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unearths some literary gems.
From A Going Concern, by Catherine Aird:
***[Vis-a-vis this book's firm of solicitors: "Messrs Puckle, Puckle, and Nunnery"]Amelia's mind had gone off at a complete tangent, trying to work out however many Puckles there must be in the firm. The old saw about thrift came into her mind: "Many a mickle makes a muckle..." Could it be a case of many a client making a Puckle?***She struggled for the right words. She must say something that had no connection at all with Cock Robin.***Detective Inspector Sloan said nothing at all rather loudly.***Amelia used to describe her father as absentminded until Phoebe Plantin had explained that he wasn't absentminded at all, but single-minded, which was quite different but had the same effect.***"Shouldn't be surprised," said Phoebe Plantin, who had ceased to be surprised long ago.***Miller...was...thin as a yard of rainwater.[I guess a yard of rainwater is even thinner than a yard of ale, because ale is thicker than water. Btw, "thin as a yard of rainwater" appears to have no currency outside of this book.]***She was either too young or too old for the works of Evelyn Waugh.***"I dare say both companies are pretty big fish in your neck of the woods...""It's a small pond," conceded Sloan, who could mix a metaphor as well as the next man.***Mr Henryson looked up with the mild uninterest of the secondhand bookseller as Amelia entered.***"I think that they--whoever they might have been--can't have found what they were searching for at the Grange...""Whatever that might have been," said Leeyes, whose highly idiosyncratic approach to algebra had never--without argument--got past the point of letting a equal one thing and b another. He was a little better at allowing the letter x stand for the unknown quantity: but not much.***"Ah!"Sloan couldn't remember the name of the man who had said "But me no buts" but he felt a considerable fellow-feeling towards him, and would have liked himself to have said "Ah me no ahs" to the superintendent but didn't think he should.[Tangent: Back in the mid-1980s, I wrote a short story called "The 'Ah' Sound."]***[Bonus: An offstage character named Perpetua. She's long deceased, but I guess a name like that has indefinite staying power!]
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unearths some literary gems.
***
To hell with Chapter 19. Every damn book has a Chapter 19.
[via Encyclopedia of American Humorists]
***
From The Rest of My Life, by Carolyn Wells:
***
If I begin a book or if a friend begins to tell me a story, my thoughts leap to the inevitable or probable denouement.
[Also via the Encyc. of Amer. Humorists, which states that "Carolyn Wells had a 'leaping mind.'"]
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unearths some literary gems.
***
[From the preface]
As for my prose, I apologize. It suffers from too many years on the lunatic fringe of law firms such as Ely Sneed. I was able to curb a regrettable tendency to begin paragraphs with "now," "therefore," and "to wit." My editor's blue pencil took care of the "notwithstandings" and "albeits." An "inasmuch as" may have slipped through, though. You can only do so much.
***
She had once been "on the stage," or had been on the stage once. Whether burlesque, a high school play, or the Royal Shakespeare Company was never made quite clear.
***
Ely Sneed had committees like gardeners have crabgrass....Battle one committee down and another would spring up in its place.
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[Flapping dept.]
Her voice rose, she rose, her napkin rose and flapped through the air.
***
If I could hear his shoe creaking, what about my watch ticking? The power of suggestion became almost more than I could stand; it sounded like Big Ben was in the closet with me.
***
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unearths some literary gems.
***"If you want me to write your Column on Crime just say the word and I'll put you on our redundant list--with pleasure.""To be redundant with pleasure is preferable to being redundant without."***"D'ye think Ah came up the Clyde in a wheelbarrow?"[This rhetorical question was new to me! But I see that it's part of a whole "thing": https://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/sndns901]***"Please don't be offended if I say I am beholden to you...whatever that might mean."***"If it's any of your business I'd also inform you that it's none of your business."***"But I couldn't see the wood for the trees...and I planted the forest myself."***"Give me a ring later in the day and maybe we'll marry your vague notion to my vague notion."***"Don't play the fool?""Why not? I'm good at it."***[Bonus: From a review of a different Carmichael book, excerpted on the dust jacket of this one: "He zigs when you expect him to zag, but never fails to arrive at a zonko ending." Who knew that the way to one-up the zigging/zagging trope was by employing a zonko!][Also: The protagonist sometimes says "De-da...de-da...de-da," in the sense of "etc., etc." or "yada yada." I've never heard this before, and I don't know whether it has general currency.]
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unearths some literary gems.
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unearths some literary gems.
From Sam the Sudden, by Wodehouse:
***“That wastepaper basket over there has been in my office only four days, and already it knows more about the export and import business than you would learn if you stayed here fifty years."***[Who Needs Context? dept.]Sam had many excellent qualities, but he did not in the least resemble a potted geranium.***Their windows are dirty and forlorn and most of the lettering outside has been worn away, so that on the second floor it would appear that trade is being carried on by the Ja— & Sum—r— Rub— Co., while just above, Messrs. Smith, R-bi-s-n & G——, that mystic firm, are dealing in something curtly described as c——.***[Walking Quasi-Reference Books dept.]One of the things that make these old retainers so hard to bear is that they are so often walking editions of the chroniques scandaleuses of the family.***Swiftly reaching a decision, he went to the desk and took out a cable form.The wording of the cable gave him some little trouble. The first version was so condensed that he could not understand it himself.***[Bonus: A nightclub called the Angry Cheese]
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unearths some literary gems.
***
"Want to see a trick?"
[....]
"Sure. If it's a good one."
The uncertainty of his acceptance seemed to please her. Probably, she had expected No. She would have taken Yes, unimaginative as that reply would have been. But that her trick was being measured off against other unknown and even better tricks made it pleasantly risky.
***
Plant had always considered Trueblood more of an event than a person.
***
"I'm going to have an early night," said Lady Stubbings. It was a line [in a book] that Melrose Plant could easily have dispensed with--weren't they forever having their "early nights"?--but in this case, he found the line especially excruciating and wished the whole lot of them would have an early night.
***
"I thought she married that Italian duke, or whatever."
"Count. No. He's floating in Venice. I suspect she's got cold feet. Wet feet, rather."
***
"You're carrying a cue in your oboe case," Melrose said to Tom.
[...]
"You ever try playing snooker with an oboe?"
***
"I made myself an authority on Mesopotamia; that way they think I must know a lot about everything else. It's amazing, really, how much people think you must know if you know about something nobody else much cares about."
[I could be wrong, but I think that's an actual ploy from the Stephen Potter canon.]
***
[Bonus: A character called Mrs. Withersby (not quite a Wetherbee)]
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