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unearths some literary gems.
From "The Strange Case of Steinkelwintz," by Mackinlay Kantor:
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"There is an odor....But, Max Grame, you can't arrest an odor! I suppose you think that an odor stole my piano?"
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unearths some literary gems.
From "Death Out of Thin Air," by Stuart Towne:
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[From an editor's footnote.] Mickey Collins was Pat's twin sister, a young lady who looked so much like her that it was a standing joke as to whether or not the twins themselves knew for sure which was which. [And have we possibly encountered a version of that somewhere before, too?]
***
Inspector Church was being as tight-mouthed as two clams.
[I love the idea that the utter silence of individual clams has an additive effect!]
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unearths some literary gems.
From "Where Have You Gone, Sam Spade?" by Bill Pronzini:
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With her was a wiry little man in his mid-forties, with colorless hair and features so bland they would have, I thought, the odd reverse effect of making you remember him.
[If I recall correctly, this is not the first time we've encountered a writer describing someone whose nondescriptness makes them paradoxically memorable.]
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unearths some literary gems.
From "The Flying Hat," by Vincent Cornier:
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The only usual sounds were the far-away drone of traffic in Oxford Street and the solemn snoring of that in Edgeware Road.
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[The flying hat] sped along; it seemed a ball of blackness, madly sportive.
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unearths some literary gems.
From Oh, Murderer Mine, by Norbert Davis
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Despite his size, the fierce, jet-black mustache he was wearing was still too big for him and Melissa got the impression the mustache was leading him around willy-nilly.
***
"Gluck-gluck-gluck," Melissa said in frustrated incoherence. "Gluck!"
***
"We are the Misses Aldrich," said the faces.
"Are--are there two of you?" Doan asked.
"Yes. We're twins.... We are specialists," said the Aldriches in fascinating unison, "in the emotional and social conditioning of pre-school-age children."
***
"Oh, phooey with an olive," said Beulah Porter Cowys.
***
["Rhetorical 'you knows' answered" dept.]
"Early to bed and early to rise, you know."
"I know," Melissa agreed.
***
"Are [the Misses Aldrich] gone for good?" she asked. "They're a little too plural for me at this hour."
***
["Pooh!" + "Bah!" = a (Grand?) Pooh-Bah?]
"Pooh-Bah!"
***
It was a voice that was hoarsely hollow and smooth at the same time. It sounded a little like a billiard ball rolling down a rain spout.
***
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unearths some literary gems.
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"What kine baboozes they got working up there in security?"
"Officer Medeiros has been nothing but professional," I said. "I don't think it's nice to call him a...whatever you called him."
***
"You, a professor, don't even have a proper office chair. You sacrifice your dignity every day by sitting on a yoga ball."
"My dignity is very well toned from sitting on that ball, I'll have you know."
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"A very good salary"....
I involuntarily rolled my chair back when Iker told me the number, as if I were making room for a dump truck load of cash.
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"You're being ridiculous! Ridiculously blinded by lust!"
"Now wait a--"
"What were you thinking about, eating that meat?" [N.B. That's literal meat.]
"That wasn't lust," I said. "That was gluttony."
***
"So maybe he steals his brother’s artifact out of jealousy, or pride, or, you know, anger."
"You forgot lust and gluttony."
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"I'm going to spell it out for you. One: Jimmy Tanaka was going to ruin Donnie Gonsalves. Two--"
"That's counting, not spelling."
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"Did you sell out for the money?"
"Of course I did! Why else would you sell out? It's called 'selling out' because you do it for the money."
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"Locus of control....A locust is an insect. Why do I have to explain that every time?"
***
[Bonus golden-goose business]:
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unearths some literary gems.
From The Corpse in the Constable's Garden, by G. D. H. and Margaret Cole:
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"Crikey!" he said; and, feeling the comment inadequate, added, "My aunt!"
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"I shall stay at Coward's Hotel in Craven Street." [This is not some kind of metaphor: it is presented in a matter-of-fact way as a literal hotel (though I'm sure the authors' intention here was humorous).]
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"Don't pretend to be a fool, Hubert," said his wife. "You know you said you liked Proust."
"I said I liked him in moderation," said the Colonel. "The trouble was, there wasn't any moderation."
***
"Praise the pigs there are two of them, anyhow." ["Praise the pigs" as a way of saying "thank goodness" was a new one on me! And, indeed, a quick look at Google Books suggests that this character may have been the only person ever to say it.]
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"He told me Barrington was a great authority on something or other, I've forgotten what."
[If I'm not mistaken, this is the second novel by the Coles in which I've encountered a character who is a "great authority on something or other," or words close to that. (:v>]
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unearths some literary gems.
From Superintendent Wilson's Holiday [a short story collection], by G. D. H. and M. Cole:
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Matthew Kingdon, Fellow of St. Philip's College, Oxford, was quite unable to settle down to prepare his paper for the Philosophical Society. 'Do Relations Relate?' was a fascinating subject, and he had promised himself good sport in answering the question, and incidentally discomfiting his great rival, Dr. Mugsley of St. Jude's.
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All the male Pedders were rather like surprised parrots.
***
[Bonus: A theatre called the Megatherium.]
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unearths some literary gems.
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'Stringing English together is like rewiring an old house.'
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[Re. the word "logocentric"]
'What other kind of too-narrow focus provides... a diagnostic name for itself? If you're ethnocentric, does your culture include a folk dance acknowledging the limitations of your outlook? Is there a beeper that goes off when you get too technocentric?'
***
[Midway through this book that is primarily comprised of digressions, Blount gets to the end of an entry entitled "Memorabilia" and says] 'There might be a way to drag the Latin /mirabile dictu/, "marvelous to say," in here, especially since it might lead us into "too marvelous for words" and other philological lyrics by Johnny Mercer--but we've got to move along, if this book is going to have any narrative drive.'
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'Minimalism:
'A little of it goes a long way.'
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[I especially recommend pp. 204-208, about names.]
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[Blount's priceless encapsulation of a bit of classical absurdity]
'Aristotle maintained that a falling body accelerated because it became more jubilant as it found itself nearer home.'
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[Apparently the word ptarmigan is spelled thus because scholars with Greek on the brain mistook the origin of the Scots Gaelic word from which the bird's name actually derived. Says Blount, the ptarmigan] 'lives in cold climes and mostly shuffles or flutters around. It isn't putting on neoclassical airs.'
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[Blount claims that the letter Q, in the Braggadocio typeface], 'looks like a South Park character.'
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'De Quincey says that Wordsworth would grow impatient when anyone else spoke of mountains.'
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unearths some literary gems.
From The Great Southern Mystery, by G. D. H. and Margaret Cole:
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[I suspect this pun was unintentional.]
The most startling thing so far about the entire affair was the finding of the sovereigns in the dead man's mouth.... At present, Arkwright could make neither head or tail of it.
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"You could get pots and pots of money from the Daily Whatever it is."
***
[Bonus #1: Tennis-playing minor characters nicknamed Bunch and Lumps.]
[Bonus #2: Two old clubmen who are colossal bores; each warns the journalist seeking them out that the other is a colossal bore.]
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unearths some literary gems.
From Mr. Pinkerton Grows a Beard, by David Frome:
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He made a sharp turn to the right and went rapidly along until he came to the Swedenborgian Reading Room. He opened the door, put on an air that he felt might be supposed to be Swedenborgian, nodded to the middle-aged man in charge, and settled down at a reading table.
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In the rear of the flat he could hear Mr. Gwatley-Wells singing loudly about an old spinning wheel, accompanying a hand organ playing down in the road below. Now and then as the organist's arm wearied Mr. Gwatley-Wells would get ahead, and would hold the note powerfully until the music caught up with him.
[That's just what I would do!]
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"I trust Mr. Gwatley-Wells has not got himself into any unusual difficulty?"
Not knowing the nature of Mr. Gwatley-Wells's normal difficulties, Bull shook his head.
***
[The protagonist and another character have been joking about whether she'll "compromise" him if they're seen alone together in a hotel restaurant.]
They went in the hotel and sat down in a corner in the dining room between two large gilt-framed pier glasses set at right angles.
Molly Cameron looked in them and smiled. "That makes so many of us that it must be all right," she said.
***
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unearths some literary gems.
From Murder by the Book, by Jennifer Rowe:
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The phone rang forlornly, as though it had been ringing for some time and had given up hope of ever being answered.
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"I don't give a continental what Malcolm thinks, I can tell you!"
[Not giving a continental was a new one on me, so I did some research. What follows is some info from the OED, in case you also need to know more about not giving continentals.]
"Used as a depreciatory epithet (originally with reference to currency). (Cf. sense B. 2b below.*) U.S. colloquial."
*"A currency note issued by the Continental Congress during the war; the depreciation of which afterwards gave rise to the phrases not worth a continental and not to care (or give) a continental. orig. U.S."
1851 Knickerbocker 37 554 That clock you sold me ain't worth a continental cuss.
1874 E. Eggleston Circuit Rider (1903) 148 I tole him as how I didn't keer three continental derns fer his whole band.
1890 Amer. Notes & Queries 5 169 ‘A Tinker's Dam’ is equivalent to the expression, ‘A Continental Damn’.
[Interestingly, the Jennifer Rowe books are set in Australia (and are as recent as ~30 years ago).]
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unearths some literary gems.
From Jeeves and the King of Clubs, by Ben Schott:
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I knew for a fact that the dinner jacket in which he was currently attired had been bespoken on Savile Row, no less, for I was with him at its bespeaking.
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And here he was, in the flesh, leaning against my mantelpiece like an elongated exclamation mark.
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He gave me a look of pure hatred; the kind of look a cat might give having been prematurely let out of a bag.
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As before, Lord MacAuslan was elongated against a mantelpiece like a prime example of Euclidean geometry.
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Lord MacAuslan shot me a knowing look. For want of anything better to do, I shot one right back.
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The Colonel harrumphed, a noise I had hitherto encountered only in novels.
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Not only was the lark on the wing and the snail on the thorn--comme par ordinaire--but as far as the eye could see every other member of the animal kingdom was suitably conjoined with its appropriate poetical appurtenance.
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She had the no-nonsense look of one who, when the mood took her, was prepared to indulge a certain amount of nonsense.
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"I suppose [flying a plane is] devilishly complicated?"
"Can you drive a car?"
"I can. Is it much like driving a car?"
"Not really, now I think about it."
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"That Vandyke of his follows you round the room like the eyes in an oil painting."
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Aunt Dahlia's floral melange resembled nothing less than a crayon scrawl of a scarecrow's funeral drawn by an insolent child.
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Lambert Lyall is one of those curious old shops even Dickens would have called Dickensian.
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As we descended to the front door, I was assailed by a qualm, assuming such things are sold to the public in the singular.
***
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unearths some literary gems.
From Lucia on Holiday, by Guy Fraser-Sampson:
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[Sandwiches Are Funny, and Egg Sandwiches Are Especially Funny dept.]
Elizabeth, on the other hand, had fallen into the footwell and become hopelessly entangled with a travelling rug, some magazines, a Thermos flask and several egg sandwiches.
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The Contessa di Alto-Brandisci...flowed graciously around the room as though on well-oiled castors.
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[My favorite passage in the book!]
Georgie said "Oh" in a very pursed-up-mouth sort of way, until he caught sight of himself in a faded gilt mirror. Realising that his expression must seem somewhat strange, he experimented with trying to make it look like the natural result of needing to pronounce a particular word, but then found that he could not think of a single one which seemed appropriate. So, he slowly adjusted his mouth back to its normal shape, having spent several seconds pursing and unpursing his lips, looking rather like a pensive goldfish, as Olga unkindly said later.
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Amelia, Contessa di Faraglione, emerged through the French windows and greeted them without any unnecessary show of emotion such as might disturb her eye-glass.
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"The very surroundings inspire an almost tangible feeling in one of enduring beauty, don't they?...."
She drew a deep, quavering breath as though inhaling copious amounts of enduring beauty and testing its perfume.
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He practised crossing his legs for a while in the mirror, and found that if he concentrated really hard he could nonchalantly shoot his cuff at the same time as he straightened the crease on his knee.
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"Why yes, of course, so he is," Georgie concurred. He crossed his legs and shot out his cuffs perfectly at the same time, and was disappointed that nobody appeared to notice.
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"Let's just say I have a contingency plan."
She giggled to herself, and Georgie said, "Oh, aren't you wonderful?" in a very gratifying fashion, so gratifying in fact that, just for a fleeting moment, she almost felt guilty that she didn't actually have a contingency plan at all.
***
He sat down but was so agitated that he forgot to check his trouser crease as he crossed his legs.
[There is a least one more instance of Georgie trouser-crease business--and I love the Georgie trouser-crease business--but at this point it's already on the edge of belabored, imho (a shortcoming--or rather, since it's too much rather than too little, a "tallgoing"?--of the book in many other areas as well), so this is the last one I'll reproduce.]
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At this point Major Flint usually said "Now, now" and if he found that did not answer, as generally it did not...then tried "There, there."
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She could hardly say "How you all work me so" again quite so soon, so she contented herself with a sad little shake of the head.
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Fortunately, as she grew angrier she lapsed spontaneously into Swiss-German, a language which Miss Flowers understood hardly at all and which seemed to consist largely of umlauts with a verb at the end every now and then.
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Georgie stopped to cast an expert eye over the docking operations, as befitted a man who owned a yachting cap and had once stayed in a hotel in Folkestone.
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Shouts of welcome quickly greeted Olga from her friends, who seemed mostly to be American, and were introduced to Georgie in a bewildering welter of middle initials.
***
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