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unearths some literary gems.
From What Next? by Denis Mackail:
***[Mr. Cash is a solicitor]The thought of this for some reason caused him to smile, which was so unheard-of a thing to occur in Mr. Cash's room that that gentleman stopped abruptly in the middle of the word "backwardisation" and said, "I beg your pardon, perhaps I am not quite clear?"***[Mis-finished Sentences dept.!]"Besides I should miss all your--""Proposals," suggested Jim hopefully...."Nonsense. 'Racing tips' was what I was going to say."***Ergo, what the dickens and everything else am I to say?[I guess "and everything else" is a sort of blank map of maledicta, eh?]***[Parenthetical!]"Let the explanatory and parenthetical Muse descend and address the reader."[See full passage attached. And then the sequel attachment, in which the narrator really sells the idea that his story is happening in real time.]***This "but------" was the curse of Jim's existence. The riddle of the sphinx and the problem of squaring the circle left him cold.***At about ten o'clock Mr. Cash, in illustrating a mannerism of the female mandrill, knocked over a bottle of brandy.***[On the Port Club's "magic" port wine, which can be deeply indulged with nary a hangover.]Oh unsurpassable and unequalled Port Club Port, two bottles of which will be but a pleasant memory to Messrs. Cash and Grant in the morning! Oh rare grape! Oh skilled bottler! Oh peerless vintage!--how I wish I had ever met you in real life!***He bent still further forward, and his eyeglasses fell off his nose and spun wildly on the end of the curly cord. [Wildly!]***"I was a professor of never mind what at a university in the North of England."***It is well known that once a reader starts skipping he never stops, but takes longer and wilder leaps each time.***One leg of his trousers had formed itself into a kind of spiral knickerbocker and barely descended below his knee. [The rare singular "knickerbocker."]***[Laughing in Turkish Baths dept.]He might, for instance, have a Turkish bath; that wouldn't cost much; but then he hated Turkish baths really. It was so difficult not to laugh in them.***...before you, or anyone else for that matter, could say "Robinson and Cleaver."[I had to look up "Robinson and Cleaver," which turns out to be a once-famous Victorian-era Belfast department store. And of course I appreciate the narrator's thoroughness in specifying that you or anyone else couldn't say it fast enough.]***"I've got to meet Father at half-past three at platform something-or-other."[It's none of my business, but I think this may be taking genericization too far for comfort!]***Jim had at all times the gift of the sort of sleep that no outward physical disturbance could arouse. From his earliest youth cold sponges had, so to speak, left him cold.***[See attached. In which the narrator defends his depiction of the protagonist to a hypothetical, indignant reader.]***[When you can't be bothered to do your own cussing.]"Damn!" said Lush."Ditto," said Jim.***"Damn and blast!" roared Jim...."Blast and damn!" he repeated, and was on the point of adding further words of a similar nature....***A torrent of quite unspeakable though silent oaths was radiating from Jim as from some raging high-powered wireless station. [Oh, if only this book were illustrated!]***the first night of the fifth edition of "Muffins and Crumpets"***[Wait for the epilogue! (attached)]***Bonus: A passing reference in this book to the delightful surname Snelgrove was my first encounter with it. Eager to make up for lost time, I visited Wikipedia to become Snelgrove-aware. There I discovered (Missed Opportunity Dept.) that the Canadian coffee chain Timothy's could have been called Snelgrove's! Goodness gracious, I have done business at Timothy's on, I think, multiple occasions, never knowing there was an implicit Snelgrove lurking!https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy%27s_World_Coffee#Origin_and_background
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