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Grex > Poetry > #245: 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 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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orinoco
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response 190 of 215:
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Jun 8 17:43 UTC 2001 |
Yeah, it probably was too big. Then again, I'd thought Baker's writing style
would be too big a clue all by itself.
Jan is up.
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janc
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response 191 of 215:
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Jun 12 03:59 UTC 2001 |
On the crest behind them I saw a sudden tumult of movement, and thought,
ah, yes, those are mounted Sioux--by Jove, there are plenty of them, and
tearing down like those Russians at Campbell's Highlanders. Lot of
war-bonnets and lance-heads, and how hot the sun is, and me with no hat.
Elspeth would have sent me indoors for one. Elspeth . . .
"Hoo'hay, Lacotah! It's a good day to die! Kye-ee-kye!"
"You bloody liars!" I screamed, and all was fast and furious again, with
a hellish din of drumming hooves and screams and war-whoops and shots crashing
like a dozen Gatlings all together, the mounted horde charging on one side,
and as I wheeled to flee, the solid mass of red devils on foot racing in like
mad things, clubs and knives raised, and before I knew it they were among us,
and I went down in an inferno of dust and stamping feet and slashing weapons,
with stinking bodies on top of me, and my right hand pumping the Bulldog
trigger while I gibbered in expectation of the agony of my death-stroke. A
moccasined foot smached into my ribs, I rolled away and fired at a painted
face--and it vanished, but whether I hit it or not God knows, for directly
behind it Custer was falling, on hands and knees, and whether I'd hit *him*,
God knows again. He rocked ack on his heels, blood coming out from his mouth,
and toppled over, and I scrambled up and away, cannoning into a red body,
hurling my empty Bulldog at a leaping Indian and closing with him; he had a
sabre, of all things, and I closed my teeth in his wrist and heard him shriek
as I got my hand on the hilt, and began laying about me blindly. Indians and
troopers were struggling all around me, a lance brushed before my face, I was
aware of a rearing horse and its Indian rider grabbing for his club; I slashed
him across the thigh and he pitched screaming from the saddle; I hurled myself
at the beast's head and was dragged through the mass of yelling, stabbing,
struggling men. Two clear yards and I hauled myself across its back, righting
myself as an Indian stumbled under its hooves, and then I was urging the pony
up and away from that horror, over grassy ground thatt was carpeted with still
and writhing bodies, and beyond it little knots of men fighting, soldiers with
clubbed carbines being overwhelmed by Sioux--but here was a guidon, and a
little cluster of blue shirts that still fired steadily. I rode for them
roaring for help, and they scrambled aside to let me through, and I tumbled
out of the saddle into Keogh's arms.
"Where's the General?" he yelled, and I could only shake my head and point
dumbly at the carnage behind me.
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bru
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response 192 of 215:
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Jun 12 12:29 UTC 2001 |
Louis Lamour
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mary
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response 193 of 215:
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Jun 12 14:20 UTC 2001 |
_Little Men_, Louisa May Alcott
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janc
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response 194 of 215:
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Jun 12 17:21 UTC 2001 |
Not Louis Lamour. Not Louisa May Alcott.
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