101 new of 104 responses total.
Everyone knows who Lestrade went to, to get his murder cases solved.....
Then this author would be Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? Though some elements seem a bit anachronistically recent.
Nope, not Doyle. Here's another quote from the same book which is, perhaps, a bit less deceptive, though as everyone noticed, the previous one already had strong hints of not being Doyle: I watched him as his long fingers caressed the much-travelled envelope and his eyes drew significance from every smudge, every characteristic of the paper and ink and stamp, and it occurred to me suddenly that Sherlock Holmes was bored. The thought was not a happy one. No person, certainly no woman, likes to think that her marriage has lessened the happiness of her partner. I thrust the troublesome idea from me, reached up to rub a twinge from my right shoulder, and spoke with a shade more irritation than was called for. "My dear Holmes, this verges on _deducto_ad_absurdum_. Were you to open the envelope and identify the writer, it might just simplify matters."
Nicholas Meyer?
Not Meyer.
John Dickson Carr.
Not Carr.
Not me either.
From a earlier book than the previous two: "Mr Holmes," I said, feeling myself go pink, "may I ask you a question?" "Certainly, Miss Russell." "How does _The_Valley_of_Fear_ end?" I blurted out. "The *what*?" He sounded astonished. "_Valley_of_Fear_. In _The_Strand_. I hate these serials, and next month is the end of it, but I just wondered if you could tell me, well, how it turned out." "This is one of Watson's tales, I take it?" "Of course. It's the case of Birlstone and the Scowrers and John McMurdo and Professor Moriarty and--" "Yes, I believe I can identify the case, although I have often wondered why, if Conan Doyle so likes pseudonyms he couldn't have given them to Watson and myself as well." "So how does it end?" "I havent the faintest notion. You'll have to ask Watson." "But surely you know how the case ended," I said, amazed. "The case, certainly. But what Watson has made of it, I couldn't begin to guess, except that there is bound to be gore and passion and secret handshakes. Oh, and some sort of love interest. I deduce, Miss Russell; Watson transforms. Good day."
I heard a radio play like this once... <ponder>
John Gardner.
Nope. Unlike everyone guessed so far, the author is a woman. Continuing to travel backward in literary time: "You have not answered my question, sir," I bit off. He ignored my fury. Worse than that, he seemed unaware of it. He looked merely bored, as if he wished I might go away. "What am I doing here, do you mean?" "Exactly." "I am watching bees," he said flatly, and turned back to his contemplation of the hillside. Nothing in the man's manner showed a madness to correspond with his words. Nonetheless I kept an wary eye on hom as I thrust my book into my coat pocket and dropped to the ground--a safe distance away from him--and studied the movement in the flowers before me. There were indeed bees, industriously working at stuffing pollen into those leg sacs of theirs, moving from flower to flower. I watched, and was just thinking that there was nothing particularly noteworthy about these bees when my eyes were caught by the arrival of a peculiarly marked specimen. It seemed an ordinary honeybee but had a small red spot on its back. How odd--perhaps what he had been watching? I glanced at Eccentric, who was now staring intently off into space, and then looked more closely at the bees, interested in spite of myself. I quickly concluded that the spot was no natural phenomenon, but rather paint, for there was another bee, its spot slightly lopsided, and another, and then another odd things: a bee with a blue spot as well. As I watched, two red spots flew off in a northwesterly direction. I carefully observed the blue-and-red spot as it filled its pouches and saw it take off toward the northeast. I thought for a minute, got up, and walked to the top of the hill, scattering ewes and lambs, and when I looked down at the village [...]. "I'd say the blue spots are the better bet, if you're trying for another hive," I told him. "The ones you've only marked with red are probably from Mr. Warner's orchard. The blue spots are farther away, but they're almost sure to be wild ones." I dug the book from my pocket, and when I looked up to wish him a good day he was looking at me, and the expression on his face took all words from my lips--no mean accomplishment. He was, as the writers say but people seldom actually are, openmouthed. He looked a bit like a fish, in fact, gaping at me as if I were growing another head. He slowly stood up, his mouth shutting as he rose, but still staring. "*What* did you say?" "I beg your pardon, are you hard of hearing?" I raised my voice somewhat and spoke slowly. "I said, if you want a new have you'll have to follow the blue spots, because the reds are sure to be Tom Warner's." "I am not hard of hearing, although I am short of credulity. How do you come to know of my interests?" "I should have thought it obvious," I said impatiently, though even at that age I was aware tht such things were not obvious to the majority of people. "I see paint on your pocket handkerchief, and traces on your fingers where you wiped it away. The only reason to mark bees that I can think of is to enable one to follow them to their hive. You are either interested in gathering honey or in the bees themselves, and it is not the time of year to harvest honey. Three months ago we had an unusual cold spell that killed many hives. Therefore I assume that you are tracking these in order to replenish your stock." The face that looked down at me was no longer fishlike. In fact, it resembled amazingly a captive eagle I had once seen, perched in aloof splendour looking down the ridge of its nose at this lessor creature, cold disdain staring out from his hooded grey eyes. "My God," he said in a voice of mock wonder, "it can think."
I am watching bees too :) Har!
I hope it's not that vampire woman, Anne Rice.
Laurie King. I *think* that's the name I'm thinking of.
Hmm, when someone gets it right I'll be interested in looking this book up, sounds like fun.
Summer 2001 agora 21 has been linked to books 100.
Carole Nelson Douglas.
Sara has it: Laurie R. King. I've only read her Holmes books. The series so far is: The Beekeeper's Apprentice A Monsterous Regiment of Women A Letter of Mary The Moor Oh Jerusalem The first two quotes were from "A Letter of Mary", the remainder from "The Beekeeper's Apprentice". The first and last books listed are good fun. For some reason I omitted to buy "The Moor". There is, of course, a whole genre of Sherlock Holmes stories, so I thought it'd be fun to do a quote where the main character was immediately identifiable, but the author not. I was tempted by Larry Millet's Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in Minnesota (yes, three whole books about Holmes in Minnesota), but they aren't really that good. I've never felt he really capture the real Holmes as well as Ms King does.
There is, of course a Doyle story that describes at length events that occurred in America, albeit not in Minnesota.
There is? I've read the Complete Sherlock Holmes, but I don't remember any story describing his time in America. One opens with him smoking a cigarette and blaming it on his trip, but that's it. An argument could be made that A Study in Scarlet and The Three (or was it Five?) Orange Pips reflect knowledge gained while travelling across America.
Its A Study in Scarlet. It doesn't describe any events Holmes or Watson were involved in in America - but I didn't say it did.
It's THe Sign of the Four, isn't it? I think so. It starts out in England and then abruptly shifts to America.
Nope. The Sign only visits India, Andaman Islands, and England.
So I mis-read your original statement, in context. ;/
_The_Valley_of_Fear_ also has much of its action in the US.
I must confess I haven't actually read these. Just pulled the name out of my head from memories of shelving at the used bookstore I used to work at. (Questions like: "I'm looking for something by that woman who writes Sherlock Holmes stories" are somewhat easier than the usual: "So I'm looking for this book, I think it had a blue cover, don't remember the title but it was really good.") I remember thinking at the time that they looked interesting, and these quotes confirmed that impression. I shall post something tomorrow.
The thing about Manhattan is that everything is here, all mixed together, that's what I love about it. Ugly things and beautiful things you didn't even think could exist. It's loud and dirty, our apartment is teeny and you have to walk up eight flights to get to it but we have a fireplace with carved angels, a leopard-print chaise lounge, Maxfield Parrish prints of nymphs in classical sunset gardens, pink-damask drapes and silk roses in platform shoes from the 40's and 70's that Izzy has collected. Izzy grows real roses in pots on the fire escape. She loves flowers and is always teaching me the names of different ones. She especially likes the ones with really ugly names. Anastasia grows oregano, dill, parsley and basil on the fire escape. She uses them in her special inter-international recipes. Anastasia believes you should never be afraid to mix cultures. She makes a Japanese-Italianish miso-pesto sauce for pasta and a bright-pink tandoori tofu stir-fry. I can tell what she's making just by sniffing the air. Sometimes when Anastasia doesn't feel like cooking, she and Izzy and I go to our favorite restaurants. We have golden curried-vegetable samosas and yogurt-cucumber salad under trees filled with fireflies in the courtyard of our favorite Indian restaurant. We have fettuccine at an Italian place where the Mafia guys used to shoot each other while they were sucking up pasta. We like the pink and green rice chips and the rose petals in the salad with the peanut dressing and the ginger tofu at our Thai place. There is a Middle Eastern restaurant we go to where you can get minty tabbouleh and yummy mushy hummus in pita bread for really cheap, and a funny Russian restaurant with bright murals of animals in people clothes dancing around cottages in the countryside. We eat borscht there, and drink tea from a silver samovar.
(Can you fix your formatting? Your long lines are wrapping, making them difficult to read on a standard 80-column display.) (Not that this would help me much, since I have no clue about the author. ;-)
Oh dear. I'm not quite sure how I managed to do that. Would it help to repost #31? If so, I will.
Okay, here's the first quote again, more readable, I hope. I'll post another quote soon, in the hopes of eliciting at least *some* guesses. The thing about Manhattan is that everything is here, all mixed together, that's what I love about it. Ugly things and beautiful things you didn't even think could exist. It's loud and dirty, our apartment is teeny and you have to walk up eight flights to get to it but we have a fireplace with carved angels, a leopard-print chaise lounge, Maxfield Parrish prints of nymphs in classical sunset gardens, pink-damask drapes and silk roses in platform shoes from the 40's and 70's that Izzy has collected. Izzy grows real roses in pots on the fire escape. She loves flowers and is always teaching me the names of different ones. She especially likes the ones with really ugly names. Anastasia grows oregano, dill, parsley and basil on the fire escape. She uses them in her special inter-international recipes. Anastasia believes you should never be afraid to mix cultures. She makes a Japanese-Italianish miso-pesto sauce for pasta and a bright-pink tandoori tofu stir-fry. I can tell what she's making just by sniffing the air. Sometimes when Anastasia doesn't feel like cooking, she and Izzy and I go to our favorite restaurants. We have golden curried-vegetable samosas and yogurt-cucumber salad under trees filled with fireflies in the courtyard of our favorite Indian restaurant. We have fettuccine at an Italian place where the Mafia guys used to shoot each other while they were sucking up pasta. We like the pink and green rice chips and the rose petals in the salad with the peanut dressing and the ginger tofu at our Thai place. There is a Middle Eastern restaurant we go to where you can get minty tabbouleh and yummy mushy hummus in pita bread for really cheap, and a funny Russian restaurant with bright murals of animals in people clothes dancing around cottages in the countryside. We eat borscht there, and drink tea from a silver samovar.
Haven't got a guess to offer, but sounds pretty recent.
Indeed, the author is both contemporary and American.
Here's a quote from another work:
Todd had grown up in Northern California in a big ranch house called
Love Farm, with five brothers and sisters. His parents had an
antiquarian book shop called The Book of Love and grew all their own
organic vegetables. They encouraged their children to put on plays for
them after dinner -- TV did not exist at Love Farm. Todd was the
oldest, and everyone knew he would become a big star, possibly on the TV
none of them watched, although his parents often cautioned him about the
dangers of Hollywood; they had met there on a chewing-gum commercial,
fallen instantly in love over a single piece of gum (shared), and
decided to get out while they were still relatively unscarred by the
business.
Todd's expansive, loving, freewheeling nature was encouraged. He
smoked pot and discussed the Beat poets with his parents; he ran through
the woods with his brothers and sisters, leading them at games of
Indians and Indians (no one would be the Cowboys); he wrote the plays
they performed at night, soliciting the services of girls in the
neighborhood to inhabit the role of leading lady. The plays were always
romantic and ended with a passionate kiss, much to the dismay of Todd's
younger siblings, who found it all particularly stomach-turning. But
Todd's audience and his co-stars enjoyed the romance. And of course, so
did Todd, who felt privately that his calling in life was to kiss as
many girls as possible and let even more watch him doing it so they
could live vicariously through the ones on screen.
(As soon as we find out what this is from, I think I'm going to find and read it! :)
Maybe I should have picked a different author? These quotes are from someone generally classified as a young adult author. I'll post another quote tomorrow.
I knocked and waited. I knocked again. My heart was imitating my fist. What if my father answered the door? After a while I heard footsteps and the sound of a peephole opening. A tall white-haired man, with a huge white moustache that curled up at the ends, opened the door. "Hello," he boomed Swissly. "Hi," I said. "I'm looking for somebody." "Who are you looking for?" He twirled the end of his moustache around his finger and glowered at me. "Irving Rose," I said. The man's blue eyes looked like they were doing a jig and the rest of his body seemed like it would follow any second. His cheeks turned pinker. "You know Irving Rose! The genius! I haven't seen him in years." "He used to live here?" I asked. "Yes he did. In this very apartment. I moved in when he left." "Who are you?" I asked. "The landlord, Uncle Hansel," the man said. He bowed so low that I was afraid his moustache would tickle me. Instead all that happened was I got a little dizzy from his cologne. Then he put out his big hand and I shook it. I tried to see behind him, into the apartment where my father used to live. "Could I come in?" I asked. "Didn't anyone tell you that children shouldn't go into the apartments of strange men!" Uncle Hansel scolded. "You're not strange," I reassured him, still trying to see. "Well, all right, but we'll leave the door wide open and you must run out if you feel in the least uncomfortable, dear," Uncle Hansel insisted. I followed him to a small, dim room that smelled of rye bread and strawberry jam. It was filled with wooden furniture carved and painted with hearts and flowers. There were jars of roses, ferns in birdcages, a collection of mechanical windup toys and as many cuckoo clocks as could fit on the walls. As I looked at them, they all started chiming, and a flock of wooden cuckoos scooted in and out. I wondered if that drove Uncle Hansel crazy, but he seemed to be enjoying it. He smiled proudly at the birds and twirled his moustache. "Would you like something to eat?" Uncle Hansel asked. "Although, come to think of it, little girls aren't supposed to accept food from strangers." "You knew my father, though," I said. I was hungry, and I had a pretty good sense of smell -- I bet there really would be rye bread and jam. "Your father!" Uncle Hansel exclaimed. "Why of course! The genius! You look just like him!" "So could I maybe have a snack?" I asked. "Of course. Come with me."
Interesting. Probably no one I've ever read or even ever heard of, though.
I'll guess Bruce Coville. Probably wrong, but it seems like the same writing style.
Not Coville... though a guess, of any kind, is noted and appreciated. The long silences here are making me think it would probably be best to turn this over to someone else soon. This writer is female, and lives in Los Angeles. Most of her stuff has been published within the last decade and a half or so.
Here's a quote from another novel (resp:36 is from one of this author's novels, resp:34 and resp:39 from a short story): She hardly recognized him because she knew he didn't recognize her, not at all. Once, on a bus in New York, she had seen the man of her dreams. She was twelve and he was carrying a guitar case and roses wrapped in green paper, and there were raindrops on the roses and on his hair, and he hadn't looked at her once. He was sitting directly across from her and staring ahead and he didn't see anyone, anything there. He didn't see Weetzie even though she had known then that someday they must have babies and bring each other roses and write songs together and be rock stars. Her heart had felt as meager as her twelve-year-old chest, as if it had shriveled up because this man didn't recognize her.
Um... I think perhaps it's time to turn it over to the next willing person. Any objections?
The usual solution to this is to start giving really honking big clues. But you can just throw it up for whoever wants to go next if you like.
I think the clues I *have* given would make it recognizable to someone who knew the author. I think I've chosen too obscure an author. <sigh> But as I'm having enough trouble Grexing regularly enough to keep up with the auction these days -- I hereby declare the field open.
Sara- well, since you've declared the field open... who is that author anyway?
Yes, all those excerpts sound fascinating. Since Sara's opened up the field, I didn't feel so bad about net searching. :) Based upon what I found, I'm going to guess Francesca Lia Block.
Francesca Lia Block is correct. The first and third of the quotes I posted are from the short story "Dragons in Manhattan." The second is from _I Was a Teenage Fairy_ and the latest from _Weetzie Bat_. Block is, as I said, generally shelved in the young adult section of bookstores. Don't let that dissuade you from checking her stuff out. She's cool.
<remmers, having never heard of Francesca Lia Block, doesn't feel too badly about not having guessed this one>
_Weetzie Bat_? Is that about a bat (chiroptera)?
Given the quotes, I'm pretty sure it's about a bat (h. sapiens sapiens). Then again, I might be wrong...
I hope this will be an easy one: At dawn, bleary-eyed but joyful, the three youngsters took off across the wet dewy fields and went into the woods to the brook among the pines, where they had done the old swimming as little kids. And just as they got there the sun began to come up, the mists stirred over the hillsides and over the placid brook, birds peeped in the pines, the last pale stars trembled, and great light began to overspread the world. "Rosy-fingered dawn!" howled young Panos with indescribable delight, and they were all awake now, strangely ecstatic, and each began to sing, babble, and wander around in the woods throwing sticks, Alexander himself singing in a loud bawling voice that might have been heard two miles away in the profound stillness. He even ran tripping to the top of a little hill, yelling joyous hosannahs and holding out his arms to the sky, while Peter and Tommy watched him, amazed. Peter, for his part, kept looking up at the sky and yelling "Space!" or down in the water with a show of moodiness, saying "Lucidness," or stamping his feet on the ground and repeating over and over again, "Solidness, solidness, solidness," though he hadn't the vaguest idea why he enjoyed doing this. And Tommy Camp- bell, flinging his tunic over his shoulder in the warm morning, began to sing in a high cracked voice. On the Road to Mandalay, which echoed and re-echoed in the woods, especially when Panos lent his own thunderous voice' to the refrain. They felt wonder- fully foolish and happy and they let go with anything that came to their minds. "Because the sun is coming up!" howled Alexander. "Only be- cause the sun is coming up! We came here just for that!" "We thronged!" shouted Peter triumphantly. "Yes! Through the woods!" bawled Alexander. "Oh, listen to me! Beauty is truth, and truth is beauty, and that is all ye need to know!" "Chambers of beauty!" cried Tommy Campbell, pointing to the rays of light streaming down between the pines. "God's cathedral-l-l!" called Alexander through cupped hands in a great shout that carried across the fields, and they all laughed savagely. Then, as the sun came up in full brilliant array far off over the hills, fanning light all over the sky and gilding little dawn-clouds that were regimented beautifully overhead, the boys fell silent, in awe, and stood on the two little hills watching, Panos and Camp- bell on one hill, and Peter alone on another, all of them brooding and reflective. It was a strange little moment of meditation in the deep stillness of the morning, with only the sound of a farmer's horse neighing faintly far away and clip-clopping on a road, and someone whistling far away, and a barndoor closing. They trudged back home wearily, after a quick shivering swim in the brook where Alexander splashed about prodigiously, scream- ing: "Mumbo Jumbo God of the Congo and all of the other Gods of the Congo!" Now, their meditations over as whimsically as they had begun, they jabbered excitedly all the way home; Alexander wound a flower around his ear. Peter chewed the stems of long grass, and Tommy strode along like a prophet, carrying a huge limb from a rotted tree. They happened to see two veiled old ladies trudging along the road, apparently towards the church in Norcott, two darkly-clad old women faithful to some endless novena. Peter pointed at them with the air of a prophet, saying: "Fear." Alexander went into a little dance that was intended to represent fear, and Tommy Campbell raised his huge tree-bough and waved it thrice in solemn blessing. They strode on home eagerly, hungrily. Alexander cried: "Up there!" and they all stopped. Alexander was pointing at the sky, saying: "Glory!" They all stared up at the sky. "Here!" cried Tommy Campbell, pointing to the ground at his feet. "Death!" Alexander knelt on the ground and tenderly took the flower from his ear, and laid it down, and covered it with a little bier of earth, his whole body, meanwhile, seeming to tremble suddenly from some spasmodic feeling. "What's left of life," he said mournfully, "what's left of life, a little flower. Immortal little flower that venerates us, that venerates us and all that this morning means. Weep for the little flower, weep for the petals in its heart, weep for us, weep for us!" He knelt there, while the boys watched grinning, he knelt there and seemed to be wrapped in a secret, prescient ecstasy of what his life was to him. And then they went on home.
Probably wrong, but C.S. Lewis?
I'll snidely throw Ray Bradbury in as my guess, since this has a style very similar to the Pioneer 9th grade English ultra-reviled Dandelion Wine.
It makes me want to say C.S. Lewis too, even though I can't for the life of me think what book of his it would be. Edward Eager? I can't picture him being nearly this apocalyptic, but it's worth a try.
No, not C.S. Lewis, Ray Bradbury, or Edward Eager.
(I LIKE Bradbury, and Dandelion Wine!) (The book. I've never had the beverage.) I don't think Forster ever wrote about kids, but that's my what-the-hell guess anyway. ;}
No, not E.M. Forster.
Spelling correction.... E.M. Forrester. Thank you.
Don't correct people who are correct, jiffer. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0156711427/qid=995906815/sr=2-1/103- 375 8189-2164611 That's a link to Amazon's listing for "A Passage to India," written by Edward Morgan Forster (with a picture of the bookcover, with the same spelling).
She's thinking of that movie, _Finding Forrester_ *snort*
I don't necessarily have anything against Bradbury or the book, but it was not a pleasant class excersize :) If I read it again, I might not dislike it now.
... and just what's WRONG with that movie, Finding Forrester? 'TWas a fine fine movie. What was the class exercise?
Nothing was wrong with the movie. It was just about an author whose last name was Forrester while old E.M.'s last name is Forster ;)
Well, that's fine, since it wasn't about E.M.... ;} I actually thought Forrester was more inspired by Salinger.
And there is an actual author named C.S. Forrester. He did the Horatio Hornblower series. None of which changes the fact that I have no clue who the mystery author is.
I'll give it a try. Stephen King?
_Weetzie bat_ is about a person whose name is Weetzie Bat.
(Re #68: Hmm. S. King is a possibility. Wish I'd thought of it.)
No, it's not Stephen King (interesting guess, though). I shall post another quote from the same novel later this evening.
Arthur C. Clarke is another long shot, also probably wrong.
No, not Arthur C Clarke. I apologise for not getting another excerpt OCR'd last night, but I did find the section that should give this one away. The author was a American writer from the last half of the 20th century.
I hadn't intended to do this one, but here is another excerpt from earlier in the same novel: Little Mickey wakes up and goes to his window: it's Saturday morning, no school today. And for him there's a still music in the air like the faint sound of heraldry over the woods, like men, horses and dogs gathering under the trees far across the field for some joyous and adventurous foray. Everything is soft and musical, and sweet, and full of longings, misty hints and unspeakable reve- lations that float in the gentlest blue air. There, in the blue shadows beneath the morning trees, in the cool speckled shade, in the new green misty color of the woods far off, in the dark ground still moist and all covered with little blossoms, there is his hint of glorious spreading Summer, and the future. Mickey dashes out. slamming the kitchen door behind him. goes rolling his old rubber tire with a stick. He journeys down old Galloway Road over the cool dewy tar, on each side of him the birds are singing, he wonders when there'll be apples in old man Breton's orchard there. He figures this year he will explore the river in a boat. This year he will do everything, boy! In the middle of the morning Mickey watches all the big guys at the ballfield slamming their fists into their gloves, throwing a brand new white baseball around. Someone has a bat, hitting light bunts, the boys stoop to pick up the grounders and yell, "Uff! I got them old kinks this year!" Someone hoots under a high fly, punches his glove, pulls it down, trots around awhile, lobs the ball back easily. It's Spring training time, they've got to watch "the old arm." Mickey smells the fragrant cigarette smoke in the morning air where the older boys stand around talking. Big brother Joe Martin is winding up leisurely, throwing to another boy who squats with a catcher's mitt. Joe is a star pitcher, he knows how to take his time and get the old kinks out in the Spring. Everybody watches as he lobs the ball in easily, with a sure motion and a deadpan face. A minute later he's whooping with laughter when someone gets a knock on the shins from a hard grounder. In his mother's cool shady kitchen, Mickey devours a bowl of cereal and stares at the picture of Jimmy Foxx on the box cover. His chums are coming up the road, he can hear them, they're going off to play cowboys on the hill. He's Buck Jones all the time. They're out in the yard now, calling: "Mick-ee!" Mickey comes storming out of the kitchen with both guns blazing, "Kow! kow! kow!" and dodges behind a barrel; the others take cover and return fire. Someone leaps up, twists, con- torts, and falls slain to the grass. In the Spring night, Joe tunes up the old Ford and roars off to drink beer with his buddies. And on the first warm June night, Mrs. Martin and Ruth dust off the old swing in the backyard, put cushions on it, make a big bowl of popcorn, and go sit under the moon, in the waving black shade of the high hedges. A cousin sits with them in the breezy night, exclaiming: "Ooh! ain't the moon grand!" Old man Martin, banging around the kitchen making an egg sandwich, mimics savagely: "Ain't the moon gry-and!" The three women out in the yard, swinging rhythmically in the creaking old swing, are telling each other about the best fortune- tellers they have ever known. "I tell you. Marge, she is uncannyl" Mrs. Martin rocks in the swing, waiting patiently, with slitted eyes, skeptical. "She foretold almost everything that happened that year, detail by detail, mind you!" And with this Cousin Leona looks up at the moon and sighs, "The irony of this life. Marge, the irony of life." The father of the house stomps out of the kitchen with his sandwich, mimicking again, savagely: "Oh, the irony of liaf!" The women rock back and forth in the old creaking swing, reaching mechanically into the popcorn bowl, musing, contented, belonging to the wonderful darkness and the ripe June world, owning it, as no barging man of the house could ever hope to belong to any part of the earth or own an inch of it.
The style of this reminds me a little of "A Child's Christmas in Wales." I'm gonna guess Dylan Thomas, even though I didn't think he'd written much other prose.
No, not Dylan Thomas. The author was born in New England.
The setting of #74 seems distinctly American, so I doubt it's Thomas.
(#76 slipped in, with an unsurprising response.)
("He's so square, when you say 'Dylan', he thinks you mean Dylan Thomas,
whoever THAT is. The BOY ain't GOT no CULTURE." -- paraphrase of Simon &
Garfunkel)
Okay, hopefully this one will sound familiar to somebody: As Peter stood there, he recognized three young men strolling up the street. They were a strange trio: one was a hoodlum, one was a dope addict, and the third was a poet. The hoodlum---Jack---was a sleek, handsome youngster from Tenth Avenue, who claimed that he was born "on a barge in the East River" eighteen years before. He was well-dressed, seemingly composed in his bearing and quiet, almost dignified, in his man- ner. It was only that he could never concentrate; he was always looking around as though anticipating something. His eyes were hard and blank, almost elderly in their stony meaningless calm. He talked in a swift, high-pitched, nervous voice, and kept look- ing away stonily, twirling his key chain. The dope addict, whose only known name was Junkey, was a small, dark, Arabic-looking man with an oval face and huge blue eyes that were lidded wearily always, with the huge lids of a mask. He moved about with the noiseless glide of an Arab, his expres- sion always weary, indifferent, yet somehow astonished too, aware of everything. He had the look of a man who is sincerely miserable in the world. The poet---Leon Levinsky---had been a classmate of Peter's at college, and was now a merchant seaman of sorts, sailing coastwise on coalboats to Norfolk or New Orleans. He was wearing a strapped raincoat, a Paisley scarf, and dark-rimmed glasses with the air of an intellectual. He carried two slim volumes under his arm, the works of Rimbaud and W. H. Auden, and he smoked his cigarette stuck in a red holder. They came along the sidewalk, Jack the hoodlum swaggering slowly, Junkey padding along like an Arab in the Casbah, and Leon Levinsky, lip-pursing, meditative, absorbed in thought, twin- kling along beside them with his Charley Chaplin feet flapping out, puffing absently on the cigarette-holder. They strolled in the lights. Peter walked up and greeted them. "So you're back finally!" cried Levinsky, grinning eagerly. "I've been thinking of you lately for some reason or other---actually I guess it's because I've so much to tell you!" "Why don't we go and sit down?" proposed Junkey wearily. "Let's sit in the cafeteria window there and we can talk and keep an eye on the street." They went in the cafeteria, got coffee, and sat down by the windows, where Junkey could resume his pale vigil of Forty- Second Street---a vigil that went on a good eighteen hours a day, and sometimes, when he had no place to sleep, twenty- four hours around the clock. It was the same with Jack---the same anxious vigil of the street, from which the watchers of the Street could never turn their eyes without some piercing sense of loss, some rankling anguish that they had "missed out" on something. Junkey always sat facing the street, and when he talked, sometimes with intense earnestness, his eyes kept never- theless going back and forth as he combed the street sweep- ingly under drooping eyelids. Even though Peter and Leon Levinsky sat with their backs to the window, they could not help turning now and then just to see. Leon Levinsky was about nineteen years old. He was one of the strangest, most curiously exalted youngsters Peter had ever known. He was not unlike Alexander Panos, in a sense, and Peter had been drawn to him for this reason. Levinsky was an eager, intense, sharply intelligent boy of Russian-Jewish parentage who rushed around New York in a perpetual sweat of emotional activity, back and forth in the streets from friend to friend, room to room, apartment to apartment. He "knew everybody" and "knew every- thing," was always bearing tidings and messages from "the others," full of catastrophe. He brimmed and flooded over day and night with a thousand different thoughts and conversations and small horrors, delights, perplexities, deities, discoveries, ecstasies, fears. He stared gog-eyed at the world and was full of musings, lip- pursings, subway broodings---all of which rushed forth in torrents of complex conversation whenever he confronted someone. He knew almost everyone Peter knew, a few thousand others Peter did not know. Like young Panos, Leon Levinsky was also likely to show up suddenly morose and brooding, or simply disappear from the "scene" for months and Peter liked that too.
Jack Kerouac, of course. (Twila smacks her head and wonders how she could have been so stupid...)
That *is* the correct answer! Don't feel bad if you didn't guess it; all excerpts were taken from Kerouac's first novel, _The Town and the City_, and it's not one of his more recognisable works.
(Hey swa: Does the story "Dragons in Manhattan" appear in a book called _Girl Goddess #9,_ by any chance?)
Yes, that would be the one... (You *know* it? I wasn't just throwing wildly obscure stuff out there?)
I'll input some text soon (like by Sunday -- Gareth's graduation party/open house/birthday party/going away party is Saturday!).
(I read _Girl Goddess #9_ years ago, and it actually made a pretty big impression on me. I couldn't for the life of me remember the author's name.)
<i looks around, wondering>
Yoo hoo, anderyn. New quote please?
Ohkay. This is from a favorite book of mine. Damerel rode slowly back to the Priory, for a considerable part of the way with a slack rein, allowing the gray to walk. The frown did not lift from his brow: rather it deepened: and it was not until Crusader, startled by the sudden uprising of a pheasant, stopped dead, throwing up his head and snorting that he was thrown out of his abstraction. He admonished Crusader, but leaned forward to pat his neck as well, because he knew the fault was his. "Old fool!" he said. "Like your master -- who is something worse than a fool. *Would she could make of me a saint, or I of her a sinner--* Who the devil wrote that? You don't know, and I've forgotten, and in any event it's of no consequence. For the first part it's too late, old friend, too late! And for the second -- it was precisely my intention, and a rare moment this is to discover that if I could, I would not! *Come* up!" Crusader broke into a trot, and was kept to it, until, rounding a bend in the lane that brought the main gates of the Priory within view, Damerel saw a solitary horseman, walking his horse, and ejaculated: "Damn the boy!"
Some cautions -- the odd punctuation is in the edition I'm using here at work, and I don't recall it in the original. The */* are to indicate quotations or italics.
Hmmm. I've read that. But can't quite recall where. Mercedes Lackey maybe?
No. Not Lackey. But an interesting guess!
You know, I think I haven't read that. The names and situation sounded familar, but on second reading, the voice doesn't. Lackey was a long shot based on people with funny names talking to horses.
This author is slightly earlier in the century than Lackey.
So, its is between zero and eight months ago when it was written?
Oh. Well, in THAT case...:-) LAST century... early.
I also feel that I've read it, but think I probably haven't. <sigh> *My* wild (**WILD**) guess is Ellis Peters. I'm fairly sure that's wrong.
Definitely wrong, but you've got roughly the right era/nationality.
Tanith Lee?
<clears throat>
<clears throat LOUDLY;>
(Since this is the summer mysterious quote item, and it is no longer in Agora, the throat-clearing may be going unheard.)
Well, it's the most recent one in the Books conference, where I read it, too.
Maybe somebody should start a new one.
You have several choices: