Book Answers

[drcpunk]

1. It is difficult to write about a real person.
T. H. White: The Once and Future King, about Guenever. I am still surprised at how many people think Guenever is proof of White's misogyny.

2. All the years in this ring to you, and all your own years, too.
Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer: Sorcery and Cecelia, or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot.

3. Hic sunt leones.
Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose. I'm a bit surprised no one got this.

4. You have solved the problem which philosophers have been debating since antiquity -- the mystery about which no two nations or tribes have ever agreed, and no two men or women have ever agreed, and no intelligent person has ever agreed totally with himself from one day to the next. You know the difference between right and wrong. I am overawed. I swoon. I figuratively kiss your feet.
Robert Anton Wilson: Masks of the Illuminati.

5. Why can I never set my mind on a possible thing? [Caveat: Can't find the source for this, so the wording might be off.]
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness. I still don't know if I got the wording right.

6. Feathers or lead?
Roger Zelazny: And Call Me Conrad, aka This Immortal.

7. I am more your friend than you think--for after our very first encounter, I could by saying a word to the cardinal have had your throat cut!
Alexander Dumas: The Three Musketeers.

8. I was worst to the one I loved the most.
Laxdaela Saga.

9. Who are they, these people who raise us? We think we know them, but they're strangers. They give us so much, make us who we are, and we never find out why.
Mark Chadbourn: The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke.

10. I shall need very good nursing. It will make no difference, for I shall not recover; but I wish everything to be done, to the smallest detail, as if I should. I hate an ill-conducted sickroom, and you will be so good as to nurse me, on the hypothesis that I shall get well.
Henry James: Washington Square. I'm not surprised no one got this. I like James' portrayal of the monstrous father far better than the softened version in the play The Heiress or in the movie with Holly Hunter, although the movie had a consistent rhetoric, if one different from James'.

11. I faint when I cut my finger! Crimson sunsets make me dive beneath my bed! Bloodhounds drive me into screaming fits! I once threw up all over a very distinguished nobleman who introduced me to his blood brother!
Bridge of Birds. I'm surprised no one got this.

12. Until the body melts and the brain ceases to gel, a man who has come out whole after having been put through his paces by the Delian has a heart for living.
Silverlock.

Comments

[bugsybanana.livejournal.com]

Re: The Heiress: Holly Hunter? Not Olivia De Havilland? I haven't seen either one, only the Broadway revival, but I agree that the novel is truer to actual behavior, as opposed to the Master Thespian approach in the theatrical adaptation, esp. the ending.

Must find out about Holly Hunter's Heiress. Could be interesting.

[bugsybanana.livejournal.com]

Back from the IMDB. I'm completely baffled.

Holly Hunter shows no credits for "The Heiress," nor under another title for Catherine Sloper. Likewise, searching for "heiress", I found two TV movies in addition to the 1949 Olivia De Havilland version: one from 1961 starring Julie Harris, and one from 1969 with almost no cast info, but I infer that one Jill Bennett played Catherine. I'd never heard of either film before now.

Unless Hunter did a "Clueless"-type thing where the story was "Washington Square" but the names were changed and the scene modernized, I am entirely mystified over what you meant to refer to. Please enlighten me?

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Check for Washington Square, not The Heiress. The Heiress was the Broadway play.

[bugsybanana.livejournal.com]

The one from 1997? Catherine was played by Jennifer Jason Leigh. The others were 1976 and 1956, both before Holly Hunter's time.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

You're correct -- it wasn't Holly Hunter, even though I thought it was. It was the 1997 movie I saw. The one with Olivia de Haviland is probably the one the play was drawn from.

Sorry about the confusion.