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unearths some literary gems.
From Bimbos of the Death Sun, by Sharyn McCrumb:
In a green turtleneck sweater and medallion, Richard Faber looked like a champagne bottle.
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From All Other Things, by Charlotte Stein:
She tried to roll her eyes and missed.
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unearths some literary gems.
From Miss Hargreaves, by Frank Baker:
[This book boasts a postscript from the future! The body of the first-person narrator's chronicle is dated 1939-1940, and it recounts experiences that took place in 1939. Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker was indeed published in 1940; but it included a postscript by the narrator written later in life, which is dated "1965."]
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No doubt about it. I was precariously poised on the Spur of the Moment.
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"What are trousers compared to truth?"
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"The way she looked me up and down through those what-d'you-call-'ems."
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"Remember you have to live up to a nine-foot hat and be brave."
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Wadge, the other tenor, a pleasant fellow who has a habit of putting in aspirates in unlikely places (he has a favourite solo in which he sings "Thou crownest the h-year!") turned and patted me on the back. "A faithful female friend is very nice for a h-young man," he said.
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"It has often occurred to me," she said a little breathlessly, "that since there exists a beetle who resembles a stag, there may possibly exist a stag who resembles a beetle."
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"We're here to-day gone to-morrow and some say to-morrow never comes, so perhaps we don't go."
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"Janus lost the three-thirty," he said. "Backed him both ways, my boy. Had to with a name like that. What did Janus have--two ears or two elbows, something."
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"A ghost couldn't play a harp as well as she does," he said.
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Uncle Grosvenor! I'll Uncle Grosvenor you!"
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"You and I couldn't write like that, not even if we kept ten white owls in our bathrooms."
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We saw an avaricious-looking brass fowl with one eye cocked sideways as though it feared somebody were going to bag the Bible—or perhaps as though it hoped somebody were going to.
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I read it a dozen more times, held it up to the light, shook it, smelt it, and finally spilt some tea over it.
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"Parrots are intelligent birds," said father. "Knew one once that could recite a Shakespeare sonnet. All except the last line."
"Oh well," said mother, "I certainly don't want a harp and a parrot in the house."
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Nothing ever surprises father. He can’t even surprise himself.
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Sir Hugh Allan, who once attended Evensong, mistook him for a bassoon.
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“Wait till we’re through the lock.”
If you’ve got anything to say, it might as well be said in a lock as out of it, I thought.
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I reckon that if I could really bring myself to believe she didn’t exist—well, she wouldn’t exist. But that’s damned hard when you see her sitting in the Bishop’s Throne with a fifteen-inch hat.”
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“Swans are funny creatures. I wouldn’t trust a swan with a five-pound note. No, I wouldn’t.”
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She doesn’t understand the sort of things father and I talk about. Not that we understand them ourselves, as a matter of fact.
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It wasn’t at all an easy question to answer. If I had it in an examination, I don’t suppose I should be able to fill up both sides of the paper.
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She was asked to open a Conservative bazaar and she opened it damn well; I wandered in there after she had left and I had the strongest feeling that it was the best-opened bazaar I had ever been to. Not a bit of it was closed, you could see that.
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Another matter brought her bang into the middle of Cornford, between the “n” and the “f” as you might say.
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“Here, old boy, don’t go on like this.”
“I will go on like this.”
But instead of going on like that, I turned suddenly and went out of the bar.
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"/Atalanta in Calydon/ was written entirely with arrows, Miss Hargreaves. He'd take the manuscript, pin it to the board, and fire at it. Any words that the arrows pierced, he'd take out."
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Canon Auty, it was said, had first met his wife on a mountain in Switzerland, where he found her presiding over an impending avalanche.
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Canon Auty... stroked his beard reflectively as though there, and only there, could a good time be found.
***
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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]
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From The Rest of My Life, by Carolyn Wells:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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