Allusions, not always Literary

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Some people think I'm incredibly well-read. Those who pay attention might notice that quote though I do, it's mostly from the same limited stable of authors.

Jane Austen Bloom County The Phantom Tollbooth Laura Ingalls Wilder
Done "Got the ---" One Midsummer Morning Therblig

Douglas Adams

One Midsummer Morning: A metaphor for time, from this memorable passage: "The second worst [poetry in the Universe] is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem 'Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning' four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off."
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Avenel, NJ: Outlet Books, 1989), p. 45

Richard Adams, Watership Down

"'All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.' And El-ahrairah knew then that although he would not be mocked, yet Frith was his friend. And every evening, when Frith has done his day's work and lies calm and easy in the red sky, El-ahrairah and his children and his children's children come out of their holes and feed and play in his sight, for they are his friends and he has promised them that they can never be destroyed."

Great lines:

Jane Austen

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." That's the first line of Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, or Janey-Jane, as I have been known familiarly (and thus profanely) to call her.

"Any body may know how highly I think of her." Mr. Knightley of Jane Fairfax, a statement that fails to dispel Mrs. Weston's supposition. Emma, p. 288

"Indeed I do not dare." Mr. Darcy replies gravely to an impertinent challenge from Miss Elizabeth Bennet (Pride and Prejudice, p.96).

Berke Breathed, Bloom County

Does a comic strip count as literature? I'll say yes. Opus sang against nuclear war with the chorus, "Slap my 'hind with a melon rind, but that's my penguin state of mind." I use this as an apology for something I don't think warrants sorrow, guilt, or any apology. As you use it in your own idiolect, don't forget the apostrophe that indicates the dropped "be" of "behind." Otherwise you'd be whacking an innocent if figurative deer.
The Banana Junior was Oliver Wendell Jones's computer. It looked just like the original Macintosh except for its feet.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson/Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass

"The horror of that moment, the King went on, "I shall never, never forget." "You will, though," the Queen said, "if you don't make a memorandum of it."

Norton Juster, The Phanton Tollbooth

Greatest possible magnitude: when you can't think of a synonym for most first highest except "best" but "best" isn't quite right, remember Tock, who helped Milo frame a question for the Mathemagician.

Katherine Patterson, Jacob Have I Loved

Louise/Wheezy
Louise is the elder of two twins in Katherine Paterson's Newbery Award-winning novel Jacob Have I Loved. Her Methodist grandmother quotes Romans 9:13 at her: "Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated." Let me as so many others have before me interpret the Bible to suit myself, and call my second-favorite, not my hated, movies "Esau."
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Laura Ingalls Wilder

Boughten: Whenever Laura Ingalls Wilder writes of something newfangled and luxurious (read lazy) instead of metaphorically and usually literally homespun, she often indicates it was "boughten," like the cap Almanzo receives for Christmas in Farmer Boy. Store-bought frosting, etc.

Done

In T.H. White's The Once and Future King, when Wart lives among the ants for a time, he learns they have but two words, expressing their two concepts: "Done" and "Not-Done," as in Work, which has only those two states. When someone is dressed in completely impractical, uncomfortable clothes and wishes everyone had an Airbrush filter in their eye (as a magazine cover would show him or her), I would describe that appearance as Done (not a compliment). A term paper or project completed hours (or minutes) before deadline with mondo caffeine and a dearth of sleep is Done; the person having completed it is Done. Or Done for.

Got the ---

From Samuel Butler's late 19th century satire Erewhon, another "nowhere" like Sir Thomas More's Utopia. In Erewhon, criminality is an illness but illness is criminality, so that when someone is slightly indisposed and unable to go out, a friend will excuse him to whatever acquaintance were to have been met: "He's got the socks," i.e., he stole something small and inconsequential. I say of Blake, "He's got the flaps!" when he goes into a frenzy of fluttering. Does your dog ever take leave of her senses and go tearing 'round the yard in unaccustomed hyperactivity? Same thing. Also Blake gets the yawns, especially in the later evening when his jaw has been properly massaged.

Therbligs

In the early 20th century, a family named Gilbreth studied motion and efficiency. Actually the parents did, sometimes using their children as guinea pigs. The father called any inefficiency or "wasted motion" a therblig, the opposite of Gilbreth with a minor reversal for pronunciation's sake.

Novelleeny

There's a collection of New Yorker cartoons about books and reading, with Patience and Fortitude (the lions flanking the entrance of the main branch of the New York Public Library) curling up with books. One of the cartoons illustrates the novel, novellette, novella, and novelleeny.

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Last modified 27 December 1998

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