Thanks everyone for your entries in the Ernest Hemingway / Mickey Spillane experiment! It’s the only time you’re likely to see some of those words on Stuck-in-a-Book… these Nobel Prize winners need to wash their mouth out with soap, sometimes.
The results. OV was so confident that he asked for his doughnut in advance this afternoon – I wonder whether that was justified confidence… let’s see.
1. ‘She was builty with curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of it with that wool jersey.’
Ernie
2. ‘ “You bitch,” he said. “You rich bitch. That’s poetry.” ‘
Ernie
3. ‘In there was my best friend lying on the floor dead. The body. Now I could call it that. Yesterday it was Jack Williams, the guy that shared the same mud bed with me through two years of warfare in the stinking slime of the jungle.’
Mickey
4. ‘ “Love is a dunghill,” said Harry. “And I’m the cock that gets on it to crow.” ‘
Ernie
5. ‘The majoy did not marry her in the spring, or any other time. Luz never got an answer to the letter to Chicago about it. A short time after he contract gonorrhea from a sales girl in a Loop department store while riding in a taxicab through Lincoln Park.’
Ernie
6. ‘”They’re a funny fish,’ I told him. ‘They aren’t here until they come.”‘
Ernie
7. ‘He started to walk down the dock looking longer than a day without breakfast.’
Ernie
8. ‘ “How c-could you?” she gasped. ‘I only had a moment before talking to a corpse, but I got it in. ‘ “It was easy,” I said.’
Mickey
9. ‘I got him forward onto his knees and had both thumbs well in behind his talk-box, and I bent the whole thing back until she cracked. Don’t think you can’t hear it crack either.’
Ernie
10. ‘My hand smashed into bone and flesh and with the meaty impact I could smell the blood and hear the gagging intake of his breath. He grabbed, his arms like great claws. He just held on and I knew if I couldn’t break him loose he could kill me.’
Mickey
And now for the rankings…
3/10 – Lizzy Siddal
4/10 – Me
5/10 – Harriet (interestingly, with one exception, you made the same choices as me!)
5/10 – Our Vicar
5/10 – CallMeMadam
5/10 – _lethe_
7/10 – Beatrice Starr
7/10 – rz
7/10 – Anonymous
Apparently those who score under 5 and those above 5 are usually equal. I’m going to say ‘normal distribution’ and pretend that I remember what it means.
Beatrice, rz and Anonymous – expect a third of a doughnut in the post soon. Maybe.
See you tomorrow Si – sorry you won’t be bringing a donut (which ws spely doughnit when I was a lad). If you had 9 in common with Harriet and I had 8 in common with Harriet we must think alike (I would have thought that in any democratic organisation that would mean we were correct and messers Hemingway and Spillane got it wrong).
I must check my spelling before pressing the send button – and I note you did give the traditional spelling of doughnut. Sorry for spoiling the neat blog.
I’d have done better if I’d simply picked the answers out of a hat. So much for considered literary analysis!
Well,there you go. The question is, does this a) put you off reading Hemingway? b) make you want to read Hemingway? c) make you want to read Spillane? d) none of the above? I am going for a), I’m afraid. Sorry, Ernie.
Considering we were all guessing, not bad!
coo – feeling very smug that I got so many right.
Especially since they were all total guesses.
I will forgo the 1/3 of a doughnut – perhaps OV could have it :).
RR aka Anonymous (cos I keep forgetting to put a name to posts on blogs)