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unearths some literary gems.
[Some make-believe show titles!]
[a series of Second Avenue cabarets]
Don't Make Me Laugh, So Who Are You Kidding?, I'm Entitled, and You Should Live So Long
Toast and Mrs. Toast
Redoubtable Antics of '62
***
Bonus: "an all-parrot Importance of Being Earnest"!
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unearths some literary gems.
From "Shop Talk," by E. B. White:
***[Columnist Lucius] Beebe, whose text the picture illustrates was telling how he stayed sensibly in town during a hot weekend, and how pleasant this experience was. Nobody even phoned, he wrote. Not even [press agent] Dick Maney phoned, he continued. And the Tribune, suiting the action to the word, gravely produced a picture of Mr. Maney and ran it—a man whose only immediate news value was that he had not phoned Lucius Beebe over a hot weekend.***A course in ghostwriting opens this month at American University, Washington, D.C., and youngsters whose dream is to put words into somebody else's mouth may further their ambition by enrolling.***
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unearths some literary gems.
From Boon, by H. G. Wells:
***She wrote down his sentences (spelling without blemish in all the European languages) as they came from his lips, with the aid of a bright, efficient, new-looking typewriter. If he used a rare word or a whimsical construction, she would say, “I beg your pardon, Mr. Boon,” and he would at once correct it; and if by any lapse of an always rather too nimble imagination he carried his thoughts into regions outside the tastes and interests of that enormous ante-bellum public it was his fortune to please, then, according to the nature of his divagation, she would either cough or sigh or—in certain eventualities—get up and leave the room.***Many of the fragments would be at once put out of court as modern literature by the fact that they are written in pencil on both sides of the paper!***particularly the peculiar effect that the coincidence that both Nebraska and Nismes begin with an “N” and end so very differently, had had upon his imagination***I remember how Boon sat on the wall of his vegetable garden and discoursed upon James, while several of us squatted about on the cucumber-frames and big flowerpots and suchlike seats, and how over the wall Ford Madox Hueffer was beating Wilkins at Badminton. Hueffer wanted to come and talk too; James is one of his countless subjects—and what an omniscient man he is too!—but Wilkins was too cross to let him off….***He would touch a metaphor and then return and sip it, and then sip and drink and swill until it had intoxicated him hopelessly.***They are an incomplete report of the proceedings of a section S, devoted to Poiometry, apparently the scientific measurement of literary greatness.***
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unearths some literary gems.
From Poor Relations, by Compton Mackenzie:
***This was one of those moments when he was able to feel that the accusation of sentimentality so persistently laid against his work by superior critics was rebutted out of the very mouth of real life.***"I'm glad you have a sense of humor," she exclaimed, suddenly assuming an intensely serious expression and throwing up her eyebrows like two skipping-ropes.***"Miss Merritt has written a book called The Aphorisms of Aphrodite."[...]"Miss Merritt," the old lady asserted, "was meant for bookkeeping by double-entry, instead of which she had taken to book-writing by double-entente."***"But how is one to encourage shorthand? If she had learnt the deaf and dumb alphabet I might have put aside half-an-hour every day for conversation. But it is as hard to encourage shorthand as to encourage a person who is talking in his sleep."***Her black eyebrows soared like a condor to disappear in the clouds of her snowy hair. "But do not let us talk of China," she continued. "Let us rather talk of the drama. Or will you have another muffin?""I think I should prefer the muffin," John admitted.***"For I assume you are both going in the same direction," she said, evoking with her eyebrows the suggestion of a signpost.***John laughed at the idea of being bored; then he fancied that in such a small room his laughter might have sounded hysterical, and he raised the pitch of his voice to give the impression that he always laughed like that.***"To each overture from her uncle she replies with defiance. At one moment she drowns his remarks in a typewriter; at another she flourishes her shorthand in his face; and this summer she fled to America before he had finished what he was saying."***
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unearths some literary gems.
From Rich Relatives, by Compton Mackenzie:
***The restless alchemy of nature had set to work to change the essences of the container and the contents, so that the sandwiches tasted more like cardboard and the cardboard felt more like sandwiches***"He only intended to do a short history of England before the Norman Conquest, but the more he goes on, the further he goes back."***Mrs. Lightbody's suggestions, ghostly and practical, clung for a moment to a drain-pipe***"Perhaps we could get one out and look at it in the train.""Hadn't we better wait until I come and call?" he suggested. "It's not fair to look at things in the train. Trains wobble so, don't they?"***Inasmuch as she changed her clothes three times a day, went to bed at night, got up in the morning, and in fact behaved as a woman of flesh and blood does behave, it was obvious that she and her clothes were not really one and indivisible. Yet so solid and coherent were they that if one of her dresses had hurried downstairs after her to say that she had put on the wrong one, it might not have surprised an onlooker with any effect of strangeness.***It was easy, or difficult, to choose for presentation one of Sholto Grant's pictures, because in subject and treatment they were all much alike. In every foreground there was a peasant girl among olive trees, in every middle distance olive groves, and in every background the rocks and sea of Sirene. The choice resolved itself into whether you wanted a bunch of anemones, a bunch of poppies, an armful of broom, or a basket of cherries; it was really more like shopping at a greengrocer's than choosing a picture. In the end Jasmine, who by now was herself beginning to feel hungry, chose fruit rather than flowers, and went downstairs with a four-foot square canvas.***On an impulse to defeat misgiving she jumped out of bed, sent up the blind with a jerk that admitted Monday morning to her room like a jack-in-the-box....***"And what is the programme for to-day?" asked Sir Hector suddenly, flinging down the paper with such a crackle that Jasmine would not have been more startled if like a clown he had jumped clean through it into the conversation.***Jasmine's little talk with her uncle was the smallest ever known.***There are few places in this world that cast a more profound gloom upon the human spirit than a sunny English drawing-room at 9.45 a.m. Its welcome is as frigid as a woman who fends off a kiss because she has just made up her lips.***[A used typewriter is acquired.]Cousin Edith...used to play upon it ghostly sonatas, occasionally by mistake pressing too hard upon one of the stops and uttering a rudimentary scream of affright when she beheld an ambiguous letter take shape upon the paper.[...]Gradually Jasmine mastered some of the whims of the instrument; she learnt, for instance, that if one wanted a capital A, the birth of a capital A had to be helped by pressing down S at the same time; she also learnt to control the self-assertiveness of the Z, which used to butt in at the least excuse as if for years it had resented the infrequency of its employment.***Lady Grant had chosen a small table in the window, one of those small tables with such a large vase of flowers in the middle that the feeder is left with the impression that he is eating off the rim of a flower-pot.***"Funny that those lines should come so pat. I don't usually spout poetry, you know." [The protagonist of Slightly Perfect, which I was reading concurrently, also spouts some poetry at one point and then claims he doesn't usually do so.]***Nor did the coachman look like a proper coachman, because he had a moustache, which somehow made the cockade in his hat look like a moustache too.***Every time the rays of a passing lamp splashed the brougham Jasmine felt that she ought to say something, but before she had time to think of anything to say it was dark again; and the next splash of light always came as a surprise, so that in the end she gave up trying to think of anything to say and counted the lamp-posts instead. Driving in a brougham with Aunt Cuckoo reminded her of playing hide-and-seek in a wardrobe, when, although one was delighted to have found a good place in which to hide, one hoped that the searchers would not be long in finding it out.***"But it's just like our own risotto," she exclaimed when the heap of well-greased rice sown with morsels of meat was put before her."Very likely," said Aunt Cuckoo, and the tone in which she accepted Jasmine's comparison was so remote and vague that if Jasmine had likened the pilau to anything in the scale of edibility between Chinese birds' nests and ordinary bread and butter, she would probably have assented with the same toneless equanimity.***at the third time of hearing [a character's repertoire of travel anecdotes] one became as it were mentally saddle-sore and yearned to be back home.***Aunt Cuckoo's voice, from many years of tonelessness, was, now that she was able to feel a genuine excitement, full of astonishing little squeaks and tremolos which had she been a clock would have led the listener to oil the works at once.***The most rapid, the most inattentive glance at these pictures was enough to produce a sense of almost intolerable fatigue, because each picture was so obviously what it set out to be that the eye was not allowed a blink between a Sussex down, a Devonshire harbour, a Dorset pasture, and a London slum, and the amount of narrative compressed into the space was as if a dozen bad novelists had simultaneously read a dozen of their worst chapters.***[Times as Smells dept.]the rooms on the ground floor smelt perpetually of half-past-two on Sunday afternoon, partly of clean linen, partly of gravy.***As for Harry Vibart, it was absurd to go on thinking of him. She might as well fall in love with a jack-in-the-box. [The second metaphorical jack-in-the-b. that has unexpectedly popped up, for those keeping count.]***But it was no fun to lecture one's involuntary self unless it were done viva voce.***Seated at a large table at the far end of the room was her uncle, or rather what she supposed to be her uncle, for her first impression was that somebody had left a large ostrich egg on the table."Jasmine," her aunt announced.The ostrich egg remained motionless; but the scratching of a pen and the slow regular movement of a very plump white hand across a double sheet of foolscap indicated that the room contained human life. At the end of a minute the egg lifted itself from the table, and Jasmine found herself confronted by a very bright pair of eyes and offered that very plump white hand.***"Never let a bishop be sure of anything. He thrives on ambiguity."***"I work quite hard at typewriting, and this is a very good machine. The only thing is that it won't do dipthongs, which is a pity, because Uncle Arnold gets very angry if Saxon names are not spelt with dipthongs. There are six cousins here who are called after the six boy kings. Uncle Arnold calls them Eadward, Eadmund, Eadgar, Eadwig, Ædred and Æthelred; but other people call them Eddy, Monday, Tuesday, Why, Because, and Ethel."***Like most people who keep journals, he was usually a day or two in arrears, and when people saw him pompously entering the room with a notebook under his arm, they used to hasten anywhere to escape being asked what he had done on Thursday morning between eleven and one.***Unfortunately for Edward's plans he found that Jasmine was inclined to laugh at him when in the middle of rehearsing a dialogue from the Italian Traveller's Vade Mecum between himself and a laundress he indulged in Petrarchan apostrophes.***"Confound this patent lighter; it's gone out."The upper room of the tower was in complete darkness, and Jasmine was inclined to hope that it would remain in darkness; she felt that even the mild illumination of the cigar-lighter gave too intimate a revelation of her countenance for any promise to be made. Harry was gaining time for his reply by devoting himself to the cigar-lighter, and Jasmine felt that if this tension was continued, she should presently begin to emit white sparks herself.[That's two disparaged patent lighters in the last two books I've read--the other one, again, being Slight Perfect--for those doing the math. (This lighter is actually present in the scene, I note, where the other was introduced gratuitously as a metaphor.) My reading choices, sometimes separated by decades and/or an ocean, seem to crosspollinating a lot lately! Well, it's true I do sometimes leave the books lying around in proximity to each other. Maybe I should embark on a branch of literary critcism that consists of reading two unrelated books concurrently and looking for random mirrorings. Then again, it's probably been done!]***[Speaking of lit crit: Who says literary criticism isn't an exact science? The formula here seems to hinge on an inverse relationship between quality and the number of appearances of the word "darling" per page.]"But do you realize that you've driven me into reading books? That's a pretty desperate state of affairs. I can't pass a railway book-stall now without buying armfuls of the most atrocious rot. And the worse it is, the more I enjoy it. About fifty darlings a page is my style now."***[Bonus: Mackenzie casually uses the word "bosky," thus defying Gelett Burgess--who, as you may recall, was quoted in a recent batch of snippets as saying, 'As for "Welkin," "Lush," and "Bosky"--who dares to lead their metric feet into the prim paths of prose? Let bygones be bygones.' In other words, the answer to Gelett's rhetorical question, half a decade after it was posed, was "Compton Mackenzie."]
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unearths some literary gems.
From Slightly Perfect, by George Malcolm-Smith:
***It was the face one sometimes sees on a city street, when out of a procession of lifeless masks comes a single, isolated countenance, so personal and intimate that one catches himself on the point of greeting an utter stranger as an old acquaintance.***[Re. oversleeping]"Haven't you ever felt that the most important thing in life was just another few minutes in bed?"[Trivia: When this novel about an insurance actuary who runs away and joins a carnival was made into a Broadway show(!), "Five More Minutes in Bed" was apparently the opening production number. (:v> Note also that the actor named Bunny did *not* play the character named Bunny. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Are_You_with_It%3F_(musical)]***His nose was interesting, too. It was flattened at the tip, as though its owner viewed the world through a window, with his face pressed against the glass.***A pair of puzzled parentheses appeared between his eyebrows.***A silence prevailed that could have filled the Grand Canyon.***"Maybe he could work up an act--Professor McClumpha, the Mathematical Wizard." [That name is apparently pulled out of the air, and we never hear it again.]***He had a habit of laughing in reverse, inhaling a laugh instead of exhaling it, as though sucking his mirth back into himself.***Milton had not yet, however, written "finis" to that chapter relating to his former life. There remained a few asterisks demanding footnotes.***The mind of Herman Bogel was like a patent cigarette lighter. Only its owner could understand how it worked, and sometimes it seemed that he himself was not quite sure.***"Bogel, you are a buzzard!"The vehemence of the blast nearly removed the toupée from the elfin's skull.***He removed his pince-nez and tapped them on his left thumbnail, while two deep creases furrowed the figure "11" above his nose.***Suddenly his pince-nez sprang off his nose as the implication of his own words lifted him from his chair.***[Yet another monkey puzzle--but not a tree, this time.]"What's a species of monkey in five letters?""Oh, that again!" Bogel sighed. "Always those puzzles! I'm not interested in five-lettered monkeys at the moment." [In other words, "Not now! Not now!"]***She felt the warmth of a blush in her cheeks and in embarrassment laid another blush on top of the first one. There could be no doubt that A. P. saw it. He regarded her with alarm, like a boy appalled to see that he had actually scared somebody by yelling "boo!"***"Yup, a traveling carnival. Can you bend it?"Much less than bend it, Miss Brainard couldn't even believe it.***There she could wrestle with her dilemma in private. Dilemma-wrestling, like shadow-boxing, is best done alone.***The chief actuary had begun to gather himself together, but even with all the Bixby parts reassembled, he was only capable of voicing a mere cliché.***The rain quit shortly before noon on Wednesday morning, probably from utter exhaustion.***The only sign of life inside the ancient vehicle was a toupée moving back and forth inside the cashier's cage.***To most people, admittedly, Bogel was a distinct pain in the proverbial. [I don't recall hearing this one before, but I see that it has a presence in search results.]***Amos Carter's forehead rolled up to resemble a bewildered washboard.***
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unearths some literary gems.
The Oath Referential, or, Sentimental Swearing
SPOTTED IN THE WILD; EVIDENCE (OR PRESUMPTION) OF SOME GENERAL BYGONE CURRENCY
My only aunt!
Oh, asterisk!
Oh, blank!
My hat!
Good egg! [? not easily searchable, but unlikely to be unique]
God's trousers!
Great jumping beans!Ye little fishes!Jumping Jeroboam
Pooh-bah!
Snakes and ladders!
SPOTTED IN THE WILD; PROBABLY UNIQUE COINAGE BY ONE AUTHOR
Well, I go to Chicago! (Robert Graves)
Damask cheek! (G. D. H. & Margaret Cole) [? presumed unique but not easily searchable]
I'll be double-dyed in Danbury! (Ellery Queen)
Filberts! (Ellery Queen) [unique? not easily searchable]Great Jonathan! (Vincent Starrett)Jesus H. Moses! (Rex Stout)Moulting Manitous! (Douglas G. Browne)My Great-aunt Maggie! (Alan Melville)What the Lord Chancellor? (F. Frankfort Moore)Sac à papier! [unique? not easily searchable]
Hoots toots! (Gladys Mitchell)
Good old gaiters! (Gladys Mitchell)
Well, by the Great Catamaran! (Carolyn Wells)
Phooey with an olive! (Norbert Davis)
Rouge pots and hare's feet! (New York Times, 1903)
Oh, fiddlehead ferns! (Kimberly Greene Angle)
Toasted cheese! (Hope Mirlees)
Busty Bridget! (Hope Mirlees)
By my Great-Aunt’s Rump! (Hope Mirlees)
NON-OATH REPURPOSED INTO AN OATH BY JC-E
Well, of all the arts!
Muppets on ice!
Jumping dingbats!
Marvin Gardens!
F'rinstance! (modeled on the French "par exemple!")
Double davenports!
Whizzle McFluff!
Oh, Bucky balls!
Peaky Blinders!
Well, I seldom! (even milder version of "Well, I never!")
Muffins and crumpets!
O vanitas! O fiddlitas!
UNCATEGORIZED
O the Times! O the Manners!
Darn my socks!
Mother Machree!
Great goats of spunk!
NOTED BY PROF. ODDFELLOW
Old balsam! (The 'Jorrocks' Edition, 1892)
Judas' cats! (Western Ontario's 1930 yearbook)
Oh pickles!
Howly jabers! (Judge's Library, 1887)
Good luck! (Scribner's, 1876)
Oh, migrations!
What the hey, what the nonny?
Winnie-the-Pooh performed twice! ([Conestoga] Spoke newspaper)
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unearths some literary gems.
From Animal Land, Where There Are No People, by Sybil and Katharine Corbet:
"I have been asked to say something about the creatures that live in Animal Land where there are no People. My daughter Sybil, aged four, began to describe them to me about a year ago, but as I personally know nothing about them except that I draw them from her very graphic descriptions, I thought I had better write down a few of the facts about them, collected by her, in her own words:—'Animal Land where there are no People is quite near, only you can’t see it. It is a kind of Garden Cage, with the North Pole and the sea always roughling and wavy. In the summer they like to be hotter and hotter, and in the winter colder and colder. They live by the North Pole and in the leafy places near. It is always light there, always day, they climb the poles and always play. That is Animal Land.'"KATHARINE CORBETJanuary 1897[Some highlights include precursors to Yoda, Pikachu, and the Moog.]https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00086398/00001/flipbook
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