Post a line or 2 from a novel & see if anyone can guess the novel without using Google

[red dog 1]

"Gnossos cruising meanwhile in the back of a charcoal-gray four-passenger Aston Martin, wedged between two freshmen football heroes with android heads, from Alexandria, Virginia, mouths mumbling in taut, athletic fashion as if they have unopened Brazil nuts packing their cheeks. How's your ass, ace?'

[applegrove]

1. Above the town, on the hill brow, the stone angel used to

stand in memory of her who relinquished her past as I gained my stubborn one.

[hedda_foil]

4. Look Homeward Angel by Tom Wolfe

[applegrove]

7. The Stone Angel by Margaret Lawrence (canadian)

[hedda_foil]

9. Ah, well! A stone, A leaf, an u found door.

[applegrove]

10. What is that from?

[hedda_foil]

11. I guess I'll add it to the list!

[Mister Ed]

2. "They danced down the street like dingledodies..." n/t

[Srkdqltr]

3. Picking up the telephone, he said, 'Leon, I thought you would like to know. She's here".

[Glorfindel]

5. "Yes. It took four men, all four ablaze with gorgeous decoration,

and the Chief of them unable to exist with fewer than two gold watches in his pocket, emulative of the noble and chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, to conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur's lips. One lacquey carried the chocolate-pot into the sacred presence; a second, milled and frothed the chocolate with the little instrument he bore for that function; a third, presented the favoured napkin; a fourth (he of the two gold watches), poured the chocolate out. It was impossible for Monseigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring Heavens. Deep would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only three men; he must have died of two."

[LeftishBrit]

47. Dickens: Tale of Two Cities

[Glorfindel]

48. Yes! My favorite of Dickens' works.

[hedda_foil]

12. A stone, A leaf, an unfound door.

[Withywindle]

119. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe

[MickOfTheWest]

13. breeze and blade

"There is a similarity, if I may be permitted an excursion into tenuous metaphor, between the feel of a chilly breeze and the feel of a knife's blade, as either is laid across the back of the neck."

[llashram]

14. don't like metaphor

such as this.

[MickOfTheWest]

15. Should I delete my response?

No problem if so.

[llashram]

16. your choice

I just voiced a personal opinion...

[USALiberal]

17. call me ishmael

[Harker]

19. Moby-Dick.

Opening line.

[USALiberal]

20. Yep!!!!

[Brother Buzz]

18. There was a desert wind blowing that night.

It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.

[First Speaker]

25. I know it's Chandler...Lady in the Lake?

[Brother Buzz]

29. Yes, Raymond Chandler - Red Wind (1938)

I can only think Earle Hagen was riffing on Red Wind when he wrote Harlem Nocturne, the quintessential film noir piece, and NOT Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer.

[USALiberal]

21. I was born and raised on a Carolina sea island and I carried the sunshine of the low country, inked

I was born and raised on a Carolina sea island and I carried the sunshine of the low country, inked in dark gold, on my back and shoulders.

[Glorfindel]

22. "The Prince of Tides"

n/t

[USALiberal]

23. I love that book and I love that movie. Heartbreaking.

[Glorfindel]

24. So do I. Heartbreaking, indeed.

[Jade Fox]

49. Pat Conroy was a beautiful writer. nt

[USALiberal]

50. Yes, I loved that book and movie!

[red dog 1]

68. Pat Conroy is one of my literary heroes

I loved reading The Great Santini, one of my all-time favorite books. (The movie was pretty good too)

[First Speaker]

26. The United States in now on the verge of civil war.

[First Speaker]

27. "I can dodge folly without backing into fear."

[First Speaker]

28. "Isn't it pretty to think so."

[Brother Buzz]

30. "Hello, sir. Yes...Uh-huh...Yes...

Last edited Fri Jun 17, 2022, 03:25 PM - Edit history (2)

You say that you want to bury your aunt with a Christmas tree in her coffin? Uh-huh...She wanted it that way...I'll see what I can do for you, sir. Oh, you have the measurements of the coffin with you? Very good...We have our coffin-sized Christmas trees right over here, sir.

Here's a clue:

Expressing a human need, I always wanted to write a book that ended with the word Mayonnaise.

The Mayonnaise Chapter

Feb 3-1952

Dearest Florence and Harv.

I just heard from Edith about the passing of Mr. Good. Our heart goes out to you in deepest sympathy Gods will be done. He has lived a good long life and he has gone to a better place. You were expecting it and it was nice you could see him yesterday even if he did not know you. You have our prayers and love and we will see you soon.

God bless you both.

Love Mother and Nancy.

P.S.
Sorry I forgot to give you the mayonaise. [sic]

[Mad_Dem_X]

31. "The man in black fled across the desert...and the Gunslinger followed."

[red dog 1]

33. It's from a Stephen King novel

Last edited Sat Jun 18, 2022, 01:49 PM - Edit history (1)

But I forget which one

(Maybe someone else knows)

[Glorfindel]

37. The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger

by Stephen King

[Mad_Dem_X]

38. You got it!

I have a t-shirt with those words on it.

[red dog 1]

32. "Temperatures were taken twice a day in the ward..Early each morning and late each afternoon.

Nurse Cramer entered with a jar full of thermometers and worked her way up one side of the ward and down the other, distributing a thermometer to each patient."

[First Speaker]

41. Catch-22?

[red dog 1]

54. Ding!

(Do I get a Rec?)

[red dog 1]

34. "We pull up to the garage an there is a panel truck parked just outside, painted in blue, yellow,

orange, red Day-Glo, with the word BAM in huge letters on the hood.
From out the black hole of the garage comes the sound of a record by Bob Dylan with his raunchy harmonica and Earnest Tubb voice...."

[UTUSN]

35. "There is a fort in the South where a few years ago a murder was committed."

[Glorfindel]

39. The General's Daughter?

(just a wild guess!)

[UTUSN]

45. Am grateful for the wild guess - thought there would be no reply but no. Clue, was made into a movie

[Glorfindel]

46. Since I didn't guess correctly, I googled it

I MUST now read it! Thanks a lot for leading me in that direction.

[UTUSN]

51. Brilliant book, much underrated movie.

[UTUSN]

55. Please let me know when you read/see it - am very interested in your reaction!

[DFW]

36. I'm terrible at these, but here is one of my all-time favorites:

"If I understand you, Major-and frankly I don't much care if I do-you are accusing me of being both a communist and a Nazi, of being both a close friend of General Kishikawa's and his hired assassin, of being both a Japanese militarist and a Soviet spy. None of this offends your sense of rational probability?"

[malthaussen]

56. The Major must have been a Republican. n/t

[DFW]

59. No political affiliations are stated in the book

But from the attitude expressed, he certainly sounded like the Ivy League (superficially-) educated William Buckley type Republican. The author, though American himself, hated the place and moved his family to the UK.

In the book, the Major later orders Nicholai tortured, disfigured, and tossed into solitary for three years until the CIA decides his skills are needed. After completing what the CIA asked of him, Nicholai disappears, and the major later meets a violent "accidental" demise, which it is obvious Nicholai has engineered.

[red dog 1]

69. Was that "Major Major"?

[DFW]

70. His name in the novel is Major Diamond.

Most of the story, apart from the main character, has more to do with his younger brother, Jack O. Diamond, who is every bit as much an asshole as his older brother was.

[red dog 1]

71. I was thinking it might be from "Catch 22"

[DFW]

73. The book is called "Shibumi"

It basically spans the time from 1930 to 1980

[Celerity]

40. "And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security

operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?

Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?...

The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!

If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

[First Speaker]

42. This sounds like Solzhenitsyn...

...the Cancer Ward? I'd say the Gulag Archipelago, but it isn't a novel...

[Celerity]

43. Gulag Archipelago is correct

I fear that those words may well come to be uttered in some similar form by many Americans before this decade just started a little less than 18 months ago is complete.

[First Speaker]

44. The "Gulag" is one of the great books ever written...

...a tour of Dante's Inferno, brought to earth. And I'm afraid you could be right. How many of us will have the courage to resist, I wonder...?

[Brother Buzz]

52. "If you rode the Black Shadow at top speed for any length of time....

you would almost certainly die. That is why there are not many life members of the Vincent Black Shadow Society."

[jmowreader]

114. That sounds like a line from The Great Shark Hunt

Hunter Thompson was infatuated with that motorcycle.

[Brother Buzz]

115. Yes, he was also infatuated with shooting golf....

which accelerated his untimely departure from San Francisco

His idea of shooting golf was to pull up to Lincoln Park Golf Course on Clement Street on a Sunday morning after a night of drinking, pull his shotgun out of the trunk and start shooting at golf balls flying past. The men in blue didn't like it and gave him the "El Tomato".

Extra points if you can name the character from 50's television program that used the term "El Tomato".

[malthaussen]

57. "But that's bullshit, Randy..."

"... Don't you know bullshit when you hear it? Don't you think it would be a useful part of your intellectual tool-kit if, when a steaming pile of bullshit lands on your head, you could say 'My goodness, this appears to be bullshit?'" (a paraphrase, I don't have the book at hand)

-- Mal

[ruet]

58. "Stone burner... stone burner..." -NT-

[dingosatemyusername]

61. Dune?

[ruet]

62. Which One? -NT-

[SKKY]

60. "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

[LeftishBrit]

66. George Orwell: 1984

[red dog 1]

63. "I said, 'Hold on just a minute, I'll be right with you soon as I finish this chapter' and it was

one of the best chapters in the book."

[red dog 1]

64. "The flooded New England valley made a beautiful holiday spot, with twenty miles of

secluded lakeshore.
But visitors Gerald Sternbruck and Ernst soon realize that the still waters of the lake reveal a frightful evil that preys on fauna, flora, and human beings."

[red dog 1]

65. "Damn your eyes. What's that pump stopping for?"

(Not from Young Frankenstein)

[red dog 1]

72. "Your mother's in here, Karras. Would you like to leave a message? I'll see that she gets it."

(This one should be easy to get)

[Harker]

82. "The Exorcist."

Took me a while.

[red dog 1]

83. Ding!

[Harker]

85. ...

[red dog 1]

74. "The bees in my stomach are dead and getting used to it."

[red dog 1]

75. "He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up

was to come down alive."

[Ohiya]

143. Catch 22

[red dog 1]

145. "That's some catch, Catch 22"

[red dog 1]

76. "Rules? PI$$ on your rules!"

[red dog 1]

77. "The minute I went in, I was sorry I'd come. He was reading the Atlantic Monthly,

and there were pills and medicine all over the place, and everything smelled like Vick's Nose Drops.
It was pretty depressing. I'm not too crazy about sick people, anyway. What made it even more depressing, old Spencer had on this very sad, ratty old bathrobe that he was probably born in or something. I don't like to see old guys in their pajamas and bathrobes anyway. Their bumpy old chests are always showing."

[LeftishBrit]

112. J D Salinger: Catcher in the Rye

[red dog 1]

123. Yep

[red dog 1]

78. "God never talks. But the devil keeps advertising, Father. The devil does a lot of commercials."

[red dog 1]

79. "He turned up one day in the doorway of my office. He was already out of uniform, but he had not yet

lost the leathery tan which testified to his military service.
He was tall and fair and he had the pleasant, easy smile of the successful college graduate.
He might have been any one of half a dozen former students whom I vaguely remembered."

[red dog 1]

80. "I've got to hit the books this semester. I'm carrying 18 hours and I'm on pro.

"So?
"So, I've got to get through.
"Maybe sometime, you rat-bastard traitor to your ancient blood, I'll ask you why. But not today, right? Let's go to Louie's.
Their tearing it down.
What?
Building a thing called Larghetto Lodge. Things have changed, for Christ's sake, you can't go stomping around the country for a year and expect to come back to the same busy landscape. C'mon, let's get a beer in the Plato Pit."

[liberal_mama]

81. "Where's Papa going with that ax?"

The first line of my favorite book of all time. Even though I'm 53 and I first read the book as a little girl, I still love it and reread it at least once a year. Such beautiful writing and a wonderful story.

[LeftishBrit]

86. E.B. White: Charlotte's Web

[red dog 1]

84. "After just admiring Fred's bar and crawled out from underneath the plank press,

I told him that I had to go up to my shack and do some work, plant some flowers and things."

[red dog 1]

88. "I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know that all cops carry guns with triggers"

[red dog 1]

89. "I'm quite illiterate; but I read a lot."

[LeftishBrit]

113. I think this is also 'Catcher in the Rye'

[red dog 1]

122. Ding!

[Mad_Dem_X]

90. "Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?"

[malaise]

91. Last night I dreamt I went to

Manderley again😀

[LeftishBrit]

111. Daphne du Maurier: Rebecca

[red dog 1]

92. "The everyday world demands our attention, and prevents us from sinking into ourselves"

[red dog 1]

93. "The mob rushes in where individuals fear to tread"

[LeftishBrit]

153. B.F. Skinner: Walden Two

[red dog 1]

94. "Far over the misty mountains cold....To dungeons deep and caverns old

We must away ere break of day
To seek the pale enchanted gold"

[First Speaker]

96. The Hobbit?

[red dog 1]

97. Yes, I think so

(I lost my notes on this one)

[red dog 1]

95. "He dressed in fatigue pants, a military issue t-shirt, and combat boots.

High on his left arm, a tattoo of a red cobra, fanged, coiled, and ready to strike, stood in stark relief to his pale, freckled skin."

[red dog 1]

98. "I have no wish to take life, not even human life,' repeated Boxer, and his eyes were full of tears"

[LeftishBrit]

110. George Orwell: Animal Farm

[red dog 1]

121. Yep

[red dog 1]

99. "The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable.

In three days no one could stand him."

[First Speaker]

103. Catch-22

[red dog 1]

105. Yep

[VGNonly]

100. "That's bold talk

for a one-eyed fat man"

[First Speaker]

101. True Grit

[Paladin]

102. "...he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts..."

From the long first sentence of a great murder mystery from a few years ago. Those of you who have read it will recognize it; those of you who haven't need to put it on your "Must Read" lists.

[CTyankee]

104. Indian summer is like a woman.

[red dog 1]

106. "My name is Elizabeth Butler; my friends and students call me Liz.

The University of California at Berkeley lists me as a lecturer and field archaeologist; but in actuality, I am a mole, a scavenger, a garbage collector.
I find it somewhat surprising, though gratifying, that I have managed to make my living in such a strange occupation."


(Hint: Novel was written by a woman)

[Not Heidi]

107. Pelf? Mom likes pelf?

I hope that's a direct quote; my copy is consigned to the ruder depths of the garage.

[red dog 1]

108. "I cut into the Automat and there is Bill Gains huddled in someone else's overcoat

looking like a 1910 banker with paresis, and Old Bart, shabby and inconspicuous , dunking pound cake with his dirty fingers, shiny over the dirt."

[red dog 1]

109. "The body will destroy the germs of a physical illness within a week;

but the mind will preserve germs of morbidity or fear for a lifetime."

[sir pball]

116. What I used to pamper among the tangled vines of my heart,

mon grand peche radieux, had dwindled to its essence: sterile and selfish vice, all that I canceled and cursed. You may jeer at me, and threaten to clear the court, but until I am gagged and half-throttled, I will shout my poor truth.

[Brother Buzz]

117. P.S.

Sorry I forgot to give you the mayonaise.



Yes, in the end the author failed because mayonnaise was misspelled.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

118. From a little after two o'clock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead

September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her
father had called it that—a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for
forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and
moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone
fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust
motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown
inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them. There was a wistaria vine
blooming for the second time that summer on a wooden trellis before one window, into
which sparrows came now and then in random gusts, making a dry vivid dusty sound
before going away: and opposite Quentin, Miss Coldfield in the eternal black which she
had worn for forty-three years now, whether for sister, father, or nothusband none knew,
sitting so bolt upright in the straight hard chair that was so tall for her that her legs hung
straight and rigid as if she had iron shinbones and ankles, clear of the floor with that air of
impotent and static rage like children’s feet, and talking in that grim haggard amazed
voice until at last listening would renege and hearing-sense self-confound and the longdead
object of her impotent yet indomitable frustration would appear, as though by
outraged recapitulation evoked, quiet inattentive and harmless, out of the biding and
dreamy and victorious dust.

[Meowmee]

120. Water had frozen everywhere, so it was difficult to find water to drink,

and snow fell constantly, so my mother would spend a great deal of her time searching for food and for a warm place for the two of us to live. I do not myself remember the long exhausting searches for food, the nervous prowlings on streets waiting for an opportunity to slit open a plastic trash bag, although my mother told me of this, but I do remember the terrible cold.

[red dog 1]

124. "I decided finally to pack the football. It was a slightly used Spaulding ball, an expensive one,

with the information printed on it that it was 'triple-lined and lock-stitched.'
It's sponsoring signature was that of Norman Van Broclkin, the ex-Philadelphia Eagle quarterback.
It seemed a little deflated."

[red dog 1]

125. "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."

[Harker]

126. 1984.

Time to reread it.

[red dog 1]

136. Ding!

[red dog 1]

127. "That was the cop who saved me. He lost a leg to a hammer-head shark;

crushing irony, rescued by the law."

[red dog 1]

128. "The city lay cool and dim beneath a vaulting sky of high-scudding grey clouds...A grey shroud that

covered the corpses of buildings, stiff in brick-and-steel rigor mortis, pale in their eternity of sooty death,"

[red dog 1]

129. "I dig through ancient trash," I told the elegantly groomed young woman who had been sent

by a popular women's magazine to write a short article on my work.
"I grub in the dirt, that's what I do, I dig up dead Indians."

(Hint: It's a novel written be a well-known female author of science fiction and fantasy novels)

[red dog 1]

130. "That the incidence of psychopathy is increasing is evident not from the neat

statistical studies originating in the basement laboratories of our universities or the brightly-lighted halls of government bureaus but from a glance at the current world situation."

(A very famous movie was made 11 years after this book was published)

[red dog 1]

131. "Col. Cathcart might raise the number of missions again at any time"

[Ohiya]

142. Catch 22

[red dog 1]

144. Yes,

[red dog 1]

132. "It was 1943. When Jenny's pregnancy was apparent, she lost her job.

[red dog 1]

133. "I stood outside the barber shop looking up at the jutting neon sign of a second floor

dine and dice emporium called Florian's

[red dog 1]

134. "If the others heard me talking out loud, they would think that I am crazy,

But since I am not, I do not care."

[Ohiya]

146. Maybe - One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest

[red dog 1]

147. Excellent guess, but no.

[red dog 1]

148. Excellent guess, but no.

[red dog 1]

135. "In short, this young, handsome, successful, happily-married-three-lovely-children-

father was a fear crazed dope fiend in flight to avoid prosecution on three felonies and god knows how many misdemeanors and seeking at the same time to sculpt a new satori from an old surf, in even shorter, mad as a hatter"

[red dog 1]

137. "He began his pullout at a thousand feet, wingtips thudding and blurring in that gigantic wind,

the boat and the crowd of gulls tilting and growing meteor-fast, directly in his path."

[red dog 1]

138. "Perhaps to lose a sense of where you are implies the danger of losing a sense of who you are"

[red dog 1]

139. "Of all the people in the world, the Clutters were the least likely to be murdered."

[Harker]

149. "In Cold Blood"...

You on a Capote jag?

[red dog 1]

154. I love the guy!

(I think he was a great writer)

[red dog 1]

140. "There was a slight hassle with the jailers over whether I was to go in to see him or not.

The cops had nothing particularly to gain by letting me in.
A reporter from New York -- that just meant more publicity for this glorified beatnik."

[red dog 1]

141. "He walked into the garage and started to tinkle with a carburetor under the hood of

an old green Ford pickup.
'So you think I'm a fool?' I said, sounding more belligerent than I intended.
'We're all fools together,' he replied. 'It's just that a few people know it, others don't. You seem to be one of the latter types. Hand me that small wrench, will you?'"

[red dog 1]

150. "The muzzle of the Luger looked like the Second Street tunnel, but I didn't move"

[red dog 1]

151. "Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it."

[LeftishBrit]

152. J D Salinger: Catcher in the Rye

[red dog 1]

155. You Got It!

[red dog 1]

156. "Thus it came to him merely to run away was folly, because he could never run away from himself"

[red dog 1]

157. "Brenda was six when she fell out of the apple tree"

[red dog 1]

158. "The little person who leads this trio is an inspired man. His fiddle is out of tune,

and there's no rosin on his bow, but still he is an inspired man -- the hands of the muses have been laid upon him.
He plays like one possessed by a demon, by a whole hoard of demons."

[red dog 1]

159. "He no longer needed fishing boats and stale bread for survival"

[First Speaker]

160. Just a guess--The Old Man and the Sea?

[red dog 1]

163. No, good guess though

[red dog 1]

161. "My glass was empty. I asked her what she would have to drink, she said

Scotch and soda..I ordered two of them and said 'No, I've been living in San Francisco."

[jmowreader]

162. "Joe, remember that stuff you sent me to test for thermal stability?

Well, first of all, it hasn't got any."

[red dog 1]

164. "Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece."

[red dog 1]

165. "Never trust a cop in a raincoat"

[red dog 1]

166. "furry Pooh Bear, keeper of the flame, voyaged back from the asphalt seas of the great wasted land:

oh highways U.S. 40 and unyielding 66, I am home to the glacier-gnawed gorges, the fingers of lakes, the golden girls of Westchester and Shaker Heights. See me loud with lies, big boots stomping, mind awash with schemes."

[red dog 1]

167. "When he awoke, he saw angels mating overhead. For a few seconds longer, Axxter watched them,

fragments of a dream."