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unearths some literary gems.
From The Elephant is White, by Caryl Brahms and S. J. Simon:
***
["Margarine" as a color dept.]
A number of utility shops lurked dimly behind faded blue, pink, and margarine façades.
***
Save for a pair of tortoiseshell glasses drinking all by itself the room was empty.
***
"And every year when the ice on the great rivers melts, they take their yacht, the Boris Goudonov--and go to see," Nina frowned, "a cow."
***
"Who is this Averchenko?" asked Pete jealously. "A Russian poet?"
"But no," said Nina. "He is a humorist, only very funny. Whenever two Russians meet in a railway carriage and laugh very loud, it is because they have just remembered something in Averchenko."
***
His mind was already busy with the intricate matter of inconspicuously inserting a better borscht into a conversation about Surrealism.
***
"My subconscious," said Raphael with pride, "is probably the most energetic subconscious outside Krafft-Ebbing."
***
The taxi bore its load of luggage like an Edwardian duchess wearing a floral hat at a garden party.
***
Clockwork elephants ran Donald Ducks right off the streets of Paris.
[That's poetic license, I assume: "Donald Ducks," in this context, reads funnier than the technically correct "Donalds Duck." (;v>]
***
[Bonus: Some names!]
le Comte Sans-Blague (JC-E precursor alert! https://www.salticid.com/jce/jceart.html)
the Marquis de Sang-Froid
Miss Penguin (a school instructor)
Kibitzer Incorporated (a film studio)
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unearths some literary gems.
***He had bravely eaten six peanut cookies from the big box presented to him by the Sunday-school mothers to show their appreciation of something or other.***What was so discouraging to a clergyman as a meeting of other clergymen?***"Who could settle down, married to that whistling tea kettle?" [Cf. "I'm a Little Teapot" grown up.]***[Bonus: Scherf, idiosyncratically, calls puffed wheat or rice--at least I infer that's what she's talking about--"balloon cereal." This phrase appears to have no presence in the dictionaries, Wikipedia, Google Books, or the Internet in general.]
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unearths some literary gems.
[This is a book about a comedy writers' collective that Spike Milligan, Eric Sykes, and others formed in the 1950s, which originally occupied the upper stories above a greengrocer's--so that we have a reference to the "crates of fruit, veg and surplus apostrophes that were blocking the entrance."
[We're told that Frankie Howerd "was forever on the lookout for more comic material 'fresh from the quipperies.'"
[Speaking of Howerd, though we may think of him as saying "ooh-er" when performing, apparently behind the scenes he was a very different man: a man who put the "er" before the "ooh"! One of his colleagues describes him requesting a script polish: "Ah, er, ooh, if you could add, y'know, just a touch here and there."]
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unearths some literary gems.
From "Don't, Mr. Disraeli!" by Caryl Brahms and S. J. Simon:
[This is a kooky comic novel from 1941 primarily about two feuding Victorian upper-class London families, the Clutterwicks and the Shuttleforths. Their story is told in snippets that are interspersed with cutesy vignettes involving historic 19th-century personages. Alas, though I finished the book I found it not only disappointing but tarsome.]***There were enormous jellies, too solid to tremble with apprehension.**It is obvious to the most casual observer that someone has been knocking her down with a feather.***Aunt Lobelia [Tunnifuddle] swooned. But before they had time to wave one burned feather, she besought herself of the need for haste. So she threw off her vapors as an ascending balloon throws off ballast.***What they needed was not the fascinating M. Guitry then, but a fascinating Miss Fiddle-dee-dee now.***"Miss Adeline," said Mrs. Creamery."Adenoids," said Aunt Lobelia.***[This bit gives you a taste of the (often intentionally anachronistic) real-historic-figure business. I laughed at this one, but most of it is much more precious, belabored, and self-satisfied--and there's tons of it.]The [draper's] assistant smiles confidently."It is only temporary," he says. "I am going to be H. G. Wells later on."***He reaches for the telephone. Curses! It will not be invented for another thirty years.***His candlestick is specially designed to permit him to burn the candle at both ends. [Btw, this is the second "burning the c. at both e.'s" gag I've come across recently. The other one was in a different book by a different author, but I decided it wasn't funny enough to snippetize.]***The starter is having trouble with the horses. There are so many of them. He is cursing our authors like anything. It would not have hurt them to cut the field down to an orderly half dozen.***[Teaching a Parrot to Play Halma dept.]Over the way old Mr. Purplehammer is not sleeping either. He is teaching Lorelei to play halma.***[Bonus: When a character with expressive eyebrows crosses paths with another such character, he "eyebrow[s] him back."]
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unearths some literary gems.
"Jumping Pete!" he exclaimed.
"No personalities, please."
***
"Who's Who. Why the devil should the old chap be interested in who may or may not be who?"
***
"Between you, me, and the Irwell..."
[This variant on "...and the lamppost" does not come up in Google. I see that the Irwell is a river in England (but not the part of England in which this book is set).]
***
[Bonuses]
1. "Timbukthree" appears as a malapropism, precursing the similarly named pop group. This book is from 1960, but Google brings up a couple of earlier Timbukthrees, one being an anecdote/gag from 1943 about a student who tries to answer "Where is Timbuktu?" by assuming it can be found between "Timbuk one and Timbuk three"; and the other being an ad in a 1954 magazine boasting that "from San Francisco to the Shetland Isles; from Vancouver to Johannesburg; from Timbuktu to Timbukthree....The whole world is now coming to Taste [sic] the magnificence of Our Coffees [sic]!"
2. I've known the saying "Many a mickle makes a muckle" for a couple of decades, but I believe this novel marks the first time I've actually encountered the word "muckle" totally in the wild—i.e., not in the context of that saying, just in the course of reading a work of fiction and while making no deliberate effort to scour the literary horizon for "muckles." The author is English, but the word is used in ordinary conversation (i.e., not a lecture about Scottish vocabulary, or anything meta like that) by a Scottish character. He says "ken too muckle" to mean "know too much." There's an impulse to think I deserve some sort of prize for garnering a "muckle," after all these years—but, of course, a "muckle" is its own reward. And now I can begin keeping my eyes open for that elusive "mickle," which is bound to show up in another decade or two. Watch this space!
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unearths some literary gems.
***
He gave a mirthless laugh, as perfect in its way as a smoke ring.
***
[It's been a while since we've had an anthropomorphized telephone ring, and I think this is a top-notch example!]
The telephone bell rang with a hard, impertinent, and imperative note.
***
Raphael Sands was a pudgy, middle-sized man. He faintly resembled the frog who puffed himself up until he burst, but he was probably too careful to burst....He had a habit of playing to his audience even when the audience was imaginary. Left alone in a room whose furnishings seemed to him at fault, he would roll his eyes in resigned horror just as though half-a-dozen admirers were watching him.
***
The house...had evidently been thrown off in a burst of irritation by a satirical architect. It was half-timbered, with many turrets, a few pillars, and several gables. The windows were of assorted shapes, and included some portholes. The house was made of shiny red brick, and had broken out in conservatories here and there.
***
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unearths some literary gems.
***"What!" cried her father, like a character in a book.***"What a passion you have for hats," she said. "Yet I never see you wear one.""Because one is never to be found," said Chandler W. Moment. "They hide themselves at my approach. It's a case of the perversity of inanimate objects." [THINGS!]***"Great Jonathan!" exclaimed the chief of police.[Aw, shucks, folks, it was nothing. (A quick trip to Google Books suggests no larger currency for "Great Jonathan!" as an oath.)]***Dawson was a funny skate, anyway.[Not sure whether this is an allusion to an ice skate, a roller skate, or a fish. (The "miser" sense of "skate" doesn't seem to fit the character.) Google Books brings up exactly two funny skates from its entire database: the one in this book, and one in a pulp "sleaze" work from 1949.]***[Who Needs Context? dept.]the almost immoral similarity of safety pins***"I want you to clarify your earlier inference. Do you believe it possible that it may--the paper, not your inference--have been dropped upon the floor...?"***In the Moment living room* a singing silence had succeeded the words of greeting and the early small talk of arrival.[*Now that's what I call "living in the moment"!]***[So, yes, Starrett likes his colorful character names! In addition to Professor Chandler W. Moment and his daughter Holly Moment, we have a Mr. Ridinghood and a Dr. Rainfall (SPOILER: he was originally named Gregory Tempest). A journalist mostly referred to as Dawson is revealed, two thirds of the way through the novel, as signing his byline Ernest Crackanthorpe Dawson: "He signed up three abreast, as bold as Ella Wheeler Wilcox, upon whose literary laurel wreath he had designs." You may recall that Starrett also gave us, in the last book, names such as Rev. Saddletire (and the third book in the series is called The End of Mr. Garment).[But Starrett is not a first-rate writer, imho, and he's a little too self-congratulatory about his fanciful names. He's always drawing attention to them, *remarking* on them as strange names. Here we have an Amos Bluefield, for instance: "Who ever heard of a blue field?" (RQA: Kentuckians.) So he kind of spoils it a bit, alas.]***[Bonus: A bleeped transcript renders a phrase such as, we infer, "the goddamned bastard" or the like as "the adjective noun."]***
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unearths some literary gems.
From Time to Change Hats, by Margot Bennett:
[First, you may be interested to know that the title turns out *not* to refer to a juncture at which one shifts roles--i.e., "changing hats" metaphorically--but rather to the deduction that, according to the prevailing theoretical timetable of the crime, the murderer, who seems to have re-dressed the corpse in different clothes, would actually not even have had "time to change hats." Literal hats!]
***
"She lives with, for, or at a too charming male secretary, Forsyth."
***
Paula...had fascinated me like a picture painted by--I couldn't imagine who would have painted the picture.
***
I had met too many people in one day. I could understand none of them.
***
She was not the type to drop a stitch; instead, she dropped the knitting.
***
"The thing is to rub the police the right way. As for you, young man, I don't see why I should bother to rub you at all."
***
"I deeply appreciate [his reading aloud to me].... With his help I have acquired a profound contempt for all poetry."
***
"Everyone knows that everyone has read Hamlet, so each man assumes he has read it himself."
***
"Why do you think she came here--to Clapham?"
"You want my honest opinion? You won't say 'Ah, cat!'"
I told her I had never said "Ah, cat" to anyone.
***
"I have been in Australia. When I was seventeen I went to the wide, free life of a sheep station. It was very wide, very free, but I discovered that freedom, width, and sheep bored me equally."
***
"The factory will get on without me very well....My work consists mainly of saying in amazement, 'That's a damned good idea!' And it usually is. I will say that things go nearly as smoothly when I'm there as when I'm not."
***
"Wouldn't you die of boredom here?" she asked me. "Isn't it too deadly for words?" She went on with quite a lot of words.
***
I felt conspicuous as I began to give my evidence, in fact I felt like a lone tomato in a sea of lettuce.
***
[Regarding precisely when they heard a shot fired.]
"I am never interested in Time," she added. "I believe that Time is dynamic."
"Dynamic?" The coroner licked his lips nervously.
"I believe that it moves about," Paula explained clearly.
"Quite," the coroner mumbled.
***
[Paula, the former actress, is still giving evidence in the coroner's court.]
"Do you believe in telepathy?" she appealed to the audience with a gesture that made her extravagant hat sway dangerously.
***
[This is a funny ending to a scene between the protagonist and a teenage girl. In order to understand her and persuade her to cooperate with his investigations, he has determined to set aside his stereotypical assumptions about schoolgirls--that all they care about is field hockey, and all they do is giggle and get crushes on their schoolmistresses--and focus on her as an individual personality. This works out well, and indeed she is nothing like the stereotype, which by the end of the scene the reader may have forgotten all about. And then he says this to the reader!]
A little more encouragement and she would look like the girl who had been asked to tea by her favourite mistress to discuss the hockey match with St. Bede's.
***
I walked into the Limes wearing a scowl on my mind if not on my face.
***
[Expressive Necks dept.]
[The taxi driver] disapproved of people who caused trouble. I could read it on the back of his neck.
***
She looked like the most intelligent of the Seven Dwarfs.
***
"Wisney's just an old man with eyebrows."
***
She shook her head gloomily, made a noise like an ancestral voice, and bobbed back into the house.
***
(Anti)-bonus: The empty brackets below represent one of those instances where a snippet-marker fell out of the book, and I couldn't reconstruct where it came from. A blank map to a missing snippet!
[ ]
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unearths some literary gems.
From Murder on "B" Deck, by Vincent Starrett:
***[Comprehensive Toasts dept.]Osborne raised his tumbler. "All right," he said. "Here's to everything!"***"Do you care for the first-person singular?" he asked, addressing the stateroom at large, but looking at Miss Harrington.[Now, the context for this is that the character, a novelist, is reading a new first chapter aloud, and inviting opinions as to his choice of first-person narration. However, I like imagining "Do you care for the first-person singular?" as one of those amusingly decontextualized illustration captions. This book from 1929 is not illustrated; but how easy it is to visualize one of those stilted black-and-white drawings, depicting the speaker surrounded by listeners in an ocean-liner stateroom, asking that question. Even better might be if the illustrator didn't read the chapter, and was simply following instructions to illustrate a young man saying "Do you care for the first-person singular?" to the young woman who is his romantic interest. In that version, I see them standing pleasantly on the ship's deck (the illustrator has gathered that the story takes place on shipboard, so nothing as embarrassing as Barbara Remington's Middle Earth lion will ensue), with "Do you care for the first-person singular?" apparently a specimen of better-grade smalltalk. (Also cf. Can of Yams, "Do you care for metaphors?")]***"You said a better man never took office. Never took off his what?"***The message was neither in cipher nor in Chimpanzee, yet it caused Ghost also to start and stare.[I knew monkeys used typewriters, but I didn't realize they sent cables to oceangoing vessels. And, yes, the amateur detective in this series is named Ghost (Walter Ghost). We also have, in this book, a Hollywood actress named Miss Catherine Two and a Reverend Saddletire--who (spoiler!) turns out to be a former chauffeur, so I suppose, thinking of "horseless carriages," the name befits him. Oh, and the shipboard newspaper is called the Daily Minute--a title whose "tautology--or something" annoys the novelist character.]***The ship's pool for the day before had been won by the Hon. Cassius Tutwiler. Tut, tut!***Three empty chairs looked blankly back at the searcher. [Did I ever tell you about the time that, as a teen, I staged a backyard snapshot of three empty chairs partying? At least, it ought to have been three--it's possible I was limited to only two available lawn chairs.]***[His conception of a briefly glimpsed figure] was as the shadow of a dream of smoke.***"If you are jellyfish, not men...." What he meant was that if they were men, not jellyfish....***[Heavy Anthropomorphization dept.]The story of the battle and its motive had crossed the second-cabin barriers, idled at the luncheon tables, descended to the engine room, climbed the masts and stairways, and penetrated to ever corner of the liner.***"Here he is," cried the novelist, "bright as a dollar. Bright, one might say, as two dollars."[I was going to highlight this self-one-upping as an example of "inflationary" language, before it even sunk in how literally inflationary it was!]***[Saying "No pun intended" to a Mirror dept. (The context is that the detective is wearing a head bandage.)]He looked at himself in the glass and smiled. "I was never a beauty," he shrugged. "There are moments when it is a comforting reflection." He nodded to the glass. "No pun intended."***"I think that Hollywood female has something to do with it!""Miss Two?""That's the lady. I've been putting two and Two together, as it were, and making four."[But no bridge-playing joke here, alas. However...]"I want to find out what Miss Seven-come-eleven told Walter last night."***"I'm going to Ghost's cabin and plunge again into the perilous business of thought....""Why perilous?" asked Miss Harrington...."Oh, well, dubious, if you like. What's an adjective between friends?"["What's an adjective between friends?" would also make a good decontextualized caption for a nonexistent illustration, imo.]***"He's one of my assistants.""I don't care if he's one of your nephews," observed Ghost amiably.[Even in context, that nepotistic remark is completely inane and gratuitous, as far as I can tell. In other words, I like it!]***[While some of the passengers disembark at Cherbourg, the novelist finds himself tongue-tied when alone with his beloved.]The whole English language, or that part of it that was his stock-in-trade, with the departing passengers had taken French leave.[...]"Well," he achieved," Cherbourg, upon a first sight, appears to be--ah--very Cherbourgy.***[Bonus: A passing reference to a category of passengers described as "the shuffleboard nuisances."]
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