I wanted to start a post like this for Lolita. We have a main thread for critical review which is certainly fun, but this is for interesting lines or phrases. We may want to be careful we don’t get too out of hand with DH and his industrial revolution dialogue.
Taking an example from Lolita, this is what I am talking about:
“My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, …”
I don’t even have to quote the entire sentence. The adjective “photogenic” coupled with a parenthetic remark to which other writers might have given an entire chapter. The demise of his mother was left to my imagination, which is not pretty.
If I don’t record these while I’m reading, they will fade into a distant memory, an area that is all too easily reached these days. The serious critical stuff, please put in the main thread; those phrases you read and read again smiling, please put them here.
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As I am presently “obsessed” with simile, I have been on the lookout for them in everything I am reading. Conrad’s similes have been known to bring tears to my eyes. Hammett’s aren’t there . . . but they are pretty good. I was particularly “taken” with this one, from our narrator, on meeting Elihu Willsson for the first time:
On first reading this, the comparatum that came to mind was that of a fish that hides itelf and lies in wait for its prey. But then I re-read the simile. The comparandum is not Willsson himself, but his eyes. Imagine the eyes jumping out to grab something . . . it is an entirely different picture.
Isn’t that the way it always is? You’ve written your reports, burned your Fatimas, had your dinner, then you come home to this? I enjoyed how he took care of the light globe without getting up — chucking a Gideon Bible at it. Maybe he had the Bible out while he was burning the Fatimas.
This is on page 97 as the fight with MacSwain comes to a close. Throughout the book the Op is described as a short boozer who shuns exercise so it is consistent that a fight would be described as a comic brawl.
aw . . . shucks. I wanted to put that last one up. I just re-read it this morning and thought, “What a wonderful example of the classic, B-movie, hard-boiled tough-guy. I can see Robert Mitchum saying just those words.”
Then again, it is not inconsistent with the persona Bruce Willis takes on in Last Man Standing.
It does not surprise me that you latched on to it as well . . .