From Act One, by Moss Hart:

***

It is taken for granted that a cabinetmaker or a shoemaker, . . . starting with a certain degree of talent for his profession, does, after the practice of that profession for ten or twenty years, learn how to make a good cabinet or a decent pair of shoes. . . . Not so the playwright. He is quite capable after twenty years of practice of having a left shoe for the second act when a right shoe is obviously called for.

***

[Expressive Back of Head dept. (I think this has come up before!)]

I signed the slip as he counted out the money, conscious that the people immediately behind me were whispering to each other. "It is not George Kaufman," I heard a woman's voice say. "It must be the other one."

As nearly as I could, I tried to achieve a look of modesty with the back of my head while I waited for him to finish.

***

[From My Lucky Star by Joe Keenan]:

***

"I'd felt certain this would unnerve her, but her response was well to the left of fiddle-dee-dee."

From The Black Rustle, by Constance and Gwenyth Little:

***

I tore my eyes away, shifted in my seat, and bumped Gert's knees again. Gert said "Tch" and I said "Tch," too, just to keep my end up.

***

It was merely an oft-repeated account of her cruise to Bermuda.

However, Gert was not the sort to let a thing like that go on indefinitely, and she presently stopped the flow by the simple expedient of opening her mouth and launching into a two-week vacation in Maine in a voice that drowned out Marge's pipe. The cruise faded to a murmur and then died, and the vacation had the floor. [Cf. the similar conversational battle of the ghost stories in Affair at Aliquid, where someone wanted to "get her ghost off her chest."]

***

"Is Gert his girl friend?" I asked casually.

Randall grinned. "I'm afraid she hardly qualifies. She never holds things properly or hands him the right tool." [Oo-er!]

***

"Can't understand why you aren't all outside getting the fresh air," Bruce observed to the room at large....

Randall said, "We were afraid it might get us first."

***

"If you'd all eat at one certain time," he muttered, "we'd know where we are."

Randall called after him, "Why do you want to know where you are?"

***

From Falling Star, by Patricia Moyes:

***

[While the other books that I've read in this series use a third-person narrator who follows the point of view of the sympathetic police inspector whom the series is built around, this one has a somewhat Bertie Woosterish first-person narrator-protagonist (a character who may appear only in this book). He doesn't have B.'s narratorial flair (though he has his moments, as you will soon see!), nor is he played strongly for laughs, most of the time; but he is a well-intentioned, slightly pompous, wealthy gent who gets into a lot of trouble, primarily because his associates grossly manipulate and impose on him, but with the compounding factors of his ill-judged impulsiveness, his own "clever" sneaky actions that backfire, and his exaggerated sense of his own savoir faire. Like Bertie, he admits his intellectual limitations; but, like Bertie, he resents the fact that he gets no respect from the people around him, even when he's accommodating their outrageous requests. For the most part, all this was more serviceable than especially charming in this story, but of course I always like to show appreciation for a Wodehousian gambit!]

***

"I try very hard to be reasonable," I went on, trying very hard to be reasonable.

***

"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, in a voice that might have come frosted out of his own Martini jug. "That is a Bacardi."

***

[One of the choicest Bertiesque flourishes, imho.]

Biddy, in the inconsequential way she has, was reciting "Albert and the Lion" aloud to herself, and swearing when she couldn't remember the words. When I asked her why she did this, she replied that it helped her to think. I pass the information on for what it is worth. It certainly did not help me to think.

***

[A pet monkey has been thrust into the protagonist's arms.]

I realized that the wearing of a pink-bottomed monkey as a sort of feather boa did nothing to help my dignity, but that could not be helped.

[And some very Wodehousian dialogue soon follows!]

She did not take the monkey, which was now jumping up and down in my arms, chattering and begging to be swung again.

"Can't you stop playing with that animal?" Keith asked.

"Since you ask," I said, "no. It has taken a fancy to me and it is extremely adhesive."

"Oh, well then, keep it if you want to."

"I do not want to," I pointed out. "It is merely that..."

"Look," said Keith, "there are serious things I want to say to you, and you will keep on talking about monkeys."

***

[Doctor-Samuel-Johnson-But-Not-The-Doctor-Samuel-Johnson Dept.!]

"Of course I've heard of Doctor Sam. But his name wasn't..."

"He changed his name about once a week," said the Super. "Very confusing, it was. But his favorite alibis were nearly all some sort of variation on Samuel Johnson. I've known him arrested as Sir Samuel Johns, Colonel Samson Jobson, Doctor St. John Samuel, and so on. It wasn't until he died in Wormwood Scrubbs last March that we found out what his real name was. You'll never guess."

"Frederick Arbuthnot?"

"No, no, no. James Boswell."

[By the way, "Frederick Arbuthnot" is not the random, silly guess that it might sound like (unfortunately); it actually is another alias that "Doctor Sam" had used. I will note, however, that this is the second book I've read within a space of two weeks in which the name Arbuthnot appeared. (It was a first name in The Band Box, by Vance.)]

***

[And speaking of Anatole...]

At this, Anton broke into a protesting stream of mixed English and French.

***

She remained uncharmed, merely shaking her head so that the dusty black feathers in her hat quivered in the sunset.

[...]

She shot me a look brimful of malice, and directed her quivering hat out through the front door.

***

I felt exactly like the victim of a card trick, who is told, triumphantly and correctly, that the card he was thinking of was the five of spades.

***

I was aware of some sort of plot thickening like a béchamel sauce all around me.

From Soothing Syrup, by Joan Butler:

***

["Shenanigan," singular, dept. (The first of two appearances in the book, by my count. I don't recall whether the second reference is to the same shenanigan.)]

"Everything is planned, and everyone is looking forward to the shenanigan."

***

[Literal Hats dept.]

"Samson has cats--enormous, half-wild creatures that show their teeth at you, and arch their backs, and look as if they'd spit in your eye at the drop of a hat."

"I'll bet they won't worry Adrian."

"Why not?"

"Because he never wears a hat."

***

"You haven't seen Adrian, have you?"

"What's he like?"

"Tall, and rather thin. Black hair, dark eyes. The ascetic type. About twenty-six. Never wears a hat."

"Why not?"

"He says he likes to feel the breeze caressing his scalp."

"What does he do in a flat calm?"

"He still doesn't wear a hat."

"He should buy himself an electric fan, and have a heck of a time."

"I'll tell him that. Have you seen him anywhere?"

"You mean, around here?"

"Yes. I mean around here, just now."

"No. I haven't seen anyone at all."

"Then why couldn't you have said so at first?"

"Because if I had, you wouldn't have described Adrian, and if I'd met him he'd have been a complete stranger to me."

***

[Allusion to Possibly Nonexistent (and Risqué) Limericks dept. (A web search revealed a few people doing "Kentucky" lims, but I didn't, at a glance, find evidence of a canonical one that exactly matched up with what we're given here.)]

"I have a hunch that if I met a spook I'd dig my thumb in his ribs and ask him if he'd heard the one about the young man from Kentucky, who was always extremely unlucky."

"Why was he always unlucky?"

"We won't go into that," Mr. Weston replied austerely. "It has no bearing whatever on the case in hand."

***

"He hasn't actually said so; but I can see it in his eye."

"I hope you're looking in the right eye."

***

"All this is news to me. Who, or what, is the Pageant?"

***

Colonel Sir William Trenchard [had]... a military moustache which had gone white in the wash. He had long arms and large hands, and looked as if he could wrestle a gorilla and like it, even if the gorilla didn't.

***

[Waxing very Wodehousian here!]

"Mind you," he went on, "there are people around here who would put up a poor showing in an intelligence test against a battle-scarred old wart-hog... but it's not my place to list them in alphabetical order. I just mention it in passing."

***

It was obvious... that he had some weighty matter on his mind, squashing it flat.

***

"It's doing my nervous system a power of good."

"I shouldn't have thought you had a nervous system."

"I have a system; but it's not nervous just now."

***

[A few more good taking-it-literallyisms (all from the same conversation).]

"And besides, he hasn't a penny."

"He has. I saw him with one only a few days ago."

 

"I must ask you to break off your affair with him without further ado."

"There hasn't been any ado."

 

"That should make it so much easier for you to send him about his business."

"What business?"

***

"I refer, of course, to that promising young playwright, Adrian Addison, for whom a great future has been foretold by dozens of people completely unqualified to judge."

***

[This joke sounds like it's straight out of The Pleasure Dial, though it isn't. (:v>]

"I'm beginning to understand why he's so popular on the wireless.... It must give people a wonderful thrill to turn him off."

***

"I beg your pardon!" Percy said, momentarily taken aback, but not very far.

***

[More literal-mindedness from Sally (who I think is consistently the one giving us most of the literal-minded retorts).]

"Each and every tick of the clock shortens the few brief hours at our disposal."

"What clock?" Sally asked.

"Any clock," Percy replied briefly.

 

"He seems to think you have all the essential qualifications, and who am I to say he is wrong?"

"I don't know," Sally confessed.

[A Rhetorical Question Answered, as well! I suppose, now that I think about it, RQAs are generally a subset of Taking Things Too Literally.]

***

"As your legal guardian, I forbid you to leave the house."

"As my legal guardian, you can go lay an egg!"

***

Many a yawning rabbit, which had ankled out for breakfast, raised its head....

[I love the image of rabbits "ankling out" like Bertie W.]

***

[More Wodehousian business.]

"That, sir, if I may say so, is an example of scientific deduction at its best."

"Thank you, Potter."

"Not at all, sir."

"I think it's pretty good myself."

"Sherlock Holmes couldn't improve on it, sir. And all without the use of a magnifying glass."

"Or even a sample of cigar-ash," Sir William added modestly.

"Nor, sir, did you play the fiddle all night long."

***

[Not Sally this time, but in her league.]

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't tell him to go boil an egg."

"More than likely he hasn't got an egg to boil, sir."

***

[More Wodehousian stuff.]

It was a beautiful morning. The sun shone like the sun on a railway poster, and the flowers threw out their chests and basked in the heat. High overhead, the local larks sang fit to bust their breeches. One of these mornings made-to-measure, and fitting snugly at the waist.

***

"Don't be such a smooch."

"I am not a smooch!" Jeffrey said coldly. "I have no idea what a smooch may be; but--"

[...]

"You're in danger of developing into one.... If you don't want to graduate as a smooch, summa cum laude, now is the time to dig in your heels."

***

"He wants an option on the film rights," Adrian said nonchalantly, throwing out his chest. "With a hey-nonney-no and a yippi-i-ay!"

"With a what?"

"Never mind. That was just a marginal note."

***

"There was such an air of quiet confidence about him that we had to open the window when he'd gone."

***

Percy, after a quick glance at his watch, as if to see if the time was ripe for the operation, mopped his brow.

***

[Adjusting for Inflation dept.]

"If Sam doesn't want an option on my play, some other sucker will. You know what Barnum said--there's one born every minute. And the birth-rate has gone up since his day, too. It's probably nearer one and a half by now."

***

"Ordinarily, I am the most phlegmatic of men, with a double helping of insouciance in my system."

***

[But there's such a thing as imitating Wodehouse TOO closely, imho. (Unless this expression had more general currency than I realize?)]

"Reading from left to right, Adrian Addison in the flesh."

[Along those lines, there's also a minor subplot involving an offstage bonny-baby contest that people do not want to get saddled with judging.]

From Puzzle for Puppets, by Patrick Quentin:

***

The St. Francis Hotel and the St. Anton Hotel stared at each other across the formal flower beds of the park like two rival and opulently upholstered dowagers at a garden party.

***

"I can just picture him," said Iris dreamily. "A lovely squawking check suit and one of those mouths you talk out of the corner of and a cigar."

***

His laugh was about as cheerful as the interior of the Capulet tomb.

***

"The cat warn me."

The cat! The white rose, the red rose, the elephant, the crocus--and now the cat. That's what I liked about this case. It had so much natural history in it.

***

"We'd better get him on the bed and out of the way," I snapped. "I can't stand beards all over the carpet."

***

I could feel the festive pulse of San Francisco in the sunshine, in the air, but we were no part of it. It was all like somebody else's birthday.

[Cf. Can of Yams, "It makes me feel like I'm crashing someone else's honeymoon, with all the wrong baggage."]

***

The Lawrence Stadium went in for cellar in a big way. A couple of dozen Phantoms of the Opera could have lived in this one without intruding upon each other's privacy.

***

From The Singular Case of the Multiple Dead, by Mark McShane:

***

[This book has some highly creative character names]:

Tony Zero

Virginius Twyce

Relentable Cease

Minerva Droplet