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unearths some literary gems.
***
[From the preface]
As for my prose, I apologize. It suffers from too many years on the lunatic fringe of law firms such as Ely Sneed. I was able to curb a regrettable tendency to begin paragraphs with "now," "therefore," and "to wit." My editor's blue pencil took care of the "notwithstandings" and "albeits." An "inasmuch as" may have slipped through, though. You can only do so much.
***
She had once been "on the stage," or had been on the stage once. Whether burlesque, a high school play, or the Royal Shakespeare Company was never made quite clear.
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Ely Sneed had committees like gardeners have crabgrass....Battle one committee down and another would spring up in its place.
***
[Flapping dept.]
Her voice rose, she rose, her napkin rose and flapped through the air.
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If I could hear his shoe creaking, what about my watch ticking? The power of suggestion became almost more than I could stand; it sounded like Big Ben was in the closet with me.
***
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unearths some literary gems.
***"If you want me to write your Column on Crime just say the word and I'll put you on our redundant list--with pleasure.""To be redundant with pleasure is preferable to being redundant without."***"D'ye think Ah came up the Clyde in a wheelbarrow?"[This rhetorical question was new to me! But I see that it's part of a whole "thing": https://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/sndns901]***"Please don't be offended if I say I am beholden to you...whatever that might mean."***"If it's any of your business I'd also inform you that it's none of your business."***"But I couldn't see the wood for the trees...and I planted the forest myself."***"Give me a ring later in the day and maybe we'll marry your vague notion to my vague notion."***"Don't play the fool?""Why not? I'm good at it."***[Bonus: From a review of a different Carmichael book, excerpted on the dust jacket of this one: "He zigs when you expect him to zag, but never fails to arrive at a zonko ending." Who knew that the way to one-up the zigging/zagging trope was by employing a zonko!][Also: The protagonist sometimes says "De-da...de-da...de-da," in the sense of "etc., etc." or "yada yada." I've never heard this before, and I don't know whether it has general currency.]
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unearths some literary gems.
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unearths some literary gems.
From Sam the Sudden, by Wodehouse:
***“That wastepaper basket over there has been in my office only four days, and already it knows more about the export and import business than you would learn if you stayed here fifty years."***[Who Needs Context? dept.]Sam had many excellent qualities, but he did not in the least resemble a potted geranium.***Their windows are dirty and forlorn and most of the lettering outside has been worn away, so that on the second floor it would appear that trade is being carried on by the Ja— & Sum—r— Rub— Co., while just above, Messrs. Smith, R-bi-s-n & G——, that mystic firm, are dealing in something curtly described as c——.***[Walking Quasi-Reference Books dept.]One of the things that make these old retainers so hard to bear is that they are so often walking editions of the chroniques scandaleuses of the family.***Swiftly reaching a decision, he went to the desk and took out a cable form.The wording of the cable gave him some little trouble. The first version was so condensed that he could not understand it himself.***[Bonus: A nightclub called the Angry Cheese]
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unearths some literary gems.
***
"Want to see a trick?"
[....]
"Sure. If it's a good one."
The uncertainty of his acceptance seemed to please her. Probably, she had expected No. She would have taken Yes, unimaginative as that reply would have been. But that her trick was being measured off against other unknown and even better tricks made it pleasantly risky.
***
Plant had always considered Trueblood more of an event than a person.
***
"I'm going to have an early night," said Lady Stubbings. It was a line [in a book] that Melrose Plant could easily have dispensed with--weren't they forever having their "early nights"?--but in this case, he found the line especially excruciating and wished the whole lot of them would have an early night.
***
"I thought she married that Italian duke, or whatever."
"Count. No. He's floating in Venice. I suspect she's got cold feet. Wet feet, rather."
***
"You're carrying a cue in your oboe case," Melrose said to Tom.
[...]
"You ever try playing snooker with an oboe?"
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"I made myself an authority on Mesopotamia; that way they think I must know a lot about everything else. It's amazing, really, how much people think you must know if you know about something nobody else much cares about."
[I could be wrong, but I think that's an actual ploy from the Stephen Potter canon.]
***
[Bonus: A character called Mrs. Withersby (not quite a Wetherbee)]
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unearths some literary gems.
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Tarzan (of, if I remember rightly, the Apes)
***
Then there is the three-dot trick. At one time those dots indicated an omission. To-day, some of our best use them as an equivalent of the cinema fade-out. Those dots prolong the effect of a word or sentence; they lend it an afterglow. You see what I mean? Afterglow ...
***
(And now we’ll have a little novelty. The Great Novelists of to-day number their sections. We’ll have a number without any section. This has never been done be——
4
***
Why was it, Luke asked himself, that she was always so merry and bright with others, and so very different when she was with him? Could it be that she wore a mask to the rest of the world, and disclosed her real self only to him? It could. It could also be just the other way round. That was the annoying part of it.
***
“That’s always the way. Whenever I make a beautiful thing, some cow always gets it. It’s happened before. If I wrote my beautiful biography, some cow would parody it. The world’s full of cows.”
***
He went like a lamb, too broken to resist. I confess I am worried about him. I must try to see him again if
5
a chance of doing so.”
(And that shows you again, how the number of a chapter-section may be used economically.)
***
(The reader is requested to look out. Once more the numbers of the section will be used as a part of the sections. The price of paper is still very high.)
“Just imagine,” said Luke. “Only this morning I was convinced that life was hell. Absolute hell.”
“And now?” asked Jona, shyly.
“Now I know that it’s
7,”
he said, and kissed her.
Luke walked back. It was some time in the small hours that he entered his house burglariously by forcing open the window of a room that had once been called a den.
As he sat at breakfast the next morning, Dot said: “Hope they gave you a good dinner at the ‘Crown’ last night.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t really remember what we
8.”
“All love and honey, what?” suggested Dot.
“Dot,” said Luke, “don’t be asi—
9.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Dot “You don’t need to pay any at—
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tion to my chaff.”
***
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