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unearths some literary gems.
From The Black Iris, by Constance and Gwenyth Little:
***
"You look silly with a hat on--you know it?" Mrs. Balron observed.
"Naturally. Since I feel silly, and am silly."
[Good answer!]
***
[Again with metaphorial bandboxes! Not the same author as before, either.]
This lousy little bandbox of a house was full of odd noises.
[And a little more research shows that calling a small building a bandbox is not unique, either.]
***
[And meanwhile in the Eyewear Business dept....]
He did not bother with the kitchen since he knew that his aunts considered it an apartment to be viewed through a lorgnette--if at all.
***
"People as a whole," said Mrs. Balron, "are entirely too touchy."
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unearths some literary gems.
From The View from the Sixties, by George Oppenheimer:
***
For a long time [Harpo Marx] called me Benson. It was no special distinction; he called everybody whose name he could not remember by this label. Nights in his dressing room... you could hear him introduce his hordes of visitors to one another as Mr. or Miss or Mrs. Benson.
[Tangent: When I read Groucho and Me as a kid, one of my favorite details was how Groucho repeatedly used "Delaney" as the name of minor personages whose real names didn't matter or which he couldn't recall or didn't want to reveal or whatever.]
***
Also assigned to the screenplay... were Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin.... Goldwyn never referred to them by name, but only as "de boys." This created considerable confusion since William Du Bois was also working for Goldwyn.... Time and again Goldwyn would buzz me on the dictagraph, order me to bring in de boys, and hastily buzz off, leaving me to figure out whether he wanted William or Sheekman and Perrin. Inevitably I guessed wrong, whereupon Goldwyn would scream at me, "I said de boys, not Du Bois" or vice versa.
***
"Damn it," I said irascibly after losing another rubber, "let's have some light. I can't see my nose in front of my face."
"That isn't where it is," said Charlie [Lederer].
***
[Doing the Math]
There was a scene in which [Garbo] and Douglas had to do a tango. Robert Alton, the choreographer, was showing her the steps and I was required to tango along with them, injecting and shortening the dialogue lines to the rhythm of the dance.... In this case it took three to tango.
***
One of the theaters... was a loft on the second floor of an ancient building on Martha's Vineyard. Directly underneath it was a merry-go-round with a calliope. The love scenes became even more unconvincing when accompanied by "East Side, West Side" or "Anchors Aweigh."
***
"I like my job. I'm happy in New York."
He shook his head sadly. "Boy," he said incredulously and, lest I might have misunderstood him, he repeated, "Boy."
***
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unearths some literary gems.
From Murder at Beechlands, by Maureen Sarsfield:
***
"Old Lord Whatsisname came to tea and simply wouldn't go. Such an old bore, otherwise I'd have asked you both to come up."
No Lord Whatsisname had been to tea with her, but as she had to make some sort of excuse, she might as well make an impressive one.
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unearths some literary gems.
From Act One, by Moss Hart:
***
It is taken for granted that a cabinetmaker or a shoemaker, . . . starting with a certain degree of talent for his profession, does, after the practice of that profession for ten or twenty years, learn how to make a good cabinet or a decent pair of shoes. . . . Not so the playwright. He is quite capable after twenty years of practice of having a left shoe for the second act when a right shoe is obviously called for.
***
[Expressive Back of Head dept. (I think this has come up before!)]
I signed the slip as he counted out the money, conscious that the people immediately behind me were whispering to each other. "It is not George Kaufman," I heard a woman's voice say. "It must be the other one."
As nearly as I could, I tried to achieve a look of modesty with the back of my head while I waited for him to finish.
***
[From My Lucky Star by Joe Keenan]:
***
"I'd felt certain this would unnerve her, but her response was well to the left of fiddle-dee-dee."
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unearths some literary gems.
From Pomeroy, Deceased, by George Bellairs
***
["Patrick, Undergraduate" dept.: All the front matter says "Pomeroy, Deceased"--with the comma--but the dust jacket is "Pomeroy Deceased" sans comma.]
***
[Coming Out of a Band-Box dept.]
He might have just come out of a band-box. He was dark-haired, and every hair was in its place. He looked as if he had a bath and a complete change of linen for each patient.
***
[Eyewear Business dept.]
He polished his monocle with his handkerchief as though preparing it for playing a part in what was ahead.
***
It sounded like a lot of nonsense to Dorange and Littlejohn. Dorange hesitated. Littlejohn felt they were rather like a couple of travellers in a lift who had got out on the wrong floor.
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unearths some literary gems.
From They Rang Up the Police, by Joanna Cannan:
[The You Had to Be There on this is that Mrs. Willoughby is an impossibly pretentious character who affects no interest in the "sordid" material world. The protagonist from Scotland Yard is asking her where she was during the key interval.]
"My dear man, how do I know? I'm too intelligent to worry about something that isn't. Time isn't."
[He apologetically presses her, reminding her that he's investigating a murder, to which her evasive answer culminates in the rhetorical question, "What's death?"]
[Finally the inspector takes leave of her, "after giving her a chance to prroduce a firmer alibi and getting a dissertation on the nonexistence of place."]
***
[From a later scene: Mrs. Willoughby is also highly judgmental. Here she is speaking of an inoffensive stranger whom she has observed only for a few minutes after he entered a public room, lingered briefly, and then left.]
"As he stood there by the fireplace I could see right into his twisted little soul."
"I wonder why he went away," said Nancy.
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unearths some literary gems.
***
"Je regrette, mais il est defense de fumer ici."
"Oh, sorry old boy," said the young man cheerfully, stubbing out his cigarette against his heel. "Bad show, eh? Un mal spectacle."
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unearths some literary gems.
From The Case of the Crooked Candle, by Erle Stanley Gardner:
***
“The man’s name was Smith. He put up a deposit of five dollars and rented the boat to make some studies of the nocturnal habits of sharks. At least, that’s what he said he wanted to do.”
“And what time was this boat rented?” Mason asked.
“The boat was rented at right around nine o’clock in the evening.”
“For how long was it rented?”
“He returned it at exactly twenty minutes past ten, about one hour and twenty minutes later. I remember there was some discussion about the length of time he’d been out, and I told him to call it an hour and let it go at that because I couldn’t remember whether it had been right on the dot of nine o’clock when he started out or not.”
“Wasn’t an hour rather a short time to make a study of the nocturnal habits of sharks?”
“It depends on how many habits you want to study—and how many sharks.”
***
[Counsel is definitely not refraining from personalities...]
Burger frowned across at Mason. “What’s that crooked candle got to do with it?” he asked.
Mason said, “That’s my defense.”
“Your defense?”
“Yes.”
Burger hesitated a moment, then announced ponderously, “Well, it won’t hold a candle to the theory I have.”
There was laughter from the courtroom. Mason joined in the laughter, then, as it subsided, said quickly, “You’ve heard of candling an egg, Mr. District Attorney? Well, I’m candling your case. And it’s rotten.”
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unearths some literary gems.
From The Black House, by Constance and Gwenyth Little:
[In case you're keeping score, this is the *second* book by the Littles in which there's a house that has been divided in two up the middle, with an "empty" half that complements the half that is normally used, but in which there are goings-on.]
***
"My aunt didn't approve of spirits."
"Well"--Diana sighed--"that's one thing the old girl and I have in common. I don't approve of her, and you tell me she's a spirit.
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unearths some literary gems.
From The Birthday Murder, by Lange Lewis:
***
The telephone rang thinly in the hall.
It was a telegram from Victoria's New York agent. As the operator's mechanical voice spoke, the words fell into capitals on yellow paper.
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unearths some literary gems.
From The Case of the Fugitive Nurse, by Erle Stanley Gardner:
***
[This isn't the first time PM has suggested starting from the middle, but on this occasion he justifies it!]
“You—I—I hardly know how to begin,” she said, crossing her knees, smoothing the pearl-gray skirt down over her legs, her hazel eyes fastened on the toe of her left shoe.
“Begin at the middle,” Mason said.
She glanced up at him quickly. “I thought you’d say begin at the beginning. That’s what people usually say in response to a statement of that sort.”
“Well, then, let’s be unusual,” Mason said. “Sometimes it’s better to begin in the middle and then you’re not so far from either the beginning or the ending.”
***
"It keeps developing into such a series of bizarre situations that the whole thing seems like a cross section of a crazy quilt." [I guess a cross section of a crazy quilt is presumed to look even crazier?]
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unearths some literary gems.
From The Case of the Careless Kitten, by Erle Stanley Gardner:
***
"You're getting conservative, mercenary, cautious. You're more interested in periods than you are in question marks."
***
"But it's always been that same spectacular, flamboyant, pulling-the-rabbit-out-of-the-hat business with you."
Mason said, "Well, if the rabbit I'm looking for happens to be in a hat, why not pull him out?"
"Because you usually furnish the hat."
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unearths some literary gems.
***
[Taking Things Literally dept.]
"It's too far for a man with regular office hours to commute comfortably."
"That hasn't anything to do with it," Frank said. "I don't like it. I wouldn't live in it if it was in Grand Central Station."
"It would look nice in Grand Central Station," Kay remarked. "Model Connecticut Literary Farmhouse. You could charge admission."
***
"I shall require some [hot water] tonight and some again in the morning," Mrs. Osgood said, in a tone which would have frozen any hot water that might have been available.
[Cf. the voice so frosty it might have come out of the martini shaker, from Patricia Moyes.]
***
[Cousins dept.]
"I don't get emotionally attached to the cousins of my clients."
***
"No!" Miss Pomeroy did not quite know why she should have said that when the end of the story had been obvious well in advance, but some sort of exclamation seemed to be called for, and "no!" was adequately brief and pointed.
***
[Bonus: An(other?) attorney named Winterbottom.]
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unearths some literary gems.
From Murder at Shots Hall, by Maureen Sarsfield:
***
Once a month by the calendar, the Ambroses had a family row. Once every five weeks they threw a party. [I can't help envisioning this as a mathematical "word problem": "Assuming months of 30 days each and rows lasting exactly one full calendar day, how often will a family row fall on the day of a party?"]
***
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unearths some literary gems.
From Conjurer's Coffin, by Guy Cullingford:
[Who is or was Guy Cullingford? Well, here's what the "about the author" blurb has to say: "The author of this book prefers to do a conjuring trick and remain invisible, and so gives us no autobiographical details or photograph with which we could shatter the illusion."]
***
[The Joke Only Works in a Working-Class English Accent dept.]
"It's them lazy sluts from the bally [i.e., ballet]. Bally noosance I call them," and she looked sharply at Miss Milk to see whether her pun was appreciated.
***
[Twins dept.]
"What really drew my attention to it was one which I thought said: 'Italian lady gives lessons. Twins by arrangement.' I had to look again to see that it was terms."
***
[Old expression that's new to me.]
"She'd be as right as a trivet."
***
"You're the artist's nightmare. The one who always remembers it's been done before."
[Just wait until Google comes along. You ain't seen nothin' yet!]
***
[Characters Who Allude to People They Know as If You're Supposed to Know Who They Are, When Clearly There's No Reason You Would dept.]
"I like my milk and my tea in separate Thermoses, and if I leave it to Violet I know she'll put them in together."
Miss Milk had no idea who Violet was, but she tut-tutted in sympathy with the principle involved.
***
"The porter knew nothing: come to that you could remove the hotel brick by brick during the night, and I don't think he'd notice."
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unearths some literary gems.
From The Case of the Famished Parson, by George Bellairs:
***
The clock on the Jubliee Tower... struck midnight. At this signal the grandfather clocks in the public rooms and hall began to chime all at once in appalling discord....
Then, in mockery of the ponderous timepieces, a clock somewhere else cuckooed a dozen times. The under-manager, who had a sense of humour, kept it in his office, set to operate just after the heavy ones.
[Isn't that a handsomely effective description, in prose, of something that would make a perfect movie gag?]
***
He was fond of long words, but knew hardly any. So he made them up as he went along for the sheer pleasure of mouthing them.
"Brognostication is the thief of time," he said to himself by way of excusing his early appearance on the links."
[I would say he doesn't so much make up long words as produce slightly adulterated versions of actual words and phrases, employing them with a low degree of discrimination.]
"Obsequious portentatiousness," said Harry Keast expressing to himself his awe at the sight.
***
[Bandbox dept. Btw, I didn't even know that word until I read the novel of that title recently. This despite the fact that I own a bandbox (i.e., my hat box).]
[The police surgeon] was serious, casual and a bit patronising, and immaculate. He looked to have come out of a bandbox instead of the morgue.
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unearths some literary gems.
From The Black Rustle, by Constance and Gwenyth Little:
***
I tore my eyes away, shifted in my seat, and bumped Gert's knees again. Gert said "Tch" and I said "Tch," too, just to keep my end up.
***
It was merely an oft-repeated account of her cruise to Bermuda.
However, Gert was not the sort to let a thing like that go on indefinitely, and she presently stopped the flow by the simple expedient of opening her mouth and launching into a two-week vacation in Maine in a voice that drowned out Marge's pipe. The cruise faded to a murmur and then died, and the vacation had the floor. [Cf. the similar conversational battle of the ghost stories in Affair at Aliquid, where someone wanted to "get her ghost off her chest."]
***
"Is Gert his girl friend?" I asked casually.
Randall grinned. "I'm afraid she hardly qualifies. She never holds things properly or hands him the right tool." [Oo-er!]
***
"Can't understand why you aren't all outside getting the fresh air," Bruce observed to the room at large....
Randall said, "We were afraid it might get us first."
***
"If you'd all eat at one certain time," he muttered, "we'd know where we are."
Randall called after him, "Why do you want to know where you are?"
***
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unearths some literary gems.
From Hopjoy Was Here, by Colin Watson:
***
"You'll have noticed how damnably rhetorical these anonymous letter writers always are?"
***
The cat presented its rear, its tail momentarily a quivering exclamation mark, and disappeared into the farther garden.
***
Purbright examined the picture. It showed upwards of thirty members of the Flaxborough Amateur Operatic Society transfixed in self-conscious attitudes of Ruritanian abandon. There was a wealth of false mustachios, arms akimbo, flourished steins, peasant blouses... and feet on chairs.
[...]
Disguised as a prince disguised as a student, forty-eight-year-old Jack Bottomley, bachelor proprietor of the Freemasons' Arms, accompanied his singing with a stiff, resolute gesture; he looked like a learner driver about to turn left.
***
Neither looked remotely expectant of enjoyment. It was natural for the few people they passed on the way back to the hotel to assume, if they noticed them at all, that they were holiday-makers.
***
Purbright carried Warlock's report to the Chief Constable not in confidence that Mr. Chubb possessed a superiority of intellect consonant with his rank but rather as a man with a problem will seek out some simple natural scene, the contemplation of which seems to set free part of his mind to delve more effectually towards a solution.
***
"Harton's about as obliging as an empty stamp machine."
***
"I need hardly tell you that we are not seeking this information out of idle curiosity."
Mr. Tewkes raised his brow. What better motive, he seemed to ask, could there possibly be?
***
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unearths some literary gems.
From Falling Star, by Patricia Moyes:
***
[While the other books that I've read in this series use a third-person narrator who follows the point of view of the sympathetic police inspector whom the series is built around, this one has a somewhat Bertie Woosterish first-person narrator-protagonist (a character who may appear only in this book). He doesn't have B.'s narratorial flair (though he has his moments, as you will soon see!), nor is he played strongly for laughs, most of the time; but he is a well-intentioned, slightly pompous, wealthy gent who gets into a lot of trouble, primarily because his associates grossly manipulate and impose on him, but with the compounding factors of his ill-judged impulsiveness, his own "clever" sneaky actions that backfire, and his exaggerated sense of his own savoir faire. Like Bertie, he admits his intellectual limitations; but, like Bertie, he resents the fact that he gets no respect from the people around him, even when he's accommodating their outrageous requests. For the most part, all this was more serviceable than especially charming in this story, but of course I always like to show appreciation for a Wodehousian gambit!]
***
"I try very hard to be reasonable," I went on, trying very hard to be reasonable.
***
"I beg your pardon, sir," he said, in a voice that might have come frosted out of his own Martini jug. "That is a Bacardi."
***
[One of the choicest Bertiesque flourishes, imho.]
Biddy, in the inconsequential way she has, was reciting "Albert and the Lion" aloud to herself, and swearing when she couldn't remember the words. When I asked her why she did this, she replied that it helped her to think. I pass the information on for what it is worth. It certainly did not help me to think.
***
[A pet monkey has been thrust into the protagonist's arms.]
I realized that the wearing of a pink-bottomed monkey as a sort of feather boa did nothing to help my dignity, but that could not be helped.
[And some very Wodehousian dialogue soon follows!]
She did not take the monkey, which was now jumping up and down in my arms, chattering and begging to be swung again.
"Can't you stop playing with that animal?" Keith asked.
"Since you ask," I said, "no. It has taken a fancy to me and it is extremely adhesive."
"Oh, well then, keep it if you want to."
"I do not want to," I pointed out. "It is merely that..."
"Look," said Keith, "there are serious things I want to say to you, and you will keep on talking about monkeys."
***
[Doctor-Samuel-Johnson-But-Not-The-Doctor-Samuel-Johnson Dept.!]
"Of course I've heard of Doctor Sam. But his name wasn't..."
"He changed his name about once a week," said the Super. "Very confusing, it was. But his favorite alibis were nearly all some sort of variation on Samuel Johnson. I've known him arrested as Sir Samuel Johns, Colonel Samson Jobson, Doctor St. John Samuel, and so on. It wasn't until he died in Wormwood Scrubbs last March that we found out what his real name was. You'll never guess."
"Frederick Arbuthnot?"
"No, no, no. James Boswell."
[By the way, "Frederick Arbuthnot" is not the random, silly guess that it might sound like (unfortunately); it actually is another alias that "Doctor Sam" had used. I will note, however, that this is the second book I've read within a space of two weeks in which the name Arbuthnot appeared. (It was a first name in The Band Box, by Vance.)]
***
[And speaking of Anatole...]
At this, Anton broke into a protesting stream of mixed English and French.
***
She remained uncharmed, merely shaking her head so that the dusty black feathers in her hat quivered in the sunset.
[...]
She shot me a look brimful of malice, and directed her quivering hat out through the front door.
***
I felt exactly like the victim of a card trick, who is told, triumphantly and correctly, that the card he was thinking of was the five of spades.
***
I was aware of some sort of plot thickening like a béchamel sauce all around me.
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