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unearths some literary gems.
From The Case of the Case of the Kilcladdich, by P.J. Fitzsimmons:
[I've now read everything published to date in this recent Wodehousesque funny mystery series set in the 1920s, and I have to say I've found them pretty entertaining--the big caveat being the frequent anachronistic turns of phrase. I'd say offhand that this sixth of six is the best so far.]***Molly MacAlistair figured in my recollections as an unknown and unknowable peril--like an angry snowman.***[The cast of characters in this novel includes a Tweedledum/dee-esque pair of feuding barmen, who are constantly flinging creative insults at each other.]"Ya yard and a half of unravelled knitting"[later]"You're as quick off the mark as the mark."***Molly crossed her arms and, somehow, her eyebrows.***"I can handle her, Captain," I said. "I rowed at Oxford. I also fell into the river at Oxford."***"Well, then?" Molly crossed her arms in a way that also said "Well, then?"***"How many of those [sheep] have you got now?""I don't know," I said. "I tried counting them, but I fell asleep."***
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unearths some literary gems.
From A Natural Woman, by Carole King:
***
[Re. a song she wrote during high school, "Leave, Schkeeve"]I had no idea what a schkeeve was, but it rhymed with "leave," and that's all that mattered.***As ambiance is to a room, mood is to a song. If you add too many lights and a pinball machine, the mood is lost.***[On a demo made for the Shirelles, she] tried to sound like the Shirelles' lead singer, Shirley Owens. One of the other Shirelles...told me later that when Shirley recorded the lead vocal, she was trying to sound like me sounding like her.***[Laurel Canyon] was the first time I had ever lived where the action was....As if to validate the concept, one of my neighbors...confided that he'd been one of the Action Kids on Dick Clark's ABC television show Where the Action Is.***
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unearths some literary gems.
When she took a note that was high for her, Miss Darcey always put her right hand out into the air, as if she were indicating height, or giving an exact measurement. Some early teacher had told her that she could “place” a tone more surely by the help of such a gesture, and she firmly believed that it was of great assistance to her. (Even when she was singing in public, she kept her right hand down with difficulty, nervously clasping her white kid fingers together when she took a high note. Thea could always see her elbows stiffen.) She unvaryingly executed this gesture with a smile of gracious confidence, as if she were actually putting her finger on the tone: “There it is, friends!”
This morning, in Gounod’s “Ave Maria,” as Miss Darcey approached her B natural,—
Dans—nos a-lár———mes!
Out went the hand, with the sure airy gesture, though it was little above A she got with her voice, whatever she touched with her finger.
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unearths some literary gems.
From America's Humor, Feb. 1927:
Here's a not-very-good magazine that nonetheless yielded some points of interest. For one thing, this issue includes a magazine-within-the-magazine, "America's Rumor," that is a self-parody. It's even unfunnier, but I also found it hard to tell the difference.
The magazine proper includes a few droll spoof advertisements ("Goofyads"--see attached meta-ad), such as the attached plug for auto tires that churn butter.
The self-parody includes a bogus contest (see attachments), and a couple of good "continued" gags: "continued from page 0" (attached), and a column that begins with "Continued from Harper's Monthly" and concludes with "Continued in the Saturday Evening Post."
The page-gutter rift in the "continuity" headline (attached) is not an intentional gag, according to my best guess. I also thought you might get a kick out of the freckle statistics and the stunt-man proposal (both attached).
Describing someone who is completely calm and cool, a character in one of the stories says, "He was a 32-degree Fahrenheit."
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unearths some literary gems.
From A Stroll before Sunset, by Rachel Ferguson:
***"About the title: I've come to the conclusion that The Eternal Triangle is a bit obvious. What price The Temporary Triangle?"***The perfect play would consist entirely of first acts. [On the whole, I'm inclined to agree!]***that hydra-headed monster whose surname is Technique[SURname!]***"And they tell me I am the rudest woman in London.""I say, what fun!...I mean, it must be quite wonderful to be the somethingest of something; the rest of us only get sick of being the nothing of anything."***"And then, take another instance--" The figures retreated, while their host, who had not desired to take the first one, muttered anew.***[Re. the disorientation of seeing one's dramatic manuscript as a professional typescript for the first time]It was, for instance, unnerving, to see one of the Duchess's best epigrams at the foot of page forty-seven, when in the original manuscript she said it in the middle of page sixty-three....***"We must get away and celebrate it," Mary discovered, "somewhere where one's mind has elbow room."[...]"Pity the Academy isn't on, it's such a good place to talk something else in.""The Tate? The Wallace?""I can't find my way there, I've tried twice, and now I'm sulky."***"There's an old bird who catches the same train as I do and makes the same joke to me....and if I chuck the job, I've left that end loose by doing him out of his joke."***"He said that quite apart from the slightness of their acquaintance he shrank from any course which would, however indirectly, place him in touch with her once more."Mary smiled. "He is a scream, isn't he? One can just hear him shrinking from courses."***"I often think of all the good jokes that are going to be made that we can't even imagine and that we shall never hear."***"Have you ever thought that some people have their counterparts in music? Flyte's a Bach fugue, satisfying and exact, yet somehow baffling because except to the expert ear he isn't quite music."***"You can't win, in psychology. The customer is always wrong."***"He's a lonely chap though he'd probably deny it by diagrams."***By the time the butler served dessert, their spiritual elbows were on the table.***[Are You a House Name?]Was there a Croyle at all, or was he a letterhead and trade name?...Hadn't he actually glimpsed the fellow once? But that might have been his partner? Or a dummy put there in perpetuo? Yet it had gone when he opened the door...dummies can be removed, but they are also seldom members of The Garrick...***
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unearths some literary gems.
From The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine, by PJ Fitzsimmons:
***If Ivor was indeed anxious to see me he hid it behind a brave face. In fact, he hid it behind the closed door of the conservatory.***Ivor hid his amusement behind a countenance of studied boredom.***The town is perhaps ten miles square in high heels.***"Rather an involved autograph....It's a wonder he had time for anything else."***Next was Chancy, innocently taking in the scenery and appearing to be very much at risk of getting lost in a straight hallway.***Ivor...withdrew his pipe from his pocket like a key piece of evidence, followed by his tobacco pouch which he wielded as though it conclusively proved the point made by the pipe.***Crocker nodded in a manner that caused his moustache to billow, like an unfurling sail in a rippling wind, and I made a mental note to encourage him to nod again, often and vigorously.***Ivor's left eyebrow expressed surprise, while his right registered doubt. After a brief negotiation, they settled on a joint policy of courteous skepticism.***"What clever gambit?" asked Vicks with a mirthless laugh contrived to suggest that Burly Brickstock wouldn't have known a clever gambit if he was sat next to one on a Ferris wheel.***[Bonus: an offstage character called Spigot Spoutswater-Smythe][Bonus: a character known as Quip (cf. Jeremy Quip in the JC-E play "Surely, You Jest!")[Bonus: a stage show called Hold Everything--which, I see, was real, and technically had an exclamation point at the end of the title]
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unearths some literary gems.
From Sara Skelton, by Rachel Ferguson:
***The audience roared with delight when the Chairman, genial H. P. Condiment, rapped with his hammer to announce Mrs. Ruddledial's turn.***an author whose name I could never catch, but which sounded like "Iron Bicycle"***He taught me not to say "Commence," "Westminster" and "Well I never!"***people...who merely leant out of windows and said, "Shoosh!" in the largest possible italics[N.B. "Shoosh!" is set in roman there.]***We would also pin our parts up in the flies, and this was a capital scheme for the long-sighted who had pages of vituperation, involving a lot of calling on high heaven.***We also became terribly polite, and would offer each other cups of tea all day long, even though we were ten miles from an urn.***Let me say at once that my own performance was vile. And for my failure I am artist enough to blame the author entirely.sorter_thing ***I had had no time to dip into the two books...but I am sure they were very good, as the print was very close, and that, in an author, is usually a sign of earnestness.***He was gazing at me hoarsely.***No wonder London christened her "The Guernesey Caramel"!***[A great bit of twisted zeugma, imo!]He had given me, with some daily orchids, to understand that I should be his leading lady when the theatre fell vacant.***"Leading ladyship is an exact science."[This seems to be quite the accidental precursor to Stephen Potter! Ferguson is writing in 1929, and though I imagine she landed on the "-ship" through wordplay on "[her] Ladyship," she's pretty squarely in the upmanship zone in relating the advice she was given on what practices to put in place to assert her status as leading lady in a play. They're not quite "gambits," but she's so close!]***TUESDAY: Dorrien Gray writes. As far as I can make out from mass of epigrams, he too is pleased.***one of those De-so-and-so Ladies***Light though heavy steps descended the companionway.***How tempora does mor.***[Plus lots of silly names for people, places, and things. They're presumably all fictitious, though some are spoofs on real people, places, and things.]Sanguine SilligagMorgan MuffinOssian Dermoid M'CartilegeGustav Poltergeist [a composer]"a Shakespearean skit called Stratford-on-Toast""the Pedantic, a boat of several thousand tons sterling""Let's all go down the Strand, have a banana!" [a ditty]the Satiety [a theatre, presumably a play on the Gaiety]Macdonnell, Sons, Nephew and Macdonnell [a law firm][Bonus: The inscription in the library copy I have out, which I've attached in case you like "that sorter thing."]
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unearths some literary gems.
***
"Some posh bloke with one of those names that don't know where to stop; Monty McMontague-Mount-Muckity, or some such."
***
He cultivated a grey moustache that passed beneath his nose as part of a full orbit around his head, taking in mutton-chop sideburns and the coastal region of a glistening bald pate.
***
"Don't be an ass, Boisjoly," said Ivor in that flat, uninflected sort of way in which one says "Don't be a teapot" to a teapot.
***
Barking [that's a character's surname] had allowed his mind to wander, and when it returned it appeared to have stumbled on something and knocked it over.
***
Ivor squinted in thought, as though focusing on the question, which occupied an uncertain spot somewhere in the air between us.
***
[Bonus: "the leopard's loungewear" (i.e., cat's pajamas).]
[Bonus: Re. someone impersonating a character called Flaps Fleming, we have a reference to "two Flaps Fleming"--thus a rare instance where the pluralization of the first name rather than the second is merely *implied*, since the name already ends in S. (But when the allusion recurs, the author goes with the more pedestrian "Flaps Flemings.")]
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unearths some literary gems.
From Ask a Policeman, by The Detection Club:
***[She] gave a loud cackle of laughter that set off Lady Selina's parrot.[Later, the same (human) character's laughter is described as "a macaw-like screech."]***"A waggonload of monkeys is nothing, you might say, to Fate."[I didn't find evidence of this aphorism, per se, elsewhere, though wagon- or cartloads of monkeys crop up in a general way. In the present instance, where there's an implication of Fate acting in unexpected ways, I guess the proverbial monkeys have proverbial typewriters, or the equivalent.]***[The sheet of notepaper] had been so hastily torn from a writing-pad that at least one-seventh of its total surface had never got as far as the envelope, but remained adhering to the parent block.***Anderson was tall and dark, lean-faced, with one eyebrow more uptilted than the other and consequently a permanent air of polite skepticism.***Anderson laughed, all "man-of-the-world-with-more-experience-than-you-my-young-friend."***[N.B. Tweedle's full name is Mr. ffulke Tweedle.]
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unearths some literary gems.
From The Smart Set, 1910:
***Mr. Ade must have Slipped on the Banana Peel of humor when he Committed the Book of this play. [George Jean Nathan; I'm not sure of the reason for the initial caps]***Like a cracked bell, the fundamental idea and purpose [of the play] is there, but it does not ring true. [Nathan]***The rest of the cast was equally pathetic. Arthur Maude, as Mr. Daventry, committed suicide three acts too late. [Nathan]***Children of Destiny...was presented at the Savoy Theater for two weeks during Lent, and is now playing a long engagement in the storehouse. [Nathan]***Without Miss Holbrook, Bright Eyes would need glasses. [Nathan]***The humor of the first act is obtained through confusing an umbrella with a young woman named Mabel. [Nathan]***Miss Oza Waldrop acted the ingénue part in her usual saccharine, sputtering manner of a firecracker exploding in a can of maple syrup. [Nathan]***It contains a decidedly funny burlesque of the "you can't even hold that gun episode"...the revolver in this case, however, being a ham sandwich. [Nathan]***a pianist whose "artistic temperament" registers about one hundred and four degrees in the shade [Nathan]***[Bonus: a real book entitled Neither Do I]Notes on some of the attachments:1. That Angelus player-piano ad looks to me like it would be the cover of a pulp paperback novel about vampires in a bordello.
2. "[How to Be?] His Own Cyrano"
3. Nathan's "eternal frankfurter": a precursor (by only a few years, I see) to the Famous Coney Island Hots?
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