176 new of 215 responses total.
Oh, and howzabout a small clue, of sorts: I've read that the author in question was the highest-paid writer in the world during the 1930s.
W. Somerset Maugham
Hmph. Now how am I supposed to taunt people unnoticedly? Oh yeah, by net searching the next quote. >=}
Incidentally, the phrase I did a Yahoo search on was "stomach the heartiness" (in quotes. I figured there weren't an awful lots of writers who would use such phraseology, turns out I was right. Heh.
W.S.M. (#41) is correct. Congratulations.
Ok, here is my quote:
I was in the dark. Or at least in semidarkness. I always worked best
when the light in the booth was dim. So I was in this half-lit makeshift
booth, in the semidarkness except for a blue glow from my tiny reading
lamp. In the semidarkness, in the makeshift booth in the gray conference
hall on Lexington Avenue in New York City.
My colleague that day was a spotty Liverpudlian who had once put his
hand on my thigh while I was in the middle of a piece of simultaneous
translation. I had shifted my position and carried on translating from
French to English, spouting forth about the size and hue of tomatoes,
and managed after that to avoid his gaze for months. Other female
interpreters had reacted more aggressively to his clammy paws and had
complained to the International Interpreters' Association, but I had
said nothing. These days, for fear of being struck off he picked at his
skin and his cuticles rather than seeking out the thighs of his
colleagues.
"My Life as a Whore" by Martha Stewart?
nope. This book was written by a woman though.
Hmph, my meager net search failed... ah well, y'all will have to suss this out on your own. Just for kicks... Toni Morrisson? (Hey, I've got a better chance than happyboy =} )
I picked a book published just last month.
Random guess: Joyce Carol Oates. (She seems to publish a new book every month or so. ;-)
re resp 25: Russ, please direct yourself to item 4, poetry1.
Hmmm... the only real candidate at Amazon is Fielding; the subject matter doesn't seem right though.
Ok, here is another clue especially for the web searchers out there. There is a big hint about the title of this book in the quote I posted.
Ok, I guess this is too hard. I'll give the answer and post something from a different author tomorrow.
Yoo hoo, Ms Fremont - new quote, or hint, or something?
ooops. I am going to go with a more well known author. ok, here goes:
During the sixties, my father was the perfect hippie, since all the
hippies were trying to be Indians. Because of that, how could anyone
recognize that my father was tyring to make a social statement?
But there is evidence, a photograph of my father demonstrating in
Spokane, Washington, during the Vietnam war. The photograph made it onto
the wire service and was reprinted in newspapers throughout the country,
in fact, it was on the cover of Time.
In the photograph, my father is dressed in bell-bottoms and flowered
shirt, his hair in braids, with red peace symbols splashed across his
face like war paint. In his hands my father holds a rifle above his
head, captured in that moment just before he proceeded to beat the shit
out of the National Guard private lying prone on the ground. A fellow
demonstrator holds a sign that is just barely visible over my father's
left shoulder. It read MAKE LOVE NOT WAR.
(Hm, I'll have to think about that one. Who was the first author you gave, by the way?)
Sherman Alexie? (the newer one that is)
jesus that sounded familiar
The first author was Suzanne Glass. The book was _Interpreter: A Novel_ I tried to pick a passage that would hint at the title. Oh well, I had never heard of her either before I picked up her book at work. oddie has correctly guessed Sherman Alexie. That quote was from a short story called "Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play 'The Star-Spangled Banner' at Woodstock." which is found in the collection of short stories entitled, _The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven_.
ok, i haven't been on in a while to read what people thought of my
correcting the idea of quote vs paragraph. but it was more on the
thoughts, that this being a "poetry conference" that these would be
single line to double line quotes, obscure of course, from poems. not
paragraphs, not whole stanzas then.
a quote would be...
"Life for me ain't been no crystal stair"
-Mother to Son :by Langston Hughes
not...
"By glow of the tail light i stumbled back of the car
and stood by the heap, a doe, a recent killing;
she had stiffened already, almost cold.
i dragged her off; she was large in the belly."
-Traveling through the Dark :by William Stafford
and leave out normal fiction or non-fiction arts, if they are not in
fact poetry. that's my opinion in this matter. this is poetry. let's
have fun with poetry, ok?
No, this is books, so let's have fun with books. Actually, this item is in BOTH conferences. So it is going to have some characteristics (and characters ;) of both.
(poor Erinn.) :^)
#61> I'd agree with you if this weren't the only live item in this conference. Until Poetry picks up, let it be.
ignatz, in the header for this item there is the expression (linked item). This means that a conference fairwitness has brought the item into their conference. I know that this item, on mysterious quotes, is now linked between three conferenves - agora, books, and poetry ... and it *might* be linked with many more, if people using other conferences wish it. Therefore, one gets a rather eclectic group of participants in linked items. Historically, the Mysterious Quote began in agora a long time ago, and the presumption was that a "quote" was any exact transcription of any length from any writing.
*Actually*, this is in the agora conf, so let's have fun drifting about random crap. ;)
well i'm finding it under the poetry conf, so if you've got it linked through alot of stuff, then... "oops, my bad." enjoy your drifting...
(musta missed the series of "linked to/from" right before your first post about quoting.) :I
oh well...
It might help for linkers to post a response stating what was linked to what, after they do it. I don't recall that being done in this case, though it may have been, but I have noticed other links being created with no announcement.
resp:70 (resp:12 resp:13 resp:14 ... and you started it.) :P
ok, well yes i must have glossed over those... so it seems that i owe
an apology people holding this quote thingy.
however i still am going to argue the "quote" misconception.
""" the presumption was that a "quote" was any exact transcription of
any length from any writing. """
due to the fact that if a quote is an exact transcription of any
length, than a whole book, in theory, is a quote about itself.
this can not be however. look up in a thesaurus, and the word quote is
described in the following:
cite;excerpot;evaluate;review;price;rate;charge.
now, price;rat and charge have little or nothing to do with literature.
this is all for money concepts of the world.
but cite and excerpt are usually defined as (cite) refering to a
source, and (excerpt) a slight selection of.
evaluate can not mean quote here either, due to everyone having own
opinions about issues. such as my issue on the "quote" thing.
review, well this also is close to evaluate, however saying 'boy
watched dog run' would be a good review of "See Spot Run." and thus we
would have a differnt kind of game here.
the only time i think necessary to quote a whole paragraph would be
when someone is quoting spoken word.
i think of quote as a movie quote. a single to double sentenced line of
words or actions. but to make it any longer than that, would be only to
make things easier to figure out. but hey, that's my opinion. you don't
have to listen to it, think it over and possibly alter your rules, or
not. but i was once told, that if you never make yourself heard, then
no one will know what to think of you, for good or for bad.
do with it what you will. and again, i apologize for any incovience
i've been, and from here on out, i shall remain silent. (unless any one
feels i shouldn't be silent.) -ignatz_zwakh
2071
A thesaurus is not a dictionary. That's his opinion (as he says). I guess I should have inserted the word "selection" in my definition. Still, if someone wants to quote the *whole text* of something someone has written, then it is still a quote. The real significance of a "quote" is that it is an exact transcription, as opposed to a paraphrase or an abridgement (or, elaboration). When all else fails, we turn to the dictionary: "quote noun A quotation" (Aha! Now we are getting somewhere!) "quotation noun A passage from a book or writing, cited or adduced." (Now we need to know what a passage is.......) "passage noun A separate portion of a discourse, treatise, or writing: a clause, verse, paragraph, or similar division" (That does seem to narrow it down to less than the whole work, but what is a "similar division"? A chapter? A book?) Then, there is common usage. Here it means - a passage of any length that is tolerable to the participants in The Mysterious Quote.
<carson wonders if oddie has a new quote>
All right... I suspect that this is much too familiar to be a good quote for the game, but what the hell... I'm not saying I will, but I could go on for hours escorting the reader-- forcibly, if necessary--back and forth across the Paris-Chinese border. I happen to regard the Laughing Man as some kind of super-distinguished ancestor of mine--a sort of Robert E. Lee, say, with the ascribed virtues held under water or blood. And this illusion is only a moderate one compared to the one I had in 1928, when I regarded myself not only as the Laughing Man's direct descendant but as his only legitimate living one. I was not even my parents' son in 1928 but a devilishly smooth impostor, awaiting their slightest blunder as an excuse to move in--preferably without violence, but not necessarily--to assert my true identity. As a precaution against breaking my bogus mother's heart, I planned to take her into my underworld employ in some undefined byt appropriately regal capacity. But the *main* thing I had to do in 1928 was watch my step. Play along with the farce. Brush my teeth. Comb my hair. At all costs, stifle my natural hideous laughter.
Give it up, Ignatz, you're alone in this argument, and you're wrong. "Excerpt" has "slight" in its meaning as much as "quote" does: It doesn't. In fact, many magazines run "excerpts" of novels -- calling them that -- that generally constitute whole chapters, or chapter-length amounts.
That first sentence couldn't be anyone but Salinger, could it? I'm gonna guess that this is one of the Nine Stories that I've forgotten about.
bugger, I knew it was too easy. :-) Yes, it's "The Laughing Man," one of the less bizarre of the Nine Stories. Next time I'll have to find something more obscure. your turn...
It would be unjust, however, to represent his interest in Mrs. A as a matter of calculation. It was as instinctive as love, and it missed being love by just such a hair-breadth deflection from the line of beauty as had determined the curve of Mrs. A's lips. When they met she had just published her first novel, and G, who after ward had an ambitious man's impatience of distinguished women, was young enough to be dazzled by the semi-publicity it gave her. It was the kind of book that makes elderly ladies lower their voices and call each other "my dear" when they furtively discuss it; and G exulted in the superior knowledge of the world that enabled him to take as a matter of course sentiments over which the university shook its head.
sounds vaguely like Collete
Nope.
Looks like it's time for some prodding. I'll have a hint or a second quote this evening.
Here's another quote, from a bit of a better-known work: The first thing that passed was the long look they exchanged: searching on his part, tender, sad, undefinable on hers. As the result of it he said: "Why, then, did you consent to the divorce?" "To get the boy back," she answered instantly; and while he sat stunned by the unexpectedness of the retort, she went on: "Is it possible you never suspected? It has been our whole thought from the first. Everything was planned with that object." He drew a sharp breath of alarm. "But the divorce -- how could that give him back to you?" "It was the only thing that could. We trembled lest the idea should occur to you. But we were reasonably safe, for there has only been one other case of the same kind before the courts." She leaned back, the sight of his perplexity checking her quick rush of words. "You didn't know," she began again, "that in that case, on the remarriage of the mother, the courts instantly restored the child to the father, though he had -- well, given as much cause for divorce as my unfortunate brother?" D. gave an ironic laugh. "Your French justice takes a grammar and a dictionary to understand." She smiled. "_We_ understand it -- and it isn't necessary that you should." Both quotes have been from novellas by this author, whose more famous novels I've never actually gotten around to reading.
(I don't think people know this...)
I'm noticing that. More hints, or should I just hand the floor to someone else?
I'd go for hints before giving up.
Um. Okay. This is from an author who grew up fabulously wealthy in New York. She took up writing on her doctor's advice, to relieve the stress of her marriage. Apparently it didn't work, since she moved to France to escape from her husband, eventually got a divorce, and kept on writing, eventually making a name for herself as a novelist.
Edith Wharton?
Ding! Thank you!
cool! I've never gotten one right before. will have to go find something quoteable now, huh?
That's the concept, yes.
okey...sorry about the delay. could've sworn I had this book lying around; as it is I had to go look up the quote I wanted: "But the author of *Primrose Dalliance* said that with the Book of the Moment crows, what counted was Personal Pull--surely they remembered that Hepplewater had married Walter Strawberry's latest wife's sister. The author of *Jocund Day* agreed about the PUll, but though that in this instance it was political, because there was some powerful anti-Fascist propaganda in *Mock Turtle* and it was well known that you could always get old Sneep Fortescue with a good smack at the Blackshirts. "'But what's *Mock Turtle* about?' inquired Harriet. On this point, the authors were for the most part vague; but a young man who wrote humorous magazine stories and could therefore afford to be wide-minded about novels, said he had read it and thought it rather interesting, only a bit long. It was about a swimming instructor at a watering-place, who had contracted such an unfortunate anti-nudity complex through watching so many bathing-beauties that it completely inhibited all his natural emotions. So he got a job on a whaler and fell in love at first sight with an Eskimo, because she was such a beautiful bundle of garments. So he married her and brought her back to live in a suburb, where she fell in love with a vegetarian nudist. So the husband went slightly mad and contracted a complex about giant turtles, and spent all his spare time staring into the turtle-tank at the Aquarium, and watching the strange, slow monsters swimming significantly round in their encasing shells. But of course a lot of things come into it-it was one of those books that reflect the author's reactions to Things in General. Altogether, significant was, he thought, the word to describe it. Harriet began to feel that there might be something to be said even for the plot of *Death 'twixt Wind and Water.* It was, at least, significant of nothing in particular."
Dorothy L. Sayers!
(I believe that the quote is from _Gaudy_Night_, for what it's worth.)
right on both counts! (hmph. didn't think it was *that* easy.) <shrug>
Ack. And I actually quoted from that same book in the mystery quote before, but I didn't remember anything about nudist vegetarians. You'd think that would stick in my mind.
I thought it sounded vaguely like dorothy sayers, but for some reason that seemed too obvious of a choice.
Well, I'm pretty familiar with the book (though it's probably been a decade since I last read it). I have to admit that for the first bit I was muttering "I *know* this quote, but who is it?" ... until about the time the name "Harriet" appeared; I was getting it, but the name confirmed it. A quote should appear in due course. I don't have anything suitable at hand.
It *is* an excellent book quotewise. Very little of what I read these days is suitable for quoting: either too trite or too well-known. (Or too esoteric except that eeyore, flem, or swa is certain to recognize it, which defeats the whole purpose, eh?)
OK, here's the next quote. You may not be surprised to learn that it was
suggested, by association, by the last one. But the author is different -
and, I think, the parody more specifically pointed.
"Please permit me a slight digression. At College we
have a flourishing Musical Society, which in recent years has
grown in numbers to such an extent that it can now tackle the
less monumental symphonies. In the year of which I speak, it
was embarking on a very ambitious enterprise. It was going to
produce a new opera, a work by a talented young composer whose
name it would not be fair to mention, since it is now well-known
to you all. Let us call him Edward England. I've forgotten the
title of the work, but it was one of these stark dramas of tragic
love which, for some reason I've never been able to understand,
are supposed to be less ridiculous with a musical accompaniment
than without. No doubt a good deal depends on the music.
"I can still remember reading the synopsis while waiting
for the curtain to go up, and to this day have never been able
to decide whether the libretto was meant seriously or not.
Let's see--the period was the late Victorian era, and the
main characters were Sarah Stampe, the passionate postmistress,
Walter Partridge, the saturnine gamekeeper, and the squire's son,
whose name I forget. It's the old story of the eternal triangle,
complicated by the villager's resentment of change--in this case,
the new telegraph system, which the local crones predict will Do
Things to the cows' milk and cause trouble at lambing time.
"Ignoring the frills, it's the usual drama of operatic
jealousy. The squire's son doesn't want to marry into the Post
Office, and the gamekeeper, maddened by his rejection, plots
revenge. The tragedy rises to its dreadful climax when poor Sarah,
strangled with parcel tape, is found hidden in a mailbag in the
Dead Letter Department. The villagers hang Partridge from the
nearest telegraph pole, much to the annoyance of the linesmen.
He was supposed to sing an aria while he was being hung: _that_
is one thing I regret missing. The squire's son takes to drink,
or the Colonies, or both: and that's that.
"I'm sure you're wondering where all this is leading: please
bear with me for a moment longer. The fact is that while this
synthetic jealousy was being rehearsed, the real thing was going
on back-stage. Fenton's friend Kendall had been spurned by the
young lady who was to play Sarah Stampe. I don't think he was a
particularly vindictive person, but he saw an opportunity for a
unique revenge. Let us be frank and admit that college life _does_
breed a certain irresponsibility--and in identical circumstances,
how many of us would have rejected the same chance?
"I see the dawning comprehension on your faces. But we,
the audience, had no suspicion when the overture started on that
memorable day. It was a most distinguished gathering: everyone
was there, from the Chancellor downwards. Deans and professors
were two a penny: I never did discover how so many people had
been bullied into coming. Now that I come to think of it,
I can't remember what I was doing there myself.
"The overture died away amid cheers, and, I must admit,
occasional cat-calls from the more boisterous members of the
audience. Perhaps I do them an injustice: they may have been
the more musical ones.
(The quotation marks are in the original, as this is not narration but
a character's speech. There is no close quote because I did not reach
the end of the embedded quotation.)
Utterly wild guess, almost certainly wrong: Evelyn Waugh
Arthur C. Clark, _Silence Please_, (c)1954 Collected in _Tales from the "White Hart"_
Darn, Walter beat me by 2 hours.
Clarke (not Clark) is correct. Waugh is not.
It sounds more like Waugh than Clarke... Clarke is usually dry.
I may have to go track that down now, just to hear the end of the story...
I've enjoyed the tales from the White Hart, but I didn't recognise that one. I guess it's time to read them again. :)
Re #15: Paul - Tales from the White Hart is Clarke's explicit attempt to mix scifi with humor. Every story is a tale told in a bar about some dubious scientific achievement.
Joseph posted #15, way back in March, and it nothing at all to do with Clarke. ;} I may check it out. When I was a Fine Young Lad and read dry sci-fi, Clarke was on my regular reading list (as were Asimov, Heinlein, and Bradbury, not all of whom are dry all the time). Then I became an Angry Young Man and immersed myself in the works of Waugh, Parker, and Huxley. From Rama to Gaza in a handful of years.
{I forgot to change my name here, didn't I? Most folks call me "Joe."}
(Where you goin' with that gun in your hand?)
(s lark/larke/? - drat!) I've got a long weekend of family stuff coming up & may or may not manage to log in. Could someone who hasn't been up in a while take this and enter a quote?
(if no one minds, I'd like to post the next quote.)
Go for it.
The next morning he almost didn't get up at the sound of the pickup. He could feel, even before he came fully awake, how tired he still was. But May Belle was grinning at him, propped up on one elbow. "Ain't 'cha gonna run?" she asked. "No," he said, shoving the sheet away. "I'm gonna fly." Because he was more tired than usual, he had to push himself harder. He pretended that Wayne Pettis was there, just ahead of him, and he had to keep up. His feet pounded the uneven ground, and he thrashed his arms harder and harder. He'd catch him. "Watch out, Wayne Pettis," he said between his teeth. "I'll get you. You can't beat me." "If you're so afraid of the cow," the voice said, "why don't you just climb the fence?" He paused in midair like a stop-action TV shot and turned, almost losing his balance, to face the questioner, who was sitting on the fence nearest the old Perkins place, dangling bare brown legs. The person had jaggedy brown hair cut close to its face and wore one of those blue undershirtlike tops with faded jeans cut off above the knees. He couldn't honestly tell whether it was a girl or a boy. "Hi," he or she said, jerking his or her head toward the Perkins place. "We just moved in." --- (have at it.)
Heh. I thought I might have read this book and I have but since I had to do a web search to remember the title and author's name, I wont answer this time :)
(uh oh.) :^)
Hmmm. Zenna Henderson? 8-{)]
(not Zenna Henderson. the author is fairly prolific, but this is an excerpt from one of the author's better-known works. I'll work up another passage from the book tomorrow if no one has guessed by then.)
Katherine Patterson. _Bridge to Terebithia_ Damned fine book. (Even if I'm wrong.)
(you are right, Rebecca! you're up!)
(I'm going to have to think about this. I have a very strong impulse to quote one author in particular, but I think that'd be far too easy, and besides that individual is too much in people's minds just now. Mmmm... Tomorrow...)
(Why are we whispering?)
(re 122- Douglas Adams?)
(124 - No, Perry Como)
(re 125- he's not on my mind...)
damn! that book actually occurred to me. no idea why i didn't guess.
Oh, I should've gotten that. I really loved that book.
(Yeah, I meant Douglas Adams.)
Okay, new quote:
6. The Piazza Navona Flooded
What you have to remember when looking at a painting is this: nothing is
accidental. Maybe that seems obvious, and maybe it seems trivial, but it
isn't either one. If something is emphasized, the artist wanted it
emphasized. If something is played down, the artist wanted it played down.
Even more, if there is a wisp of bird off in one corner of he landscape, that
bird is there for a reason.
If the artist was Rossetti, the bird symbolizes freedom. If it was
Monet, he needed the splash of color. If it was Gericault, he wanted movement
in a an otherwise still scene. If it was Audubon, that's the subject of the
painting. If it was Thoma, he happened to see a bird there when he looked.
It takes an effort, an act of will, and physical movement of a physical
brush with paint on it, to put in that bird, whether you're James Whistler
and you spend six years on a wing, or you're Van Gogh and suggest "bird" with
one plunge if brush to canvas. It's there because the artist wanted it.
I don't always know exactly *why* I want something to be in the
painting, or why I want it a certain way. Sometimes I do, but sometimes it
just feels right. Then I have the pleasure of figuring out why just as you
do, after it's done.
Sometimes it isn't a pleasure -- I decide it was a mistake. But
usually, by that time, it's too late to change it. I could spnd my life
repainting mistakes I made that are so small I can't describe them but so big
I can't miss them.
Sometimes the whole piece is a mistake from the beginning, but I can't
know that, either, until it's done, and then, as before, it's too late.
Timing, that's what it is.
Bones?
That's a neat quote!
Thanks. One of my favorites, in fact.
(Reminds me of a painting I saw at Art Fair a year or so ago: a spider was squished on the inside edge of the door.)
Steven Brust, "The Sun, the Moon and the Stars". If you haven't read it, go get it; it's very good.
Ding ding ding ding ding. John's got it. And yes, go read it.
Here we go: Everyone agreed to this and that was how the adventures began. It was the sort of house that you never seem to come to the end of, and it was full of unexpected places. The first few doors they tried led only into spare bedrooms, as everyone had expected that they would; but soon they came to a very long room full of pictures, and there they found a suit of armour; and after that was a room all hung with green, with a harp in one corner; and then came three steps down and five steps up, and then a kind of little upstairs hall and a door that led out on to a balcony, and then a whole series of rooms that led into each other and were lined with books - most of them very old books and some bigger than a Bible in a church. And shortly after that they looked into a room that was quite empty except for one big wardrobe; the sort that has a looking-glass in the door. There was nothing else in the room at all except a dead bluebottle on the window-sill.
_The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe_ by CS Lewis
Yep. I was afraid that would be too easy. Oh, well. You're up!
Slowly it became clear to him that the stories of the white panther were indeed being told again; but what was remarkable was that they had begun to come from all over the country, in the bus-top bundles of gas-field workers returning form Needle and in the cartridge belts of rifle-toting tribesmen from the north. It was a large country, even without its East Wing, a land of wildernesses and marshy deltas studded with mangrove trees and mountain fastnesses and voids; and from every out-of-the-way corner of the nation, it seemed, the tale of the panther was travelling to the capital. Black head, pale hairless body, awkward gait.
I would have gotten it if slynne hadn't. The first sentence was a dead giveaway.
Likewise.
(uh, no one's gotten it yet.) (rumors and hunting, is it Joseph Conrad?)
I also would have gotten jep's, if I'd logged in soon enough.
I like blind stabs: King
Orson Scott Card?
It is not Joseph Conrad, King or Orson Scott Card. Here is a hint: This author is very well known but this quotation is not from his most well known work, a work that is mostly well known for political reasons.
Alan Paton?
Ginsberg? >=}
nope and nope.
Here is another passage from the same novel:
In the remote border town of Q., which when seen from the air
resembles nothing so much as an ill-proportioned dumb-bell, there once
lived three lovely, and loving, sisters. Their names...but their real
names were never used, like the best household china, which was locked
away after the night of their joint tragedy in a cupboard whose location
was eventually forgotten, so that the great thousand-piece service from
the Gardner potteries in Tsarist Russia became a family myth in whose
factuality they almost ceased to belive...the three sisters, I should
state without further delay, bore the family name of Shakil, and were
universally known (in decending order of age) as Chhunni, Munnee and
Bunny.
And one day their father died.
Neil Gaiman?
I don't have a good quote, but I'm still going to guess: George Orwell.
nope and nope I have a couple of hints I could give you but they would be too easy. I am trying to think of a medium hint but I'll give the easy hint in a couple of days for sure.
This is a bad guess, but since Joe did Orwell, we can't get much worse: Rand
I can think of two more possibilities, but I can only remember one name: Graham Greene. (I've a collection of his stories, but it never made it to the top of the "books to read" stack.)
No, but you guys are giving good guesses.
Ok, here is another hint: He was born in India.
Baba Ram Das?
(oh wait... he was born here... never mind. <grins>)
Kipling?
This book is a nice post-modernist piece of work. I hope that doesn't give it away! ;-)
(is it Deepak Chopra?)
VS Naipaul (sp?)
(Orwell served as a British officer in Southeast Asia; 'twas a memory of his tale of when he shot a "rogue" elephant that made me suggest him.)
I was actually going to guess this before the India and post-modern hints, when I really thought about the politics comment, but it does happen to fit the other clues: Salman Rushdie
Very good brighn! Your turn :)
woowoo =} I'll post something this evening, when I have a book handy.
(drat. good job, brighn.)
A strange yelping sound punctuated the din of the machine. Anthony opened his eyes again, and was in time to see a dark shape rushing down towards him. He uttered a cry, made a quick and automatic movement to shield his face. With a violent but dull and muddy impact, the thing struck the flat roof a yard or two from where they were lying. The drops of a sharply spurted liquid were warm for an instant on their skin, and then, as the breeze swelled up out of the west, startingly cold. There was a long second of silence. "Christ!" Anthony whispered at last. From head to foot both of them were splashed with blood. In a red pool at their feet lay the almost shapeless carcase of a fox terrier. The roar of the receding aeroplane had diminished to a raucous hum, and suddenly the ear found itself conscious again of the shrill rasping of the cicadas. Anthony drew a deep breath; then, with an effort and still rather unsteadily, contrived to laugh. "Yet another reason for disliking dogs," he said and, scrambling to his feet, looked down, his face puckered with disgust, at his blood-bedabbled blody. "What about a bath?" he asked, turning to Helen. She was sitting quite still, staring with wide-open eyes at the horribly shattered carcase. Her face was very pale and a glancing spurt of blood had left a long red streak that ran diagonally from the right side of the chin, across the mouth, to the corner of the left eye. "You look like Lady Macbeth," he said, with another effort at jocularity. "*Allons.*" He touched her should. "Out vile spot. This beastly stuff's drying on me. Like seccotine." For all answer, Helen covered her face with her hands and began to sob.
I'm not sure if the lack of guesses is due to the snafu of the system or, well, a lack of guessing. I'll post clues tomorrow if there haven't been any guesses
I'm quite sure I haven't read this quote, & think it very likely that I haven't read this author. My lack of guesses is due to that, as well as to my not having been on Grex for a few days.
I'd hope that somebody on Grex would've read this autho, though I doubt any have read the book in question. Confirming possible guesses based on the snippet: The author is British, and contemporary to the peak of existentialism in France (Sartre and Camus). An additional hint: Of his other book titles, one borrowed a line from Shakespeare while another was borrowed by a rock band.
I still have no clue.
that's not news. :)
Come on slynne...don't be so hard on yourself...and don't set yourself up liek that either ;-)
Ok, from the hard clues to the easy clues. I was going to quote the book everyone should have read (yes, that IS a moral imperative ;} ), but I can't find my copy of it, so in stead I'll explain the relevance of its title. While there are many titles based on Shakespeare quotes (including the couplet "By The Pricking of My Thumbs" [Christie] and "Something Wicked This Way Comes" [Bradbury]), this title was chosen in part because of one of the main plots bore a similarity to the plot of the Shakespearean play whence the title: A child of a "civilized" person is found, with thier parent, out in the savage wilds of the world and is brought back into civilization. The quote is ironic, both in Shakespeare's original, as well as the novel in question (easily the mystery author's most famous novel). The mystery author was famous as a writer in his own right, but he also had famous ancestors, including a colleague of Darwin's. I've mentioned in the past that I'm a fan of this author. If that doesn't do it, I'll have to start over with a different author. ;}
"colleague of Darwin's" = T.H. Huxley, ancestor of Aldous, who wrote Brave New World and The Doors of Perception. I pass.
(and also Eyeless in Gaza, from which the quote came) the floor is open to any entrant
Guess I'll go next. I feel morally justified, since I would
have guessed it also on the basis of brighn's hints in #174.
By a living American writer:
This incompatibility between classical color theory and
reality struck Goethe in the late eighteenth century.
Intensely aware of the phenomenal reality of colored
shadows and colored afterimages, of the effects of
contiguity and illumination on the appearance of
colors, of colored and other visual illusions, he
felt that these must be the basis of a color theory
and declared as his credo, "Optical illusion is
optical truth!" Goethe was centrally concerned with
the way we actually see colors and light, the ways in
which we *create* worlds, and illusions, in color.
This, he felt, was not explicable by Newton's physics,
but only by some as-yet unknown rules of the brain.
He was saying, in effect, "Visual illusion is
neurological truth."
Oh, I _read_ this one. I remember what class I read it for, but not which of the books it was in. I'm gonna guess Oliver Sacks' _The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat,_ since that's the only one whose author I remember, but I'm pretty sure that's not it.
Curse you! Oliver Sacks it is. Thought this would be harder. It's from _An Anthropologist on Mars_. But you're not required to guess the work, only the author, so you're up.
Each thought has a size, and most are about three feet tall, with the
level of complexity of a lawnmower engine, or a cigarette lighter, or those
tubes of toothpaste that, by mingling several hidden pastes and gels, create
a pleasantly striped product. Once in a while, a thought may come up that
seems, in its woolly, ranked composure, roughly the size of one's hall closet.
But a really *large* thought, a thought in the presence of which whole urban
centers would rise to their feet, and cry out with expressions of gratefulness
and kinship; a thought with grandeur, and drenching, barrel-scorning
catarsacts, and detonations of fist-clenched hope, and hundreds of cellos;
a thought that can tear phone books in half, and rap on the iron nodes of
experience until every blue girder rings; a thought that may one day pack
everything noble and good into its briefcase, elbow past the curators of
purposelessness, travel overnight toward Truth, and shake it by the
indifferent marble shoulders until it finally whispers its cool assent -- this
is the size of thought worth thinking about.
I have wanted for so long to own and maintain even a few huge,
interlocking thoughts that, having exhausted more legitimate methods, I have
recently resorted to theoretical speculation. Would it be possible to list
those features that, taken together, confer upon a thought a lofty
magnificence? What *makes* them so very large? My idle corollary hope is
that perhaps a systematic and rigorous codification, on the model of
Hammurabi's or Napoleon's, might make large thoughts available cheap, and in
bulk, to the general public, thereby salvaging the nineteenth-century dream
of a liberal democracy. But mainly I am hoping that once I can coax from
large thoughts the rich impulses of their power, I will be able to think them
in solitude, evening after evening, walking in little circles on the carpet
with my arms outspread.
The first paragraph sounds like it has to be Douglas Adams.
Interesting guess, but no. (Keep an eye on that first paragraph, though. It's hard to believe it, but it's the more typical of the two. This is an author who knows how to go overboard.)
I could also see Gaiman writing this
ditto. whoeevr wrote it, it sounds worth reading.
I'll guess Neal Stephenson then, though Scott just used him so that's probably wrong.
Tom Robins
could we get another hint here? this item seems to need a kickstart again.
Not Gaiman, Stephenson, or Robbins. This author seems to be best known for a very slightly notorious novel about phone sex, and for a few articles and a recent book in which he rants about library science. Eccentric tastes, I guess.
Too big a clue. Nicholson Baker.
Yeah, it probably was too big. Then again, I'd thought Baker's writing style would be too big a clue all by itself. Jan is up.
On the crest behind them I saw a sudden tumult of movement, and thought, ah, yes, those are mounted Sioux--by Jove, there are plenty of them, and tearing down like those Russians at Campbell's Highlanders. Lot of war-bonnets and lance-heads, and how hot the sun is, and me with no hat. Elspeth would have sent me indoors for one. Elspeth . . . "Hoo'hay, Lacotah! It's a good day to die! Kye-ee-kye!" "You bloody liars!" I screamed, and all was fast and furious again, with a hellish din of drumming hooves and screams and war-whoops and shots crashing like a dozen Gatlings all together, the mounted horde charging on one side, and as I wheeled to flee, the solid mass of red devils on foot racing in like mad things, clubs and knives raised, and before I knew it they were among us, and I went down in an inferno of dust and stamping feet and slashing weapons, with stinking bodies on top of me, and my right hand pumping the Bulldog trigger while I gibbered in expectation of the agony of my death-stroke. A moccasined foot smached into my ribs, I rolled away and fired at a painted face--and it vanished, but whether I hit it or not God knows, for directly behind it Custer was falling, on hands and knees, and whether I'd hit *him*, God knows again. He rocked ack on his heels, blood coming out from his mouth, and toppled over, and I scrambled up and away, cannoning into a red body, hurling my empty Bulldog at a leaping Indian and closing with him; he had a sabre, of all things, and I closed my teeth in his wrist and heard him shriek as I got my hand on the hilt, and began laying about me blindly. Indians and troopers were struggling all around me, a lance brushed before my face, I was aware of a rearing horse and its Indian rider grabbing for his club; I slashed him across the thigh and he pitched screaming from the saddle; I hurled myself at the beast's head and was dragged through the mass of yelling, stabbing, struggling men. Two clear yards and I hauled myself across its back, righting myself as an Indian stumbled under its hooves, and then I was urging the pony up and away from that horror, over grassy ground thatt was carpeted with still and writhing bodies, and beyond it little knots of men fighting, soldiers with clubbed carbines being overwhelmed by Sioux--but here was a guidon, and a little cluster of blue shirts that still fired steadily. I rode for them roaring for help, and they scrambled aside to let me through, and I tumbled out of the saddle into Keogh's arms. "Where's the General?" he yelled, and I could only shake my head and point dumbly at the carnage behind me.
Louis Lamour
_Little Men_, Louisa May Alcott
Not Louis Lamour. Not Louisa May Alcott.
"But I don't speak Danish, dammit!" "But you have a gift for languages, remember? In the few weeks available, you can be given a smattering. No more than that will be necessary, for His Highness speaks German indifferently well, as you will before you take his place. You have a tolerable fluency as it is." "But ... but ... well, how the devil do you propose that I *should* take his place? Go to Denmark, I suppose, and present suitable references! Balderdash!" "You need not go to Denmark. I have been in constant communication with Prince Carl Gustaf. Naturally, he does not know of our plan, but he does have great faith in me. One of the ministers I mentioned is in my employ. Through him, all has been arranged. The Prince will set out from Denmark when the time comes with his retinue; he has been led to believe I have found a way out of his difficulties. He is rather a simple fellow, although amiable, and supposes that I can arrange matters. In that belief he will come to Holstein, en route to Strackenz, and in Holstein the substitution will take place. The mechanics you may leave to me." It was like listening to some grotesque fairy-tale. The cool, precies way in which he told it was staggering. "But ... but this retinue -- his people, I mean...." "The minister who is my agent will accompany the Prince. His name is Detchard. With him at your side, you need have no fears. *And no one will suspect you*: why should they?" "Because I'll give myself away in a hundred things, man! My voice, my actions--God knows what!" "That is not so," said Bismarck. "I tell you, I know the Prince, his voice, his mannerisms--all of it. And I tell you that if you shave your head and upper lip, your own mothers would not know you apart." "It's true," says Rudi, from the fireplace. "You aren't just alike; you're the same man. If you learn a few of his habits--gestures, that sort of thing--it can't fail." "But I'm not an actor! How can I--" "You wandered in Afghanistan disguised as a native, did you not?" says Bismarck. "I know as much about you as you do yourself, you see. If you can do that, you can easily do this." He leaned forward again. "All this has been thought of. If you were not a man of action, of proved resource and courage, of *geist und geschicklichkeit*, with and aptitude, I would not have entertained this scheme for a moment. It is because you *have* all these things, and have proved them, that you are here now." Well, that was all *he* knew. God help him, he believed the newspapers, and my huge overblown reputation--he thought I was the daredevil _____ _______ of popular report, the Hero of Jallalabad, and all that tommy-rot. And there was no hope that I could persuade him otherwise.
I've not read this, but I'm willing to bet the quotes are from two different books. Books that are on my list to read, when, if I'm right, I finish the author's Arthur books.
The quotes are from two different books (although the main character is the same). To the best of my knowledge, the author has written no Arthur books.
Jules Verne? (Shot in the dark.)
Er, uh, that's got to be Flashman! Wish I could remember the author...
Not Jules Verne. The "hero" of both quoted books is Flashman. I'm going
to give it to Marcus, because 10 seconds with a web browser would have gotten
him from the name "Flashman" to the name of the author, George MacDonald
Fraser. The first quote, with Flashman shooting General Custer at Little
Big Horn, is from "Flashman and the Redskins". The second, with Flashman
being dragooned into Otto von Bismarck's plot to annex Schleswig/Holstein
to Germany (a critical event in the formation of the German state before
World War I), is from "Royal Flash". I probably would have given you
the Charge of the Light Brigade ("Theirs was not to reason why, theirs was
but to do and die. Into the valley of Death rode the six hundred") or the
Taiping Rebellion (the third bloodiest war in human history) next if someone
hadn't guessed it. Flashman got around.
Which is why I thought it was Sharpe. I'll have to read the Flashman books after I finish the Sharpe stories.
All that is gold does not glitter. Not all who wander are lost. The old that is strong does not wither. Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken. A light from the shadows shall sprint. Renewed shall be the blade that was broken. The crownless again shall be king.
(Re: #202 - Tolkien, LOTR) Got a new quote for us, mdw?
Ah right. Well, if Tolkien was easy enough, I'm sure this will be
a snap:
Therein three sisters dwelt of sundry sort,
The children of one syre by mothers three;
Who, dying whylome, did divide this fort
To them by equall shares in equall fee:
But stryfull mind and diverse qualitee
Drew them in partes, and each made others foe:
Still did they strive and daily disagree;
The eldest did against the youngest goe,
And both against the middest meant to worken woe.
The "blad that was broken" is a fairly specific piece of the plot, if nothing else gives it away. Other stuff gives it away, though.
I'm thinking Milton or Donne.
Edumon Spenser? No, probably not.
Edmond Spenser, I meant to say.
I think you're right.
Fairie Queen, no less. Jan has it.
Hmmm...I guess I should do this in the newagora.
OK, but will someone link the new item to Books, please?
Well, I can do that, but would you ask in the new item, please?
Rane, I don't read Agora, so I *can't* ask in the new item.
Let me know if I didn't link the right one..... 8^}
You have several choices: