|
|
 |
|
|
unearths some literary gems.
From Death of a Downsizer, by Carole Berry:
The man with her was a study in tweed. Merely looking at him made me itch.
***
From The Anodyne Necklace, by Martha Grimes:
Miss Pettigrew kneaded her brows as if she were making muffins in her mind.
***
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
unearths some literary gems.
***
She had a head full of doughnut holes.
***
Time creeps in the dark, with no sense of passage. It fumbles blindly for the next position on the clock, and though each tick is a measurable footstep, it never seems to get its feet off the ground.
***
"She said he was like a bird....Sometimes she said a hummingbird, but mostly just any old bird."
***
He stared at me as if I were something out of Lewis Carroll. A slithy tove, for example.
***
You can be jerked out of a sound sleep at three a.m. to fumble in the dark and tell some halfwit that this is not the Superba Doughnut Company; and not be able to sleep again for wondering what kind of hours they work at Superba.
***
Tomorrow would just have to be another day, whether it wanted to or not.
***
[Bastard Grading dept.]
"You said Flynne was a grade-A bastard."
"Well, he was."
"How?"
"My God!" he flared. "Don't you know what a bastard is?"....
"I've never made a classification."
***
"I might have got an Academy award, I might have got screen credit, hell, I might even have got paid."
***
[It's those NYPL lions again! They're always good for a laugh.]
"You could have found out by calling the public library," I pointed out.
"But it wasn't open in New York."
"You could have wired one of the lions, then."
***
"I'll buy him a new suit. A double-breasted libel."
***
[No Such Person dept.]
"His name's Lazarus Fortescue."
"You're kidding. There isn't any such name."
***
[Bonus: a reference to a "half-horse town."]
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
unearths some literary gems.
From The Case Has Altered, by Martha Grimes:
Even the roots of his hair awakened with wide-eyed follicle-amazement.
***
From Dover and the Claret-Tappers, by Joyce Porter:
[Multi-word Middle Names (in Absentia) dept.]
"Consideration-for-others is not Dover's middle name!"
***
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
unearths some literary gems.
[Part of the disclaimer in the front matter]
Some resemblance between the Billingsgates' bees and real bees is unavoidable.
***
["Just when you think it's going to flop--it flaps!" dept.]
For a headdress, Appie had simply pinned the open end of a white linen pillow case around her head like a coif and let the rest of the case flop down her back. It was rather flapping than flopping just now, as a brisk wind had sprung up.
***
"Don't you know bee stings are supposed to be beneficial in certain cases? It would be quite like Aunt Bodie to try, if she could find a suitable bee."
"How'd she know which bee was suitable?"
***
Old Purbody took a beating on that shrinkage in the wool market.
***
"That peculiar-looking guitar Tick's niece Alison played yesterday for the minstrelsy was a pandora. Or bandore, if you prefer."
Max had no particular choice in the matter.
***
[Upon entering a sterilized, sealed-off honey-bottling room]
Casting prophylaxis to the winds, Max turned the white porcelian knob and pushed.
***
[Taking a leaf from Erle Stanley Gardner's "primers for extraterrestrials" writing guide...]
"What kind of plastic container?" Max wanted to know.
"The ordinary sort that gets used in a kitchen," Abigail told him. "Squarish, with a colored plastic top. You can buy them in any supermarket. We have a bunch of them around. I expect that you do, too.*"
"Oh, yes," Sarah agreed. "They're handy for leftovers and freezing things. Or bringing soup to the afflicted."
[*Which is why she needs to explain to him what they are.]
***
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
unearths some literary gems.
***"We've been free of that sort of person, thus far."Considering that Diane Demorney [the speaker above] had moved to Long Piddleton direct from London with no stopover in a That Sort of Person decompression chamber, it was hard to distinguish her from a London "emigrée," in other words, That Sort of Person.***Macalvie seemed to be tasting his thoughts, his words, and not his dinner.***"Why, just the other day, Miss Fludd was saying--""Miss Fludd?" Plant and Trueblood chorused.[Cf. The Can of Yams:HEATHEROh, dear--I hope it’s not a second-rate Pickle Festival. I would feel so bad for Euclid.ALAN AND DELPHINIA(Together) Euclid??]***"I'm just taking my nut-and-ginger cookies out of the oven, Mr. Jury. Your favorite. Come and have some."Mrs. Wasserman always assumed everything was Jury's favorite.***"Why is there a dog in the first-floor flat?" He didn't want to ask why it was playing the piano.***"Is this going to be another 'deep time' lecture?"...."I'm not talking about deep time; I'm talking about dark matter. Can't a person even look at the universe without being persecuted by you?"***He thought of Nancy Fludd. Her name wasn't Nancy, but he thought it fit her, and he was tired of calling her Miss Fludd.***"Silliness, my dear, is my stock in trade."***"That's your idea of 'not philosophical'? Hey, hey"--his hand shot out for the telephone--"let's call Plato, let's call Kant."***"They're always making movies around Santa Fe. If I see Robert Redford one more time I'll throw up."***Oh, do shut up! cried his other, sensible, sterner self, glaring over the top of gold-rimmed spectacles.[This character does wear gold-rimmed spectacles for reading, but I like the idea that when he's arguing with himself, only the sensible self wears the glasses.]***[A blank map, in so many words!]Melrose ran a couple of blanked-out maps of the United States through his mind.[....]It was Jury's fault, of course, this blank map.***
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
unearths some literary gems.
[According to her opening chapter, Wells's memoir is to be about the portion of her life *not yet lived* (hence the title), rather than a conventional autobiography covering the past--a genre she holds in contempt: "Why should a biographer look back and never forward? Why harp on the past when the future beckons?" (By the way, I don't know when Wells began drafting this book, but when it was published she was 75 years young.)
But the bad news (for her, at least) is that she doesn't deliver on this promise, and after the introductory chapter she goes on basically to write about her past. But the good news is, there are still many, many highlights [cue snippets...]
***
A more concise or better biography [than the "Solomon Grundy" nursery rhyme] can, probably, never be done.
***
My childhood? Wearisome to read. My married life, my literary career, my approaching middle age--bah, it sounds like a shelf of the Elsie Dinsmore books.
***
I invariably run up against the theory that the fourth dimension is Time. Which is silly. I know all about Time, and I think it is a negligible quantity.
***
Of course it caresses your vanity to be asked [for advice], but if you must respond, make your advice so vague and generalized that it cannot be definitely followed.
***
His riposte was so quick and apt and his further conversation so much cleverer than mine that I cease reporting it.
***
To me, the Nineties connote shirtwaists and humor. [From a chapter called "Those Nineties."]
***
On one occasion I entered [Oliver Hereford's] studio during one of these brief spells of spotlessness, and unthinkingly tore a letter to bits. Oliver walked the floor in dismay. What could be done with the scraps? I suggested that I had a half-filled waste-basket out in my New Jersey home. He hailed the fact with joy, and stuffing the scraps in an envelope, directed and mailed it to my address.
***
My sister told [Oliver Hereford] of a club we were forming and offered him the privilege of membership.
"It is," she explained, "the Esurient Club. Do you know the meaning of esurient?"
"No," said Oliver. "I've not the faintest idea what it means."
"Then you can join. A member must not know the meaning of the word, he must not ask anyone what it means and he must not look in any dictionary."
"Then how does he find out what it means?"
"Oh, you have to wait until you run across it in a book, or hear it accidentally in a casual conversation. When that occurs, you are given a degree, but, of course, you mustn't tell the other members what it means."
Oliver said he would think it over before joining the club, and later wrote to my sister that, after all, he had discovered he was ineligible for membership.
"I'm sorry," he wrote, "but I find that to belong to a club like that one must not only fail to know what esurient means, but one must care what it means. I don't."
***
[Re. misprints in Shakespeare editions.] "Ferdinand, with hair-upstaring" [someone quoted], claiming that it should be up-starting.
"No," said Oliver, "anybody could say up-starting, but that's commonplace. Up-staring,--fine!"
***
[Oliver H. thought well of the limerick form, in theory, yet rarely wrote them.]
But he said he had two lines to use as third and fourth in any limerick, so he was never at a loss, except for the other three.
His patent inside lines were:
When they said, "Goodness me!"
She replied, "That may be."
***
[Hereford wrote to Wells]
"I'm planning to re-write the alphabet, and have it begin with C is for Carolyn....It's a terribly simple thing to do if you don't lose your nerve. You just consider the alphabet as a circle, and instead of (when you straighten it out) dividing it between Z and A you divide it between B and C and make B the last letter and C the first. Don't say anything about it though, as I want to surprise the schools--and the writing world."
***
[And I guess we're fortunate that The Lark survived long enough to be digitized, because Wells tells us that it was printed on] paper which totally disintegrates if you look at it....I always turn my head as I pass the shelf that holds my copies.
***
His poems were on the order of those lays that are always asking where things are,--like the snows of yesteryear or my wandering boy tonight.
***
[In Stratford-on-Avon]
I knew there must be a fitting tribute of emotion displayed at sight of certain material memorials, and equally well knew that whatever might be my sense of reverential homage, in me such power of emotional demonstration did not abound. I should therefore take with me someone who could adequately supplement my shortcomings.
Sentimental Tommy, of course!
To be sure that was not his real name [it was Harry P. Taber], but I call my friends whatever I like.
***
[Walking Encyclopedias et al. Dept.]
Though he is a Bartlett's Concordance to Shakespeare, in men's clothing, I knew, for a surety, that he would quote no line from the poet the whole day.
***
All through the Nineties I met people. Crowds of people.
Met and met and met, until it seemed that people were born and hastily grew up, just to be met.
***
Richard Hovey...outwhistled Whistler in his gentle art.
***
[The British Museum] is as cold and forbidding as one of the Elgin Marbles, and it takes longer to get the book you ask for than to write one.
***
The only things I hope for are things I know I shall get anyway. I hope that tomorrow will be Tuesday, and it will be.
***
Headlessness is a great boon to ghosts. If the Headless Horseman had had a head, there would have been no story about him. A ghost always wants a severed head to carry round under his arm; I've heard they borrow them from one another.
[...]
But we have to have heads....while we might be better-looking, still we would look eccentric without them.
***
On the table is...my fountain pen, the only one in the world that will write on request.
[Cf. JC-E, "Amanda's Birthday Party": The words were barely out of her mouth before she began noisily rummaging through a drawer full of utensils, searching for the paring knife she had made a point of handing to Steve ten minutes before, with the declaration that this was “absolutely the only knife in the world” suitable for chopping carrots.]
[Back to Carolyn]
Also there is a gold pencil, but just for ornament, as no gold pencil was ever worth its keep.
***
[from a tribute by Caroll Watson Rankin]
One sees her work each month, each week;
One likes her style, her wit, her cheek.
As all the signs would indicate,
Is Carolyn Wells a syndicate?
Bonuses:
1. Gelett Burgess (I think) alludes to "a very Eiffel of a compliment," presumably, a compliment of metaphorically towering size.
2. The verb form "waste-basketed"--new to me, though I see that it brings various Google Books results.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
unearths some literary gems.
Johnny could like it or lump it, whichever he wished.
[Just one item from this one, a minor character name: Cuthbert Egg.]
|
Page 33 of 64
> Older Entries...
Original Content Copyright © 2025 by Craig Conley. All rights reserved.
|
