95 new of 98 responses total.
This sounds like James Thurber.
eagar allen poe
Could be anybody. Edith Wharton?
Not Thurber, not Poe, not Wharton.
James Branch Cabell? I could swear I've read this thing, but I just don't know. It's really a bit unlike Cabell, but it could be his, & I can't think of anyone better to guess.
Not Cabell. Hint: 19th century author.
Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Tu Madre
Not Hawthorne, not, um, Madre. I'll post another quote by this author shortly.
John Buchan?
Yay! The Mystery Quote is back! I'll guess Emily Bronte.
Not Buchan, not Bronte. A further hint: The author is male
and wrote two of the best-known short stories in the English
language.
Here's another quote:
Hard by the farm-house was a vast barn, that might have
served for a church; every window and crevice of which
seemed bursting forth with the treasures of the farm; the
flail was busily resounding within it from morning till
night; swallows and martins skimmed twittering about the
eaves; and rows of pigeons, some with one eye turned up, as
if watching the weather, some with their heads under their
wings, or buried in their bosoms, and others swelling, and
cooing, and bowing about their dames, were enjoying the
sunshine on the roof. Sleek unwieldy porkers were grunting
in the repose and abundance of their pens; whence sallied
forth, now and then, troops of sucking pigs, as if to snuff
the air. A stately squadron of snowy geese were riding in
an adjoining pond, convoying whole fleets of ducks,
regiments of turkeys were gobbling through the farm-yard,
and guinea fowls freeting about it, like ill-tempered
housewives, with their peevish doscontented cry. Before
the barn-door strutted the gallant cock, that pattern of a
husband, a warrior, and a fine gentleman, clapping his
burnished wings, and crowing in the pride and gladness of
his heart -- sometimes tearing up the earth with his feet,
and then generously calling his ever-hungry family of wives
and children to enjoy the rich morsel which he had
discovered.
I hesitate, because remmers may have made it way too easy now,
plus I have no quotes to enter: Washington Irving.
Hm, I wasn't aware I'd made it *that* easy, but you hit the bullseye. Washington Irving it is. First quote was from "The Spectre Bridegroom", second from "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". Jor's up. You sure you can't find a quote?
It would just be a repitition from my tired old stable.
Which would also make it obvious. If something comes up
I'll go ahead, in the mean time, someone please take my turn.
Anticipate charity by preventing poverty.
(Is that a new quote?)
It can be, if I'm not overstepping any boundaries.
You're fine as long as it's from a published work by an author who isn't hopelessly obscure. I'll take a wild stab and guess Lyndon Johnson (since he initiatied the "War on Poverty").
Hopelessly obscure? Well, I should hope that this author isn't that, but you will need to retreat much farther back in history than LBJ to find this quote, which is, btw, a translation.
Voltaire?
No, not Voltaire.
Moses Maimonides?
rca has it --- Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, also known by the acronym "Rambam" wrote that in the 12th century, in his _Guide_to_the_Perplexed_.
Ok: The shore road was "woodsy and wild and lonesome." On the right hand, scrub firs, their spirits quite unbroken by long years of tussle with the gulf winds, grew thickly. On the left were the steep red sandstone cliffs, so near the track in places that a mare of less steadiness than the sorrel might have tried the nerves of the people behind her. Down at the base of the cliffs were heaps of surf-worn rocks or little sandy coves inlaid with pebbles as with ocean jewels; beyond lay the sea, shimmering and blue, and over it soared the gulls, their pinions flashing silvery in the sunlight.
Tama Janowitz?
Not Tama Janowitz
Jack Kerouac?
help help hai
HAI!
I may be way off the mark, but somehow the quotation shares a vague ambiance with novels in the category ...La Maison aux pignons verts, but will need to do some checking before I begin theorizing regarding the author thereof.
Don't. You can guess as often as necessary, though it's considered proper to wait for at least one more response before guessing again.
not Jack Kerouac
Hm, I think R K Sawyer essentially has it in <resp:34>, although he doesn't name the author. Lucy Maud Montgomery.
re: 37: Lucy Maud Montgomery: ding The reason #34 didnt count is that we were looking for the author. go, remmers
Book was _Anne of Green Gables_ or the French title La Maison aux Pignons Verts
I'll try to scrounge up a quote sometime today or tomorrow.
Ok, here goes with a new quote:
This house is back to its beginnings now. Lonely
boarders thumb through magazines in the kitchen while
they wait for their canned soup to heat. The
television runs nearly all night, hissing its test
pattern to a fat man asleep in an armchair. There are
yellowed newspapers stacked on the window seat and
candy wrappers in the ashtrays, and this morning when I
cam down to breakfast I removed a pair of dirty socks
from the bottom stairstep and laid them on the newel
post, where I suspect they will stay forever.
The house is the same but the street is changing.
Getting younger. Old people are dwindling. The few
that are left pick their way down the sidewalk like
shadows, whispering courage to themselves and clutching
their string shopping bags full of treasure. There
goes the lame lady who lives above the grocery store in
a room full of cats and birds and goldfish. There goes
our boarder Mr. Houck, who thins himself to a pencil
line when passing a black harmonica player. Miss
Cohen, with her widowed mother. The bald man with the
ivory-handled cane. All flinching beneath the cool
eyes of the boy in dungarees who sits on a stoop
fiddling with his ropes of colored beads.
Two days and no guesses. Nobody wants to take a stab at this?
Probably wrong, but I'll guess F. Scott Fitzgerald
Not Fitzgerald, but like him, the author is American.
Anne Tyler?
Darn! Right you are. Nice going. The quote is from Anne Tyler's _Celestial Navigation_. Gloria's up.
Okay - here it is. I'll be out of town for a few days and won't be back
until sometime Monday. I'll check the responses then so guess away.
Arriving at the last house, my knock at the door was
answered by a bright, good natured, good looking little
woman, who in reply to my request for a night's lodging
and food, said, "Oh, I guess so. I think you can stay.
Come in and I'll call my husband." But I must first
warn you," I said, "that I have nothing smaller to offer
you than a five-dollar bill for my entertainment. I don't
want you to think that I am trying to impose on your hos-
pitality."
She then called her husband, a blacksmith, who was at work
at his forge. He came out, hammer in hand, bare-breasted,
sweaty, begrimed, and covered with shaggy black hair. In
reply to his wife's statement, that this young man wished
to stop over night, he quickly replied, "That's all right;
tell him to go into the house." He was turning to go back
to his shop, when his wife added, "But he says he hasn't
any change to pay. He has nothing smaller than a five-
dollar bill." Hesitating only a moment, he turned on his
heel and said, "Tell him to go into the house. A man that
comes right out like that beforehand is welcome to eat my
bread."
I'll open the guessing with Mickey Spillane! (Somehow I doubt that's right, but nothing ventured nothing gained.)
Hmmm. Not Spillane. Perhaps another quote would be in order before
I leave:
When he came in after his hard day's work and sat down to
dinner, he solemnly asked a blessing on the frugal meal,
consisting solely of corn bread and bacon. Then, looking
across the table at me, he said, "Young man, what are you
doing down here?" I replied that I was looking at plants.
"Plants? What kind of plants?" I said, "Oh, all kinds;
grass, weeds, flowers, trees, mosses, ferns -- almost
everything that grows is interesting to me."
The setting appears to be 19th century American, but the language sounds 20th century. So I'd guess this is a fairly recent work of historical fiction. No real clue as to the author though.
As a semi-related issue, for how long have their been five-dollar bills? (and where did we come up with the word "dollar", anyway?)
(that's a toughie, it's so obscure,
check out Dutch/German "taler")
(there's even a Sanskrit root)
(But who chose or made up "dollar" and why?)
Main Entry: dol7lar Pronunciation: 'dd-l&r Function: noun Usage: often attributive Etymology: Dutch or Low German daler, from German Taler, short for Joachimstaler, from Sankt Joachimsthal, Bohemia, where talers were first made Date: 1553
"dol7lar"? "'dd-l&r"?
Hint: Author is known for his journals and memoirs - not fiction.
remmers is sort of close on the time period. Another quote:
About noon my road became dim and at last vanished among
desolate fields. Lost and hungry, I knew my direction
but could not keep it on account of the briers. My path
was indeed strewn with flowers, but as thorny, also, as
mortal ever trod. In trying to force a way through these
cat-plants one is not simply clawed and pricked through
all one's clothing, but caught and held fast. The toothed
arching branches come down over and above you like cruel
living arms, and the more you struggle the more desperately
you are entangled, and your wounds deepened and multiplied.
The South has plant fly-catchers. It also has plant man-
catchers.
After a great deal of defensive fighting and strugggling I
escaped to a road and a house, but failed to find food or
shelter. Towards sundown, as I was walking rapidly along a
straight stretch in the road, I suddenly came in sight of
ten mounted men riding abreast. They undoubtedly had seen
me before I discovered them, for they had stopped their horses
and were evidently watching me. I saw at once that it was
useless to avoid them, for the ground thereabout was quite open.
I knew that there was nothing for it but to face them fearlessly,
without showing the slightest suspicion of foul play. Therefore,
without halting for a moment, I advanced rapidly with long strides
as though I intended to walk through the midst of them. When I
got within a rod or so, I looked up to their faces and smilingly
bade them "Howdy." Stopping never an instant, I turned to one
side and walked around them to get on the road again, and kept
` on without venturing to look back or to betray the slightest
fear of being robbed.
After I had gone about one hundred or one hundred and fifty
yards, I ventured a quick glance back, withot stopping, and
saw in this flash of an eye that all the ten had turned their
horses toward me and were evidently talking about me; supposedly,
with reference to what my object was, where I was going, and
whether it would be worth while to rob me. They all were mounted
on rather scrawny horses, and all wore long hair hanging down on
their sholders. Evidently they belonged to the most irreclaim-
able of the guerilla bands who, long accustomed to plunder,
deplored the coming of peace. I was not followed, however,
probably because the plants projecting from my plant press made
them believe that I was a poor herb doctor, a common occupation
in these mountain regions.
Nothing much happening here. A giant hint: A President was so impressed with this author's writing that the two of them got together and formed a new part of government. Author is not obscure. Ann Arbor Public Library has 12 books under his name.
OK, I'll bite. Who is (was) John Muir?
(Scott's been watching Jeopardy.) Upton Sinclair?
I think Scott might have it.
Now, if it had been the passage by Muir of climbing a tree to better enjoy a thunderstorm....
John Muir it is. Scott's up. All quotes were taken from A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf. The book records Muir's trek in 1867 from Indiana across Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida to the Gulf Coast. He was 29 yrs. old at the time.
Hmmm.. I'd considered John Muir but not guessed him because of the apparent setting of the passages you chose..
OK, here we go:
"Where te start? With a death sentence, perhaps. But whose--my death
sentence or hers? And if mine, which of mine? There are several from which
to choose. Perhaps this final one is appropriate. Begin at the ending.
I am writing this in a Schrodinger cat box in high orbit around the
quarantined world of Armaghast. The cat box is not much of a box, more of
a smooth-hulled ovoid a mere six meters by three meters. It will be my entire
world until the end of my life. Most of the interior of my world is a spartan
cell cosisting of a black-box air-and-waste recycler, my bunk, the
food-synthesizer unit, anarrow counter that serves as both my dining table
and writing desk, and finally the toilet, sink, and shower, which are set
behind a fiberplastic partition for reasons of propriety that escape me. No
one will ever visit me here. Privacy seems a hollow joke."
PK Dick?
Dan Simmons.
Jep is correct. It's from "Endymion", BTW. Should have been quite obvious to anyone who's read that serious.
Was to me.
Sorry about being slow about posting a new quote. Here it is: Came today [it read] a blob from Thuban VI. There is no other way in which one might describe it. It is simply a mass of matter, presumably of flesh, and this mass seems to go through some sort of rhythmic change in shape, for periodically it is globular, then begins to flatten out until it lies in the bottom of the tank, somewhat like a pancake. Then it begins to contract and to pull in on itself, until finally it is a ball again. This change is rather slow and definitely rhythmic, but only in the sense that it follows the same pattern. It seems to have no relation to time. I tried timing it and could detect no time pattern. The shortest period needed to complete the cycle was seven minutes and the longest was eighteen. Perhaps over a longer period one might be able to detect a time pattern, but I didn't have the time. The semantic translator did not work with it, but it did emit for me a series of sharp clicks, as if it might be clicking claws together, although it had no claws that I could see. When I looked this up in the pasimology manual I learned that what it was trying to say was that it was all right, that it needed no attention, and please leave it alone. Which I did thereafter.
Hmmm. I'll guess Ursula LeGuin.
Nope.
This sounds really familiar to me. I don't think it's Heinlein, but since jep and I are both Heinlein fans, I'll guess him.
Unfamiliar to me too. I'll guess James White, because he does this kind of thing, and I haven't read that much of his work.
Not Heinlein or James White. The book should be familiar to any long time science fiction fan. My reprinted copy, which I bought used, has a "True" cigarette ad in the middle. Here's another excerpt from the same book: They were, I gathered, a sexual unit, the five of them, although I am not certain I understand, for it is most confusing. They were happy and friendly and they carried with them an air of faint amusement, not at anything in particular, but at the universe itself, as if they might have enjoyed some sort of cosmic and very private joke that was known to no one else. They were on a holiday and were en route to a festival (although that might not be the precise word for it) on another planet, where other life forms were gathering for a week of carnival. Just how they had been invited or why they had been invited I was unable to determine. It must surely have been a great honor for them to be going there, but so far as I could see they did not seem to think so, but took it as their right. They were very happy and without a care and extremely self-assured and poised, but thinking back on it, I would suppose that they are always that way. I found myself just a little envious at not being able to be as carefree and gay as they were, and trying to imagine how fresh life and the universe must seem to them, and a little resentful that they could be, so unthinkingly, as happy as they were.
The style doesn't tell me anything, but I'm not much of an SF fan. Is it A. E. van Vogt?
It sounds familiar to me, too, but I can't quite place it.. Hmmmm..
Ah, OK. I believe that's from "Way Station" by Clifford D. Simak?
Mark has it, I think.
I think he does, too. Right you are, Mark! You're up next.
I just thought of that book the other day for some reason. I'll come up with a quote soon.
Soon?
Sorry - I have been tied up. Here's a quote: She led the way across the street to a big white frame house which sat well back from the road. We went around the house to the back, past a little sunken stone-walled garden, and through a hedge to a small barn that was used for a garage. Beside this sat a little portable wire pen. Attached to one end of the pen was a tiny wooden house with a tarpaper roof. Only one rabbit was in sight. It was out in the pen, nibbling away at part of a carrot.
James Herriot?
Not James Herriot.
Dick Francis? (... remembering one book in which rabbits being raised were significant)
Not Dick Francis. The author is American. I'll enter another quote soon.
Sorry to be so slow. Here's another quote: "Does it work?" I asked Mr. Marble. He nodded. "I've drilled a lot of wells where people have called dousers to pick the spot and I've got some very good wells. On the other hand, I've got some good wells where I've picked the spot by spitting." "How do you pick the spot by spitting?" "Well, you just spit someplace and then drill where you spit. However I don't claim as much for that method as the dousers do for theirs."
Does it really spell that word "dousers"?
Yes.
I have no idea at this point.
[startled md opens eyes and sits up in bed] Mr. and Mrs. John Smith!
Sorry I have neglected this item so badly. I will cede to someone else with better quotes.
Ooohh! I've finally got the perfect quote. Can I take it?
Coitainly.
I'll start a new item in Spring Agora.
Sorry again for blowing this off. I promise to do better next time I win.
Link the new item to Books?
Wait, wait! Aren't you going to tell us who it is? Must we remain in suspense forever?
(if Mark wins again, he can pick up where he left off.) :^)
You have several choices: