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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 278 responses total. |
remmers
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response 33 of 278:
| 
Apr 4 12:54 UTC 1999 |
(Balzac would have been my guess too. Perhaps it's even right...)
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johnnie
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response 34 of 278:
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Apr 5 02:11 UTC 1999 |
Balzac is, indeed, correct. From "Scenes From a Courtesan's Life".
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md
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response 35 of 278:
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Apr 5 02:43 UTC 1999 |
I defer to remmers, who had guessed Balzac but got
here too late, and who enters far more interesting
mystery quotes than I.
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senna
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response 36 of 278:
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Apr 5 04:03 UTC 1999 |
Balzac's a real author? Wow. I just remember the line from "Music
Man."
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remmers
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response 37 of 278:
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Apr 5 16:14 UTC 1999 |
Yep, Balzac is for real. Generally regarded as one of the great 19th
century novelists.
Hm, I should find a quote. I'll try to do that by tomorrow.
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remmers
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response 38 of 278:
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Apr 6 17:23 UTC 1999 |
This quote is from a living American writer:
The study -- sold as a prefabricated toolshed -- is
eight feet by ten feet. Like a plane's cockpit, it is
crammed with high-tech equipment. There is no quill pen
in sight. There is a computer, a printer, and a photo-
copying machine. My backless chair, a prie-dieu on which
I kneel, slides under the desk; I give it a little kick
when I leave. There is an air conditioner, a heater, and
an electric kettle. There is a low-tech bookshelf, a
shelf of gull and whale bones, and a bed. Under the bed
I stow paints -- a one-pint can of yellow to touch up
the window's trim, and five or six tubes of artists'
oils. The study affords ample room for one. One who is
supposed to be writing books. You can read in the space
of a coffin, and you can write in the space of a tool-
shed meant for mowers and spades.
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drewmike
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response 39 of 278:
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Apr 6 18:36 UTC 1999 |
The Unabomber?
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flem
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response 40 of 278:
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Apr 6 19:27 UTC 1999 |
Richard Bach?
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void
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response 41 of 278:
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Apr 7 00:15 UTC 1999 |
piers anthony?
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davel
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response 42 of 278:
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Apr 7 01:06 UTC 1999 |
I'm looking forward to finding out this one. Nice.
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mcnally
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response 43 of 278:
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Apr 7 04:51 UTC 1999 |
Farley Mowat?
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bookworm
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response 44 of 278:
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Apr 7 05:53 UTC 1999 |
Got me. About all I'm reading nowadays are texts.
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remmers
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response 45 of 278:
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Apr 7 09:36 UTC 1999 |
Not the Unabomber, Richard Bach, Piers Anthony, or Farley Mowat.
Unabomber was an interesting guess, except that although he might have
worked out of a shed, he would never have had a computer or other
high-tech equipment in it. He'd likely have favored quill pens.
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cconroy
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response 46 of 278:
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Apr 7 14:41 UTC 1999 |
Sounds like a room description from an Infocom text adventure (except
for the first-person statements).
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remmers
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response 47 of 278:
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Apr 7 16:26 UTC 1999 |
Hm, it does at that. But the quote is not from Infocom. :)
I'll try to continue the quote later today, assuming nobody's gotten
the author by then.
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remmers
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response 48 of 278:
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Apr 9 00:53 UTC 1999 |
Okay, here's more of the author's workplace description begun in
resp:38 - perhaps there are some clues here.
I walk up here from the house every morning. The study
and its pines, and the old summer cottages nearby, and the
new farm just north of me, rise from an old sand dune high
over a creeky salt marsh. From the bright lip of the dune
I can see oyster farmers working their beds on the tidal
flats and sailboats underway in the saltwater bay. After
I have warmed myself standing at the crest of the dune, I
return under the pines, enter the study, slam the door so
the latch catches -- and then I cannot see. The green spot
ini front of my eyes outshines everything in the shade. I
lie on the bed and play with a bird bone until I can see
it.
Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a
room with no view, so imagination can dance with memory in
the dark. When I furnished this study seven years ago, I
pushed the long desk against a blank wall, so I could not
see from either window. Once, fifteen years ago, I wrote
in a cinderblock cell over a parking lot. It overlooked a
tar-and-gravel roof. This pine shed under the trees is not
quite so good as the cinder-block study was, but it will
do.
"The beginning of wisdom," according to a West African
proverb, "is to get you a roof."
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flem
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response 49 of 278:
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Apr 9 04:09 UTC 1999 |
Skinner? :)
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remmers
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response 50 of 278:
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Apr 9 10:42 UTC 1999 |
Heh. Cute guess, but nope.
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danr
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response 51 of 278:
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Apr 9 12:37 UTC 1999 |
Annie Dillard.
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remmers
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response 52 of 278:
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Apr 9 14:20 UTC 1999 |
Yup - Annie Dillard it is. Her best known work is "Pilgrim at Tinker's
Creek". I've been quoting from an essay published in the late 1980's.
Nice job. Dan's up.
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bookworm
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response 53 of 278:
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Apr 9 23:40 UTC 1999 |
Oooh. I'd never have guessed that one.
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danr
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response 54 of 278:
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Apr 10 00:43 UTC 1999 |
Whoa....This is the first one I've ever gotten. :) I do like Annie Dillard,
though.
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davel
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response 55 of 278:
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Apr 10 00:54 UTC 1999 |
(Who's Annie Dillard? (The _Pilgrim_at_Tinker's_Creek_ I've met is unlikely
to be the one you're referring to, John.))
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md
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response 56 of 278:
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Apr 10 22:58 UTC 1999 |
I'd be very surprised to learn that there's a book with that
name by another writer, but you never know.
Annie Dillard had one magical book in her, _Pilgrim at Tinker Creek._
(Not "Tinker's.") A kind of hippie or proto-New-Age _Walden_. Her
subsequent work (like Thoreau's after _Walden_) fell so far short
of her one masterpiece that you begin to wonder where _Tinker Creek_
came from.
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danr
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response 57 of 278:
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Apr 10 23:30 UTC 1999 |
Here's the next quote:
"How beautiful and how terrible are the words with which Gods speaks to the
soul of those He has called to Himself, and to the Promised Land which is
participation in His own life--that lovely and fertile country which is the
life of grace and glory, the interior life, the mystical life. They are lovely
to those who hear and obey them: but what are they to those who hear them
without understanding or response?"
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