "Christ!"
Anthony whispered at last. From head to foot both of them were splashed with
blood. In a red pool at their feet lay the almost shapeless carcase of a fox
terrier. The roar of the receding aeroplane had diminished to a raucous hum,
and suddenly the ear found itself conscious again of the shrill rasping of
the cicadas.
Anthony drew a deep breath; then, with an effort and still rather unsteadily,
contrived to laugh. "Yet another reason for disliking dogs," he said and,
scrambling to his feet, looked down, his face puckered with disgust, at his
blood-bedabbled blody. "What about a bath?" he asked, turning to Helen.
She was sitting quite still, staring with wide-open eyes at the horribly
shattered carcase. Her face was very pale and a glancing spurt of blood had
left a long red streak that ran diagonally from the right side of the chin,
across the mouth, to the corner of the left eye.
"You look like Lady Macbeth," he said, with another effort at jocularity.
"*Allons.*" He touched her should. "Out vile spot. This beastly stuff's drying
on me. Like seccotine."
For all answer, Helen covered her face with her hands and began to sob.
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brighn
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response 168 of 215:
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May 22 01:43 UTC 2001 |
I'm not sure if the lack of guesses is due to the snafu of the system or,
well, a lack of guessing. I'll post clues tomorrow if there haven't been any
guesses
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davel
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response 169 of 215:
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May 22 12:11 UTC 2001 |
I'm quite sure I haven't read this quote, & think it very likely that I
haven't read this author. My lack of guesses is due to that, as well as
to my not having been on Grex for a few days.
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brighn
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response 170 of 215:
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May 22 16:01 UTC 2001 |
I'd hope that somebody on Grex would've read this autho, though I doubt any
have read the book in question. Confirming possible guesses based on the
snippet: The author is British, and contemporary to the peak of existentialism
in France (Sartre and Camus). An additional hint: Of his other book titles,
one borrowed a line from Shakespeare while another was borrowed by a rock
band.
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slynne
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response 171 of 215:
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May 22 16:58 UTC 2001 |
I still have no clue.
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happyboy
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response 172 of 215:
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May 22 19:22 UTC 2001 |
that's not news. :)
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goose
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response 173 of 215:
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May 22 22:06 UTC 2001 |
Come on slynne...don't be so hard on yourself...and don't set yourself up liek
that either ;-)
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brighn
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response 174 of 215:
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May 22 23:05 UTC 2001 |
Ok, from the hard clues to the easy clues. I was going to quote the book
everyone should have read (yes, that IS a moral imperative ;} ), but I can't
find my copy of it, so in stead I'll explain the relevance of its title. While
there are many titles based on Shakespeare quotes (including the couplet "By
The Pricking of My Thumbs" [Christie] and "Something Wicked This Way Comes"
[Bradbury]), this title was chosen in part because of one of the main plots
bore a similarity to the plot of the Shakespearean play whence the title: A
child of a "civilized" person is found, with thier parent, out in the savage
wilds of the world and is brought back into civilization. The quote is ironic,
both in Shakespeare's original, as well as the novel in question (easily the
mystery author's most famous novel).
The mystery author was famous as a writer in his own right, but he also had
famous ancestors, including a colleague of Darwin's.
I've mentioned in the past that I'm a fan of this author.
If that doesn't do it, I'll have to start over with a different author. ;}
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md
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response 175 of 215:
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May 23 03:17 UTC 2001 |
"colleague of Darwin's" = T.H. Huxley, ancestor of Aldous, who wrote
Brave New World and The Doors of Perception. I pass.
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brighn
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response 176 of 215:
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May 23 03:29 UTC 2001 |
(and also Eyeless in Gaza, from which the quote came)
the floor is open to any entrant
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remmers
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response 177 of 215:
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May 23 16:44 UTC 2001 |
Guess I'll go next. I feel morally justified, since I would
have guessed it also on the basis of brighn's hints in #174.
By a living American writer:
This incompatibility between classical color theory and
reality struck Goethe in the late eighteenth century.
Intensely aware of the phenomenal reality of colored
shadows and colored afterimages, of the effects of
contiguity and illumination on the appearance of
colors, of colored and other visual illusions, he
felt that these must be the basis of a color theory
and declared as his credo, "Optical illusion is
optical truth!" Goethe was centrally concerned with
the way we actually see colors and light, the ways in
which we *create* worlds, and illusions, in color.
This, he felt, was not explicable by Newton's physics,
but only by some as-yet unknown rules of the brain.
He was saying, in effect, "Visual illusion is
neurological truth."
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orinoco
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response 178 of 215:
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May 23 19:05 UTC 2001 |
Oh, I _read_ this one. I remember what class I read it for, but not which
of the books it was in. I'm gonna guess Oliver Sacks' _The Man Who Mistook
His Wife For A Hat,_ since that's the only one whose author I remember, but
I'm pretty sure that's not it.
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remmers
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response 179 of 215:
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May 23 21:33 UTC 2001 |
Curse you! Oliver Sacks it is. Thought this would be harder.
It's from _An Anthropologist on Mars_. But you're not required to
guess the work, only the author, so you're up.
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orinoco
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response 180 of 215:
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May 24 22:02 UTC 2001 |
Each thought has a size, and most are about three feet tall, with the
level of complexity of a lawnmower engine, or a cigarette lighter, or those
tubes of toothpaste that, by mingling several hidden pastes and gels, create
a pleasantly striped product. Once in a while, a thought may come up that
seems, in its woolly, ranked composure, roughly the size of one's hall closet.
But a really *large* thought, a thought in the presence of which whole urban
centers would rise to their feet, and cry out with expressions of gratefulness
and kinship; a thought with grandeur, and drenching, barrel-scorning
catarsacts, and detonations of fist-clenched hope, and hundreds of cellos;
a thought that can tear phone books in half, and rap on the iron nodes of
experience until every blue girder rings; a thought that may one day pack
everything noble and good into its briefcase, elbow past the curators of
purposelessness, travel overnight toward Truth, and shake it by the
indifferent marble shoulders until it finally whispers its cool assent -- this
is the size of thought worth thinking about.
I have wanted for so long to own and maintain even a few huge,
interlocking thoughts that, having exhausted more legitimate methods, I have
recently resorted to theoretical speculation. Would it be possible to list
those features that, taken together, confer upon a thought a lofty
magnificence? What *makes* them so very large? My idle corollary hope is
that perhaps a systematic and rigorous codification, on the model of
Hammurabi's or Napoleon's, might make large thoughts available cheap, and in
bulk, to the general public, thereby salvaging the nineteenth-century dream
of a liberal democracy. But mainly I am hoping that once I can coax from
large thoughts the rich impulses of their power, I will be able to think them
in solitude, evening after evening, walking in little circles on the carpet
with my arms outspread.
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aruba
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response 181 of 215:
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May 24 22:11 UTC 2001 |
The first paragraph sounds like it has to be Douglas Adams.
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orinoco
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response 182 of 215:
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May 24 22:30 UTC 2001 |
Interesting guess, but no. (Keep an eye on that first paragraph, though.
It's hard to believe it, but it's the more typical of the two. This is an
author who knows how to go overboard.)
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brighn
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response 183 of 215:
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May 24 23:56 UTC 2001 |
I could also see Gaiman writing this
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arianna
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response 184 of 215:
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May 25 17:11 UTC 2001 |
ditto. whoeevr wrote it, it sounds worth reading.
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aruba
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response 185 of 215:
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May 25 18:39 UTC 2001 |
I'll guess Neal Stephenson then, though Scott just used him so that's
probably wrong.
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raven
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response 186 of 215:
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May 29 20:20 UTC 2001 |
Tom Robins
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lynne
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response 187 of 215:
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Jun 5 14:28 UTC 2001 |
could we get another hint here? this item seems to need a kickstart again.
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orinoco
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response 188 of 215:
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Jun 5 19:29 UTC 2001 |
Not Gaiman, Stephenson, or Robbins.
This author seems to be best known for a very slightly notorious novel about
phone sex, and for a few articles and a recent book in which he rants about
library science. Eccentric tastes, I guess.
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janc
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response 189 of 215:
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Jun 5 22:14 UTC 2001 |
Too big a clue. Nicholson Baker.
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