response 82 of 207:

Nov 6 11:20 UTC 1998

cool!  i'm all excited...)  and please call me simon... is the 
'w.h.y.r.l.' item lively?  must try it...
in the meantime, have a go at this - don't know whether it'll be easy or 
not...
'There in the dusty light from the one small window on shelves of 
roughsawed pine stood a collection of fruitjars and bottles with ground 
glass stoppers and old apothecary jars all bearing antique octagon 
labels edged in red upon which in Echols' neat script were listed 
contents and dates.  In the jars dark liquids.  Dried viscera.  Liver, 
gall, kidneys.  The inward parts of the beast who dreams of man and has 
so dreamt in running dreams a hundred thousand years and more.  Dreams 
of that malignant lesser god come pale and naked and alien to slaughter 
all his clan and kin and rout them from their house.  A god insatiable 
whom no ceding could appease nor any measure of blood.  The jars stood 
webbed in dust and the light among them made of the little room with its 
chemic glass a strange basilica dedicated to a practice as soon to be 
extinct among the trades of men as the beast to whom it owed its being.'

response 84 of 207:

Nov 6 14:01 UTC 1998

i can see why you say that, but the mystical'swords&sorcery'-sounding 
elements are something of a sidetrack here; this is a writer who is very 
firmly grounded in reality, it's just that his description is, er, 
idiosyncratic...)

response 86 of 207:

Nov 9 02:19 UTC 1998

  Likewise, I was going to guess Roald Dahl but I wouldn't think that
  that description applied to him, either, except perhaps in direct
  comparison with Lovecraft..

response 88 of 207:

Nov 9 14:38 UTC 1998

no to poe and a snarl at dahl - you'll enjoy looking back at the bfg 
when you've got what this is...)

um... not sure how to give clues that don't just give it away.  you 
*could* connect this novel to a major genre, definitively linked to 
america, but it's not exactly a typical example of the genre... is that 
too vague?  if you work out 'the beast who dreams of man' you'll be 
getting a lot closer...

and just say when you think it's time for another quote from the same 
text...)

response 90 of 207:

Nov 9 16:00 UTC 1998

I'd rule out Bradley on the "firmly grounded in reality" bit though.

The only major genre strongly linked to America that I can think of
is the western. At least one Jack London piece had a western setting
and was told from the viewpoint of a beast ("The Call of the Wild").
Also, London's writing was "naturalistic". So I'll guess him.

response 92 of 207:

Nov 10 15:16 UTC 1998

Well, in that case I'll guess Louis L'Amour, completely coming in from nowhere
but the last 2 responses.

response 94 of 207:

Nov 10 19:24 UTC 1998

wow - i've never heard of either louis l'amour or farley mowatt (so no 
to both...)

here, try another bit from the same book:
'They rode after dinner the three of them the nine miles to the SK Bar 
ranch and sat their horses and halloed the house.  Mr Sanders' 
granddaughter looked out and went to get the old man and they all sat on 
the porch while their father told Mr Sanders about the wolf.  Mr Sanders 
sat with his elbows on his knees and looked hard at the porch 
floorboards between his boots and nodded and from time to time with his 
little finger tipped the ash from the end of his cigarette.  When their 
father was done he looked up.  His eyes were very blue and very 
beautiful half hid away in the leathery seams of his face.  As if there 
were something there that the hardness of the country had not been able 
to touch.'

it's his concept of sentence structure which <i think> makes him stand 
out...

response 96 of 207:

Nov 10 22:56 UTC 1998

This sounds badly written enough to be by the
guy who wrote _Bridges of Madison County_.

response 98 of 207:

Nov 11 14:47 UTC 1998

zane grey is still not recent enough - you're after someone still 
writing today - and it's not the bridges of madison county author or 
good old carl...

looking back at the second passage, i can see why you might think it's 
written badly - but it's all very deliberate, and i reckon he's the most 
powerful writer of descriptive prose alive, in his enormously 
idiosyncratic way... for example:

'He watched the night sky through the front room window.  The earliest 
stars coined out of the dark coping to the south hanging in the dead 
wickerwork of the trees along the river.  The light of the unrisen moon 
lying in a sulphur haze over the valley to the east.  He watched while 
the light ran out along the edges of the desert prairie and the dome of 
the moon rose out of the ground white and fat and membranous.  Then he 
climbed down from the chair where he'd been kneeling and went to get his 
brother.'

and the run-on sentence?  you bet!  i've not quoted any of the *long* 
ones yet...:)

he breaks rules, to be sure; but then again, so did hemingway...
 
er... being new to all this, i'm not entirely sure what sort of clues to 
offer - so feel free to ask for hints in areas where you think it might 
help...

how about:  he lives in el paso, texas, and the new york times book 
review called him a 'great and inventive storyteller...<who> writes 
brilliantly and knowledgeably about animals and landscapes.'

response 100 of 207:

Nov 11 16:32 UTC 1998

James Herriot is not an American, but I'll throw that in as a guess 
anyway.

response 102 of 207:

Nov 11 23:14 UTC 1998

James Lee Burke?

response 104 of 207:

Nov 12 14:12 UTC 1998

no to kinky friedman, james lee burke, larry mcmurtry and james herriot. 
james lee burke is the closest in terms of style and selling power, and 
certainly has some of the same kind of underlying darkness, but this 
writer doesn't really tread into the detective genre.

i'm running out of ideas as to what sort of clues to offer, so please 
feel free to make suggestions.  here, meanwhile, is the opening 
paragraph of the book:

'When they came south out of Grant County Boyd was not much more than a 
baby and the newly formed county they'd named Hidalgo was itself little 
older than a child.  In the country they'd quit lay the bones of a 
sister and the bones of his maternal grandmother.  The new country was 
rich and wild.  You could ride clear to Mexico and not strike a 
crossfence.  He carried Boyd before him in the bow of the saddle and 
named to him features of the landscape and birds and animals in both 
spanish and english.  In the new house they slept in the room off the 
kitchen and he would lie awake at night and listen to his brother's 
breathing in the dark and he would whisper half aloud to him as he slept 
his plans for them and the life they would have.'

response 106 of 207:

Nov 12 16:31 UTC 1998

(Er, not quite.  I was whispering "Close the door and let's party".)