Allusions 2

This is a continuation of the Allusions game thread. There are currently no open puzzles in the old thread.

Here's how it works--someone lists 5 works, highlighting only the title or the author (whichever is meant to be used as a clue). The clues should give reference to some work: a book, a poem, a story, etc. Others try to guess which work the clues are alluding to.

If you have a great puzzle, don't feel as if you have to wait for the previous one to be solved to post--we can work on more than one at a time! :)

This is a poem. I don't see it is any of your libraries, but I'm almost positive all of you are familiar with it.

The Lost Traveller by Antonia White
Ship of the Line by C.S. Forester
The Virgin in the Ice by Ellis Peters
Tomb of the Golden Bird by Elizabeth Peters
Caesar : let the dice fly by Colleen McCullough

Is it The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge?

Yes, it is!

A novel:

Cold comfort farm by Stella Gibbons
Trout fishing in America; a novel by Richard Brautigan
Talk talk : a novel by T.C. Boyle
Four quartets by T.S. Eliot
The third man by Graham Greene

This seems far out, but third man, and four, makes me think of Montmorency as the fourth. They were at times cold, and comfortable, did a fair amout of talking, and there was something about a trout in a case.

Barking (with Montmorency) up the wrong tree?

No, I'm afraid you've lost your tin-opener! Although it's almost a better answer than the correct one...

Not all the clues are in the titles: at least one requires you to look inside the book in question.

Is the novel anything to do with spies or the Cold War era?

No.

thorold,

I think I'm at an impasse with your puzzle (#5) and need another clue to help me focus in the right direction.

Anyone else agree?

Extra clues for No.5:

Music, in a foreign language by Andrew Crumey
Algorithms on strings, trees, and sequences : computer science and computational biology by Dan Gusfield

I'm more lost than ever.

Something involving a countdown?

These clues with cold, America, strings, music, quartets, etc. are making me think of Garrison Keillor. But his books of essays don't count as a novel, do they?

Maybe the novel is about a talkative musician or mathematician who likes fishing. :-)

Wait a sec. Trout. Kilgore? Is there anything by Vonnegut that fits? Not Cat's Cradle, as best I can remember, but that does involve strings (the cradle), and ice, and a foreign language, doesn't it?

I've probably never heard of whatever it is. :-)

None of those guesses is anywhere near, but you're both fishing in the right sort of waters...

(I'm going away for a long weekend - answer on Monday)

Shall I tell?

Either that, or give more clues or some more info. Nationality of author, century, . . .

I'd prefer more clues instead of the answer. Since I've been thinking on it for a while, my pride would like a chance to redeem itself. :)

OK, heavy hints:

(i) It's a 20th century novel, but to tell you the author's nationality would be too much of a give-away...
(ii) For the third of the original clues, it's the subject that is important, not the title.

thorold,

I gather that the author isn't on my list of favorites? *grin*

If he were, he'd fall between two distinguished (or at least distinguishable...) fellow-poets :-)

fellow-poets? but the work is question is a novel, right?

That doesn't exclude that the author also writes poetry...

I'm going to hazard a guess . . . that I haven't read whatever this is. :-)

It's beginning to sound as though I've picked another one that no-one has read - sorry! It was reasonably popular at the time, but it was a few years ago.

OK, even heavier hint: author's nationality = Indian

Might as well add a new puzzle while we wait.

A poem. (Author not listed as a favorite, but the poem is at the top of my list.)

You Can Profit from a Monetary Crisis - Harry Browne
The Cloister and the Hearth - Charles Reade
Nelson and the Age of Fighting Sail - Oliver Warner
Imperial Sunset: The Fall of Napoleon - R. F. Delderfield
Earth abides - George R. Stewart

Hmm - not totally convinced, but could it be "Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour"?

As far as I can recall, the Old Sheep was writing about Napoleon and the French revolution, and I think Nelson came into some of the other sonnets in the sequence? Milton is obviously a link with monetarism, and there's a fireside involved.

Not having read it, I looked at the reviews of Earth abides for inspiration, and found "The world population is destroyed by a plaque." Unfortunately the reviewer doesn't say what was written on the plaque: if the inscription had anything to do with either Nelson or Napoleon, I might be onto something.

thorold,

could it be "Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour"?

No. (Not by one of my unfavorite authors either. *smile*)

doesn't say what was written on the plaque

I think it was one of the ones that says: "The End is Near!" :-) (NOT a clue.)

thorold,

Puzzle #5: I think finally got the author from your clues. I've only read A Suitable Boy, and that doesn't seem to fit. Googling for summaries of his work. . . I'm guessing An Equal Music.

>30 christiguc: Yes! I was assuming everyone would pick up "string quartet", "the Trout", "deafness" and "Vienna", so I threw in Cold Comfort farm to obfuscate the author's name. But evidently An equal music isn't as widely-known as I thought. Oh well...

I was going to guess An Equal Music!! But my first time trying Allusions, so didn't have the confidence : ).

dihiba, while I know I'm impressive, don't let that intimidate you. ;)

myshelves, I'm thinking "I cannot rest from travel: I will drink life to the lees"?

Another one to work on--this is a novel.

Diary of a Drug Fiend by Aleister Crowley
The Integral Trees by Larry Niven
The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett
The Cult of Efficiency by Janice Gross Stein
Numbers in the Dark: And Other Stories by Italo Calvino

christiguc,

Right again!

Tennyson's "Ulysses" it is.

christiguc,

Integral leaps out at me as the name of the ship in Zamyatin's We. Along with diary, glass, efficiency, numbers . . . I think that's it!

Exactly!

(I didn't want to make it too difficult because I didn't see it in anyone's library, but I stopped myself from using Mephistopheles or The Benefactor) :)

I did spend some time thinking about drug cults. :-) And then drug and efficiency, which led me to Huxley, and only then, in a dystopian frame of mind, did I see Integral leaping out at me.

Zamyatin fascinates me. Imagine writing a letter to Stalin saying "I don't like the way you're running things and would like to leave the country," and actually getting permission!

I didn't know that about him! That just makes me like him more. :)

I can imagine him getting permission, simply because that would be one way of silencing the criticism within the country. What I can't imagine is writing to Stalin in the first place. That would take a bit more brashness than I think I have in me.

Okay. I'll try again.

Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess by Bobby Fischer
The Mountains of California by John Muir
Identity and Difference by Martin Heidegger
Crime Novels : American Noir of the 1930s and 40s edited by Polito
Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame by Charles Bukowski

The lady in the lake?

I hope this one turns out to be less obscure than the last few I tried! This is a poem, little-read but much-quoted:

Wystan and Chester : a personal memoir of W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman by Thekla Clark
Amaryllis Night and Day by Russell Hoban
The Death of an Irish Sea Wolf by Bartholomew Gill
L'etranger by Albert Camus
Pastures Nouveaux by Wendy Holden

For me, I'm afraid, never read but certainly quoted. Tomorrow to fresh woods, etc. Milton's Lycidas.

Back to a novel:

The Tempest by William Shakespeare
Bernard Shaw by Michael Holroyd
Ploughing the Clouds: The search for Irish Soma by Peter Lamborn Wilson
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

The third line is the full title - touchstones balked at the whole thing.

A bit late and several puzzles later, but I noticed the question mark. Brilliant (and correct) guess, thorold! The Lady in the Lake it is! (message 40/41)

Try another novel:

The glass bead game by Herman Hesse
Prince Rupert's Drop by Jane Draycott (title should be touchstoned)
Father and son by Edmund Gosse
Old Parramatta by Michael Charles
A Thing in disguise : the visionary life of Joseph Paxton by Kate Colquhoun

>47 thorold::

Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey?

>48 hazelk:

Yes!

My first attempt - maybe too easy : ).
This is a short story. Only two clues. Explain each.

Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence

dihiba,

Does "explain each" mean that we need to have read both books to solve this?

The first one, perhaps. Or just general knowledge?
hints - 1st one pertains to author's surname, and second one to something that happens in the story.

Ok. :-) I'll give it a shot.

I've read Anne of GG. But I can't think of any name in there that is a famous author surname.

Anne Shirley leads to Shirley Jackson? :-)
The winner of The Lottery does get stoned.

On the right track, at least? :-)

Correct!
Sorry I put "surname" in there - should have just been "name".

dihiba,

Devious. :-) Without those clues, I'd have spent forever trying to come up with a famous short story about a green stone. Or a stone gable. Or a green angel. Or something. :-)

OK, a more straight forward one to get us going again - a poem. A bit more than just the title is needed for at least 3 clues.

The Last Days of Socrates by Plato
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
The Companion Guide to the South of France by Archibald Lyall
The Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare
The Book of Ruth - the Bible

56

Since this is straightforward, I reckon it isn't "J'ay perdu ma tourterelle." :-)

57

You're right - it's a poem that I would have thought anyone with a modest education in Eng. Lit. would know and would be able to quote from, at least a line or two. Maybe the clues are not so straight forward - allusions rather than actual words - but of course it's much easier from where I sit. ;-)

Your thought is winging in the right direction in one respect.

The first three strongly suggest that this is all about nightingales, but I can't make the last two fit yet - possibly a beaker full of the warm South will stimulate the brain a bit...

59

Well done, you are there thorold. Fast forward to verse 7 for the last two clues. The phoenix was the only other immortal bird that I could come up with.

And there I was, winging along with the wrong bird!

I have a modest (very?) education in Eng. Lit. --- it did not include b____y Cold Comfort Farm (*grin*) --- but even I can quote parts of this one.

Well done, both of you!

Hmm, maybe it would have been worth re-reading the poem before posting, to avoid exposing my forgetfulness :-)

I've often thought that "Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird" is a line that any competent creative writing teacher would attack with the red pen (probably scribbling "tautology" in the margin). For some reason it didn't link with "phoenix" in my mind...

>61 myshelves:
Mine didn't either, but I still managed to read Cold Comfort Farm several times for pleasure!

#62

Isn't CCF something of a parody of other books about the joys of rural/farm life in England? Not having read too many such books (I don't think I have, anyway), I figured I wouldn't be likely to appreciate a parody. But I may have that all bassackwards. Feel free to tell me so.

Care to enlighten those of us who obviously didn't receive a modest education in English Lit? (Although I HAVE read Cold Comfort Farm!)

aviddiva--Ode to a Nightingale, Keats.

I haven't read Cold Comfort Farm either. And I would be curious to know the answer to myshelves' question: since it is a parody of a certain style of book, would it still be interesting to those not familiar with the parodied style?

64

Sorry, aviddiva. I thought that thorold had written enough to expose the answer.

63, 65

I thought CCF a funny book, and worth reading in a relaxing moment. I've never read any of the gloomy rustic novels it parodies - and don't plan to! -but I think you can take them as read and enjoy the book. Much in the same way that you can enjoy Northanger Abbey without actually having to have immersed yourself in three volume Gothic novels.

I'd tried one or 2 modern gothic novels. That was enough to make me love Northanger Abbey!

Ok . . . I'll keep an eye out for a copy of CCF.

Thanks, Christiguc! I have to admit that my knowledge of classic poets is spotty -- as a kid I was warped by not only the "new math" but the "new English" as well. Most of the poets we studied in school were contemporary, and a lot of my later exposure was from random reading or musical settings. Ask me about Robert Herrick, Ben Jonson, Goethe or Shakespeare, and I'm your gal, but I missed out on a lot of Keats, Shelley and the English Romantics.

Cold Comfort Farm is a funny book on its own, and worth a read -- I'm sure exposure to the genre deepens the level of the humor, but isn't necessary.