Here's how this game works: The person who's "it" enters a quote
from a published work. It can be fiction, nonfiction, poetry,
anything. The challenge is to guess the *author* of the quote.
The first person to guess correctly is now "it" and gets to
choose the next quote. (You should wait for your guess to be
confirmed by the person who entered the quote before going
ahead and giving a new one.)

If people are having trouble guessing your author, it's considered
polite to give hints or offer up an additional quote by the same
author.

When you give a guess, it's always nice if you can indicate the
reasoning behind it. One object of this game is to learn a little
more about literature.

290 responses total.

Um, John, you're supposed to have entered a quote, remember?  (John is it,
everyone, from the winter game.)

I just guessed the author in the winter agora quote item, so it's
my turn to give a quote. Here goes:

        Well, you have to carry on. You have to carry on. He
        decided to switch his shower from morning to night.
        This showed adaptability, he felt--some freshness of
        spirit. While he showered he let the water collect
        in the tub, and he stalked around in noisy circles,
        sloshing the day's dirty clothes underfoot. Later he
        wrung out the clothes and hung them on hangers to
        dry. Then he dressed in tomorrow's underwear so he
        wouldn't have to launder any pajamas. In fact, his
        only real laundry was a load of towels and sheets
        once a week--just two towels, but quite a lot of
        sheets. This was because he had developed a system
        that enabled him to sleep in clean sheets every
        night without the trouble of bed changing. He'd
        been proposing the system to Sarah for years, but
        she was so set in her ways. What he did was strip
        the mattress of all linens, replacing them with a
        giant sort of envelope made from one of the seven
        sheets he had folded and stitched together on the
        sewing machine. He thought of this invention as a
        Macon Leary Body Bag. A body bag required no tuck-
        ing in, and the perfect weight for summer nights.
        In winter he would have to devise something warmer,
        but he couldn't think of winter yet. He was barely
        making it from one day to the next as it was.

(Dave's response slipped in...)

John Updike?

Nope, it's the Accidental Tourist.  Damn, the author's name ran right
out of my head.  Anne...  damn.

Hah!  I thunk it.  Anne Tyler.

Have to wait for my quote till I get home, nothing quoteworthy
here at work except for UNIX books and Novell manuals and stuff.

Anne Tyler is correct. Nice going, Meg. I'd hoped it would be
harder. (The movie version of _Accidental Tourist_ is one of
my favorites of recent years.)

(I once, when it was my turn, posted a manual section, & was soundly ignored.
You're wise to wait until you get home, Meg.)

Ok, this is a little long, and I even trimmed a bit out of the middle,
but it's one of my favorite sections in this particular piece of 
literature.  remmers will probly know it.

------------------

        The cause of his pain was a slim woman, possibly twenty-seven, 
with compressed lips, a thin little straight nose, and heavy red hair.
She looked, and she was, strict.  But she was a woman, and therefore
susceptible to male charm, such as inhered in Herbie - and,
unfortunately, in Mr. Mortimer Gorkin.  The boy glanced at her and 
felt a pang of self-pity.  He could tell by her soft look that she
felt sorry for him and wanted to comfort him.  Immediately he resolved
not to be comforted at any cost.

.. <some cut out here> ..

"What's the matter, Herbie, really?" asked the teacher.
"Nothing."
"Oh, yes there is."
"Oh, no, there isn't - *Mrs. Gorkin*."
        The shot went home; the teacher colored a little.  Perhaps pretty 
Diana Vernon was herself not quite happy about becoming Mrs. Gorkin.
The name still rang strangely in the bride's ears.
        "Herbie," said the teacher with an uncomfortable smile, "even 
though I'm Mrs. Gorkin now, we're still friends, aren't we?"
        (The injured male may be eleven or fifty; the approach of the 
injuring female does not vary.)
        "Sure," said Herbie, dolefully.  He hitched up his sagging gray 
kneepants.
        "Someday," said Mrs. Gorkin, "I hope yo uwill meet Morti - that is, 
Mr. Gorkin.  He's assistant principal at Public School 75.  I know he'd
like you.  He admires clever young men."
        Herbie saw through the compliment with contempt.  "Sure," he
said again.
        The erstwhile Diana Vernon said, "Come closer, Herbie." The boy
reluctantly obeyed, sidling along the edge of the desk, his hands
resting on top.  The teacher put her hand on his.  He jerked it away.
        "When you are as old as I am, Herbie," said Diana Gorkin softly,
"you will be a handsomer man than my husband, and you will marry a 
finer woman than I am, and I hope you'll remember to bring her back 
here and let me meet her, but I doubt that you will."
        This speech had no meaning at all for Herbie, who knew perfectly
well that he would never be as old as a teacher.  "Sure," he said 
once more.  Mrs. Gorkin unwrapped a sandwich, and acknowledged defeat
by a curt dismissal.  The boy retreated to his desk, snatched his lunch
bag, and scurried from the classroom.

Hmm, no, I don't know it. <remmers ponders>

I don't know either, but I'll take a shot in the dark:  Jean Shepard?

Nope.

hmm...

"hmm..." that surely "sounds" mysterious?!

exitquit
quit
o

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Hrmph, I guess nobody can guess this one.

I'll guess .... its from the second half of the 20th century.

Maybe we need a clue or another segment.

If it had been in first person I would have guessed Garrison Keeler.

re #18 - *almost* - it was first published in 1948.

Well, the author is a very well known novelist, though not for this 
particular work.  This was one of his/her first efforts, and didn't 
really hit it big till other later works had made it big.  Many of
this person's books have made it to stage, screen and/or TV.

Umm.  George Orwell?  (Wild guess based on comments I once heard
about _Keep the Aspidistera Flying_, no more.  I really don't
think "many" of Orwell's works have3 made it to other media.)

Mmm, can't be Orwell, he wrote _1984_ in 1948, and that's not what
I'd call one of his lesser-known works.  >8)

Sadly, I'm still stumped.

I thought it was a couple of years too late for Orwell's first, as well.

Not Orwell.

Well, ok.  This ought to give it away.  (The author at least, probly not
the title)  This particular author wrote a best selling book that was 
turned into a movie with Humphrey Bogart in it.

(The best selling book mentioned in #25 is *NOT* the book that my quote
was excerpted from)

 you're not talking about Dashell Hammett are you? author of the sam
spade mystery novels, among which was the maltese falcon?

  or Herman Wouk, author of the caine mutiny?

Hammett was earlier -- he wrote in the 1920's & 1930's. Wouk is
a possibility. Fits well with Meg's hint in #21, since The Caine
Mutiny was also adapted to the stage, and I think that one or two
of Wouk's novels have been TV miniseries.

Hey, kerouac, no fair guessing twice in a row!

Wouk it is.  The excerpt is from "The City Boy" (required reading when I
was in 7th grade Unified Studies, but I didn't appreciate it then as I do
now"  It was sort of a Jewish Penrod type of book.  I highly recommend it.

Ok kerouac, your turn. 

(Wouk books turned into movies include "The Caine Mutiny", "Marjorie
Morningstar" and "Youngblood Hawke."  TV movies are "The Winds of War"
and "War and Remembrance."  Supposedly "The City Boy" was made into a
movie too, but they changed the hero to a heroine, and changed it around
so much it was pretty much unrecognizable when it got to the screen.)

Coming late to this item, I also immediately recognized the excerpt
from Anne Tyler's "Accidental Tourist", a book which I also enjoyed a
great deal.

Okay, new quote...had a hard time picking one out, all the ones I
can think of are either too easy or way too hard.

-----
     Dawn is the most horrible of all, with the owls suddenly calling 
back and forth in the misty moon haunt.   And even worse than dawn is 
morning, the bright sun only glaring on my pain, making it all brighter, 
hotter, more maddening, more nervewracking.  I even go roaming up and 
down the valley in the bright Sunday morning sunshine with bag under arm 
looking hopelessly for some spot to sleep in.  As soon as I find a spot 
of grass by the path, I realize I cant lie down there because the 
tourists might walk by and see me.  As soon as I find a glade near the 
creek I realize its too sinister there, like Hemingway's darker part of 
the swamp where "the fishing would be more tragic" somehow,  all the 
haunts and glades having certain special evil forces concentrated there 
and driving me away.  So haunted I go wandering up and down the canyon 
crying with that bag under my arm:  "What on earth happened to me? and 
how can earth be like that?"
     Am I not a human being and have done my best as well as anybody 
else? never really trying to hurt anybody or half-hearted cursing 
Heaven?  The words I'd studied all my life have suddenly gotten to me in 
all their serious and definite deathliness.  Never more I be a "happy 
poet, singing about death and allied romantic matters".  "Go thou crumb of 
dust you with your silt of a billion years, here's a billion pieces of 
silt for you, shake that out of your shaker"  And all the green nature of 
the canyon now waving in the morning sun looking like a cruel idiot 
convocation.
     Coming back to the sleepers and staring at them wild eyed like my 
brother had once stared at me in the dark over my crib, staring at them 
not only enviously but lonely inhuman isolation from their simple 
sleeping minds.  "But they all look dead!"  I'm carking in my canyon, 
"Sleep is death!  everything is death!"
       

This response has been erased.

   nope.  Not rice.

But, like a lot of rice, it is overcooked.                          :)

  No, not Rice...but overcooked is a matter of opinion...

Rice to the occasion? over cooked? 

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