132 new of 224 responses total.
Nope. One more.
"English was not taught in Zembla before Mr. Campbell's time. Conmal
mastered it all by himself (mainly by learning a lexicon by heart) as a
young man in 1880, when not the verbal inferno but a quiet military
career seemed to open before him, and his first work (the translation
of Shakespeare's _Sonnets_) was the outcome of a bet with a fellow
officer. He exchanged his frogged uniform for a scholar's dressing
gown and tackled _The Tempest_. A slow worker, he needed half a
century to translate the works of him whom he called "dze bart," in
their entirety. After this, in 1930, he went on to Milton and other
poets, steadily drilling through the ages, and had just completed
Kipling's "The Rhyme of the Three Sealers" ("Now this is the Law of the
Muscovite that he proves with shot and steel") when he fell ill and
soon expired under his splendid painted bed ceil with its reproductions
of Altamira animals, his last word in his last delirium being "Comment
dit-on 'mourir' en englais?" -- a beautiful and touching end."
Anyone mention Kipling yet?
Yes, but not in relation to this quote.. :-)
In one of the quotes, the author says that he's a lousy poet. Would Kipling have said that?
Heh...
I had not read this either, so I looked it up. I only read one of his books, and I would be surprised if most of us had not read that one at some point beyond high school.
Last quote: "_Dim Gulf_ was my first book (free verse); _Night Rote_ Came next; then _Hebe's Cup_, my final float In that damp carnival, for now I term Everything "Poems" and no longer squirm. (But *this* thransparent thingum does require Some moondrop title. Help me, Will! _Pale Fire_.)"
Vladimir Nabokov.
And we have a winner!
Yah, Nabokov's Pale Fire. The prose is by Charles Kinbote and the poetry is by John Shade. Here's a review I wrote of it recently: Once upon a time, a judge named Goldsworth who lived in the college town of New Wye, Appalachia, sent a homicidal maniac named Jack Grey to an Institute for the Criminal Insane. But Grey escaped, and set out to find Judge Goldsworth and take revenge on him. When Grey arrived in New Wye, Goldsworth was away on sabbatical. Unfortunately, Goldsworth's nextdoor neighbor, a famous poet named John Shade, resembled Judge Goldsworth a bit. At the very moment Jack Grey arrived at the Goldsworth house, Shade was on his way there. Thinking Shade was the judge, Grey opened fire on the unfortunate poet, killing him instantly with a bullet through the heart. The reason Shade was at Goldsworth's house was that the man who was temporarily renting it while the judge was away, a Russian emigre named Vseslav Botkin, had lured him there with promises of liquor. (Shade was on the wagon, or at least trying.) Now this Vseslav Botkin was insane. After leading a dismal life of pederasty and persecution he had retreated into a desperate fantasy in which he imagined himself to be Charles the Beloved, last king of the kingdom of Zembla. In Botkin's paranoid world, the extremists had taken over Zembla and King Charles was forced to flee to America, where he changed his name to Charles Kinbote and found a teaching job at Wordsmith University, in New Wye. Botkin believed that Grey was actually an incompetent assassin sent by the extremists to murder King Charles (i.e., him), but who murdered John Shade by accident. The fantasies of this lunatic might be of little interest to the rest of the world, except for one thing. Botkin had been confiding his Zembla fantasies to John Shade in the hope that Shade would bring them to life in an epic poem. And in fact, Shade had been hinting to Botkin that he was writing a long poem, which Botkin crazily assumed would be his Zembla poem. On that fateful afternoon, Botkin had induced Shade to bring the almost-finished manuscript of the poem to Goldsworth's house, where Botkin (as he believed) would finally see his Zembla come to life. When the police had left and Botkin was alone at last with "his" poem, he was horrified to find that it had nothing at all to do with Zembla. It was an autobiographical poem addressed to the poet's beloved wife, whom Botkin despised, as he despised all women. The poem was very personal, containing many intimate details of the poet's marriage. It is doubtful, in fact, whether Shade ever meant to publish it. Undeterred, Botkin absconded with the manuscript to a motel room in a mountain town in the far west where he proceeded to write a long series of notes to the poem in which, taking off from a phrase here and a word there in Shade's poem, he detailed his "Zembla" fantasy. He even managed to find an unscrupulous publisher. The resulting book -- Shade's poem "Pale Fire" together with Botkin's preface, table of contents, notes and index -- comprise the novel _Pale Fire_, by Vladimir Nabokov. It is an artifact of the fictional world of Nabokov's novel, created by two of Nabokov's characters, that has somehow escaped from the fictional world into our "real" world. With the possible exception of a copy of _Alice in Wonderland_ autographed by Alice Liddell herself that I once held in my hands, it is the strangest book I have ever seen in my life. It is also filled with puzzles and paradoxes. From something as simple as the location of New Wye (somewhere in the hills of western Virgnia, judging from the butterflies that fly there), to whether the kingdom of Zembla actually exists in the fictional world of the novel (apparently not -- only where did that little Zemblan translation of Timon of Athens come from?), to the identity and motives of Shade's murderer, nothing in _Pale Fire_ is easy or obvious. Things get so complicated, in fact, that you start to wonder if maybe Nabokov didn't outsmart himself in this one. I still don't know. I do know that _Pale Fire_ is a masterpiece that deserves all the praise it gets.
Yep, I've verified it. I'd been assuming that md was quoting from a work of non-fiction. Instead, it was from the fictitious diary in Nabokov's _Pale Fire_ (which I haven't read, I'm ashamed to confess). Assuming that md certifies my guess as correct, I'll post a new quote soon, hopefully later today.
(Md's review in #102 slipped in. Very interesting. Now I'm motivated to read the book. I'll be posting a new quote soon. Stay tuned.)
I did a WWW search on one of Mike's quotes, and got the name of Nabokov. I assume you're not supposed to answer the quotes that way and so didn't answer it. I'd never heard of Nabokov.
re #105: Quick! Someone get md some smelling salts..
Hey, I bet he's heard of _Lolita_.
Heh, I was contemplating guessing Nabokov based solely on the fact that it was md posting. :)
Nabokov -- and md by default -- is a paedophile.
Zembla sounds a lot like the Russian word for land/country (with a b thrown in to make it easier for Americans to pronounce).
Right.. It put me in mind of Novaya Zemla in the Arctic Ocean.
"Nova Zembla" is what Botkin/Kinbote imagined the "extremists" called Zembla after they took it over. It is most certainly a version of Novaya Zemlya.
Okay, ready or not, here comes the next Mysterious Quote:
Haven't you heard about the new truant officer?
Nobody knows [who he is]. He wears disguises. All
the kids say he's so slick he can see around two
corners. Thirty kids played hooky from Bugmont
School last week, and he caught every one of them.
That's enough for me!
Jim Carroll
Not Jim Carroll.
Only one guess in twenty-four hours. Okay, I'll give a hint and
another quote.
Hint: This popular works of this prolific author, originally marketed
to children, later became widely admired by adults.
Next quote:
Fox hunting! Of all the asinine, stupid,
crazy, *useless* sports in the world, fox
hunting is the worst. That's why I thought
of you. If there is any member of the [name
omitted] family that is ideally suited for fox
hunting, you're it! His lordship is staging a
mass fox hunt at his estate tomorrow. I told
him you'd be there to bring in the first fox.
(Note: The first quote is in resp:113)
(Should've be "The popular works..." in the response above.)
Judy Blume? haha. I know *that* one is a long shot!
Not Judy Blume. Our author's active period is somewhat earlier.
Sounds almost like a Jeeves and Bertie line.
Hm, perhaps so. But I notice that you're not going so far as to guess explicitly that the author is P. G. Wodehouse. Good thing too, as you'd be wrong. :)
A.A. Milne?
I wasn't going to go for the gold, because I have no quote to offer should I get it. But guessing is fun anyway.
I'm reading the quotes and thinking, but I don't have a guess yet.
Not A.A. Milne. Our author is American.
Here's another quote:
I have startling news this evening, listeners. News from
the vast reaches of outer space. Our latest satellite,
orbiting the earth over two thousand miles out, has sent
back the most amazing pictures ever seen. It peeked
around the edge of the moon from away out at the apogee
of it's swing, and what do you think it saw? Another
moon! Another moon that hides in the dark sky beyond
our regular moon. The moon is smaller than our regular
moon, but -- oh brother! Is it rich! It's not
a *silvery* moon -- it's a *golden* moon! Scientists
checked its spectrographs and verified that it is...
TWENTY-FOUR CARAT SOLID GOLD!
Isaac Asimov
Interesting guess, but not Asimov.
Another hint: The author's most creative period extended from the early
1940s to around 1960.
Another quote:
Two thousand years ago, a Mayan ruler tossed his crown
into a "well of sacrifice."
"We must appease the angry gods. They made the
mountains rain fire on our city. Perhaps our
jewels and groceries will soothe them."
But the gods stayed grumpy, and the great Mayan city
slowly became a deserted ruin. Soon no one could tell
that a city once stood by the dark pool that had been
a "well of sacrifice."
Steinbeck?
Not Steinbeck.
H. Allen Smith?
Not H. Allen Smith.
I can't emphasize enough how popular this author's works were. I've
been unsuccessful so far in tracking down sales figures, but I'd guess
that the original editions sold in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps
millions. And this author turned out a *lot* of stuff.
Another hint: The author is deceased.
Another quote:
Ladywimmin an gints, I never expected to see this here
gold agin, so I'm gonna do a right handsome thing with
it! I'm gonna spend the WHOLE MILLION for MORE PENICILLIN
for these brave boys to fly to more sick Eskimos!
L. Frank Baum
Not Baum. He died in 1919, long before penicillin and orbiting satellites.
Robert Heinlein
Not Heinlein.
Fred Allen?
Walt Kelly?
Not Walt Kelly, but that's the best guess so far. Work by Kelly
and our author originally appeared in some of the same publications.
Note the preoccupation with wealth, power, and far-flung locales in
several of the quotes so far. Those are characteristic of this
author.
Two more quotes:
Quote #1:
Night! Mysterious figures rise from the center of the
water hole. The Raiders of No Issa! Watertight covers
are removed from guns. Breechlocks click. The raid is
on!
Quote #2:
"Turn southward, [name omitted]! I've decided that I shall
be the owner of North America! ... I CAN OWN North America!
This map and the helmet are my deed to the continent! ...
I'll run the country for the benefit of the MUSEUMS!
Everybody will have to go to a museum TWICE a day!"
Hmmm, I had been thinking that this might be a cartoonist.
What, like Carl Barks?
*Exactly* like Carl Barks. Excellent! We have a winner. Carl Barks wrote and drew most of the "duck stories" (Donald Duck and associated characters) that appeared in Walt Disney comic books from the early 1940s until his retirement in 1965. He created Scrooge McDuck, Gladstone Gander, the Junior Woodchucks, and the Beagle Boys. The quotes above are from Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck stories originally published from the late 1940s through the late 1950s in ten-cent Walt Disney comic books. They range in length from ten-page Donald Duck stories in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories magazine to longer adventure pieces with titles like "Crown of the Mayas" and "The Golden Helmet" in the Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge magazines. In my opinion, althought his name is not as well known, Barks' artistic and narrative abilites were comparable to those of Walt Kelly, who also worked for Disney as an animator (Kelly's name is in the "Dumbo" credits) and comic book illustrator during the 1940s. Kelly broke free of Disney with his "Pogo" character, first in comic book form, then as the classic newspaper strip. At that point, he got to sign his work, and his name became known to the public at large. Barks, by contrast, remained in the Disney stable and thus had to work anonymously - artists and writers for Disney comic books didn't get to claim any credit for their work in those days. As a result, he developed a large collection of fans who loved his stuff and recognized it as distinctly superior to that of other cartoonists writing and drawing duck stories, but who had no idea who he was and who referred to him simply as "the good artist". Soon before or after Barks' retirement from Disney, some persistent fans managed to uncover his identity. After that he became a frequent guest at comic book conventions, his duck stories were reprinted and anthologized, and the original comic books containing his work became valuable collectors items (a mint-condition copy of a 1940s comic book containing a Barks story would probably sell for thousands of dollars today). In his later years he turned out a series of oil "duck paintings" based on the original stories that themselves are now collectors items commanding high prices. A few years ago, when he was in his 90s, he was guest of honor at an elaborate celebration of his work at one of the Disney theme parks. Belated, but much deserved, recognition. Barks died in 2000 at the age of 99. Barks' stories do tend to exhibit adherence to a formula - typically some sort of adventure in an exotic land and involving a long lost treasure. In his later years, Barks remarked that if he'd known that there would be any kind of long term interest in his work, he'd have put more effort into varying his plots. Okay. Bhoward guessed it, so he's up for the next quote.
But who, I wonder, was the creative force behind "Donald in Mathemagic-Land"? (hmm. Google to the rescue again..)
Dunno, but probably not Barks. Doesn't seem like his style.
Donald in Mathemagic Land was one of my favoriets.
No fair, Lawrence tricked me into blurting that out :-) Excuse me while I rummage for an interesting quote. Unfortunately, I'm at work so you'll just have to wait until (your) tomorrow morning.
It's been a week of tomorrows, and no quote yet, so into the breach
again....
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Death before forty's no bar. Lo!
These had accomplished their feats:
Chatterton, Burns, and Kit Marlowe,
Byron and Shelley and Keats.
Death, the eventual censor,
Lays for the forties, and so
Took off Jane Austen and Spenser,
Stevenson, Hood, and poor Poe.
You'll leave a better-lined wallet
By reaching the end of your rope
After fifty, like Shakespeare and Smollett,
Thackeray, Dickens, and Pope.
Try for the sixties--but say, boy.
That's when the tombstones were built on
Butler and Sheridan, the play boy
Arnold and Coleridge and Milton.
Three score and ten--the tides rippling
Over the bar; slip the hawser.
Godspeed to Clemens and Kipling,
Swinburne and Browning and Chaucer.
Some staved the debt off but paid it
At eighty--that's after the law.
Wordsworth and Tennyson made it,
And Meredith, Hardy, and Shaw.
But Death, while you make up your quota
Please note this confession of candor--
That I wouldn't give an iota
To linger till ninety, like Landor.
(thanks polygon...I've been a bit distracted this week preparing for a trip back to the states)
Hm.... Shaw died in 1950, so the quote has to postdate that. So we're talking about a latter-20th-century author who wrote at least some humorous verse. Odgen Nash comes to mind, but it doesn't sound much like Nash. It scans too well. Wild (and probably wrong) guess: Richard Wilbur.
(By the way, I assume that the "Landor" referenced in the quote is Walter Savage Landor. His dates were 1775-1864, so it looks like he didn't quite make it to ninety, contrary to what the quote says.)
Not Ogden Nash. Not Richard Wilbur. But yes, an American.
And unlike Landor, the author of the quoted lines did not live to ripe age.
And oh -- an understandable error. Apparently George Bernard Shaw was living when this was written. The poem predates 1950.
Hm, the poem's misleading then, as it implies that Shaw had already "paid the debt", which I took to mean had "passed on". Shaw was born in 1856, so if he was in his 80s when the poem was written, that would put the date no earlier than the mid-1930s. If it's also pre-1950, that narrows it down to a span of no more than 14 or 15 years. Okay, an American author active in the 1930s and/or 1940s. I'll ponder some more...
Reminds me of Samuel Hoffenstein.
I'm not clear whether it's clear that George Bernard Shaw was Irish, not American...
It's clear to me. But polygon said that the author (who is not Shaw) is American.
Ah. Point.
Re 153. Yes, the poem was first published when Shaw was in his 80s. Re 154. Not Samuel Hoffenstein. Re 155-57. Not George Bernard Shaw. The author's most famous work (and it is very famous) is in prose, not poetry. I did not realize the author was also a published poet until I found this poem. A Google search found references to other poetry.
Fitzgerald?
Re 159. Bingo! F. Scott Fitzgerald is the author. The poem was first
published in The New Yorker in 1937. Fitzgerald himself died in his 40s.
Though refereces to the title ("Obit on Parnassus") can be found in
Google, the text of the poem does not appear to be online.
Interesting. I didn't know that Fitzgerald was a poet either.
There are only sixty or so Fitzgerald poems - how could you know? http://libweb.princeton.edu/libraries/firestone/rbsc/aids/fitzgerald/
Heh. That was a total lucky guess. I didnt realize that Fitzgerald was a poet either. Go figure. I have a really cool quote but I am not at home (where the book is) so I'll have to enter it later.
heck, just paraphrase it!
That'd make it harder to google..
see?!
Ok, here is my quote...
"We all four of us been workin together, day in and day out for , oh
lord, I don t know how long. We done raised crops and chilren together,
done kept that brick house so clean you could eat off the floors. But
like Letta always says, who wanna eat off a floor?
You think somebody gonna throw us a party for getting through
all this? No sir. You don t get no trophies for liven the life you born
into. It just be your job, and you lucky if you can do the work set out
in front of you and not fret if it seem puny. Maybe the Good Lord ain t
give us nothing but puny things. Little bitta things sparklin through
our days and nights. In the fields and in the mornin air, little bitta
things that if you blink your eye, they be gone and ain t never comin
back."
Toni Morrison
Not Toni Morrison
Langston Hughes.
Zora Neale Hurston?
al jolson?
Mark Twain?
John Steinbeck?
fred mertz?
Sounds like it could be from _The Color Purple_, so I'll guess Alice Walker.
Nope. None of the above. First Hint: This book was published within the last 10 years.
fred mertz posthumous?
"The Wind Done Gone" - Alice Randall?
(Mynxcat might just have it...)
Nope. Second Hint: A different book by the same author recently was made into a movie.
whore.
Ok, here is a different quote from the same author: "She stared at the phone. Her relationship with her mother had never been smooth, but this latest episode was disastrous. For the umpteenth time that week, [name deleted] punched the number of her parents home at Pecan Grove. For the first time, she actually let it ring through."
My guess is that it's an American author, probably female. Nonetheless I'll make a wild guess at a British author: Helen Fielding.
It is a female American author. Thus, it isnt Helen Fielding.
Okay, guess I get partial credit on that one. <remmers ponders further>
I'll answer on condition that I don't have to guess the next quote (final exam is in a week and a half and no time to research a fun quote until after I pass (or otherwise!)) Given the movie hint, my money is on Rebecca Wells.
Ann Tyler.
Hm... There have been some movies based on Ann Tyler novels, but I can't think of a recent one.
It's Rebecca Wells! The first quote I gave was from _Little Alters Everywhere_ and the second was from _Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood_ Bruce wins. But since he doesnt want to give the next quote, I guess it is open to anyone :)
THE LAWYERS, Bob, know too much.
They are chums of the books of old John Marshall.
They know it all, what a dead hand Wrote,
A stiff dead hand and its knuckles crumbling,
The bones of the fingers a thin white ash.
The lawyers know
a dead man's thoughts too well.
In the heels of the higgling lawyers, Bob,
Too many slippery ifs and buts and howevers,
Too much hereinbefore provided whereas,
Too many doors to go in and out of.
When the lawyers are through
What is there left, Bob?
Can a mouse nibble at it
And find enough to fasten a tooth in?
Why is there always a secret singing
When a lawyer cashes in?
Why does a hearse horse snicker
Hauling a lawyer away?
Darn - that style rings a bell...
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.?
Kipling?
Re 194. Not Kipling. Re 193. Not Holmes. Re 192. Not Bell.
(polygon comes to my rescue once again...thanks!)
The cynicism level in the quote suggests Ambrose Bierce.
Re 196. No problem. RE 197. Not Bierce. But, yes indeedy, a dead white American male.
Racist.
Wild guess, probably wrong: Don Marquis.
Re 200. Not Don Marquis. Another brief excerpt coming.
Hmm, this isn't the kind of excerpt I meant, but I can't resist: "Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work."
That's a very familiar quote. Is it Mencken?
IT's Pink Floyd.
Ben Franklin?
Re 203-205. Not Mencken, Pink Floyd, or Ben Franklin.
The quote in #202 was published in 1959. The author was living at the time.
Er, um, I'm not actually looking at the source, but it was some time in the 1950s anyway.
I'll hedge my bets and say Pink Floyd.
If Larry hadn't said that the author was male, I'd guess Dorthy Parker.
Something about these quotes reminds me of Ezra Pound. So I'll guess him.
I think I need another hint.
Jack Kerouac?
Actually, I've decided that this isn't Ezra Pound after all. Can I withdraw my guess? (Just can't picture Pound calling anyone "Bob". Nor complaining about paying attention to what dead people had to say.)
I say it's Pink Floyd.
Not Dorothy Parker, Ezra Pound, or Jack Kerouac. I'll post some of his prose soon.
Okay, while I look for the book I have in mind, here's another poem by the
same author (after the dashed line below).
I am VERY surprised that nobody has guessed this one yet. I left out the
final lines of the first poem because I thought it would be TOO obvious.
The following is a complete poem.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Bricklayer Love
I thought of killing myself because I am only a bricklayer
and you a woman who loves the man who runs a drug store.
I don't care like I used to; I lay bricks straighter than I
used to and I sing slower handling the trowel afternoons.
When the sun is in my eyes and the ladders are shaky and the
mortar boards go wrong, I think of you.
Burroughs
Re 218. Not Burroughs.
shit...uh...frank o'hara?
Re 220. Not Frank O'Hara.
Another quote then? Or hint? Please?
(Quotes so far from the current guest writer are in #191, #202 and #217.)
Yes, yes, I'm trying to find a sample from the author's voluminous prose works, none of which seem to be online. I'll try to get one posted today.
You have several choices: