What do you know of books? They are the most wonderful things in the world. Men sit writing them and forget to lie, but you business men never forget.
Sherwood Anderson - Windy McPherson’s Son (1916)
This is something I like about older fiction. Even moderate writers would weave sketches of another world into their novels – their world, vignettes of life as they saw it. Though they sat down to write fiction, when it came to the world as they knew it, they forgot to lie.
Writing
In those days a hasty writer used to flick his work with sand, which stanched but did not dry the ink. The result was often a grimy dabble, like a child’s face blotched with blackberries.
This is something I like about older fiction. Even moderate writers would weave sketches of another world into their novels – their world, vignettes of life as they saw it. Though they sat down to write fiction, when it came to the world as they knew it, they forgot to lie.
Writing
In those days a hasty writer used to flick his work with sand, which stanched but did not dry the ink. The result was often a grimy dabble, like a child’s face blotched with blackberries.
R. D. Blackmore – Clara Vaughan (1864)
Shorthand
“I tell you what you ought to do. You ought to go in for phonography.”
“Phonography?” She was at a loss.
“Yes; Pitman’s shorthand, you know.”
“Oh! shorthand — yes. I’ve heard of it. But why?”
“Why? It’s going to be the great thing of the future. There never was anything like it!”
Shorthand
“I tell you what you ought to do. You ought to go in for phonography.”
“Phonography?” She was at a loss.
“Yes; Pitman’s shorthand, you know.”
“Oh! shorthand — yes. I’ve heard of it. But why?”
“Why? It’s going to be the great thing of the future. There never was anything like it!”
Arnold Bennett – Hilda Lessways (1911)
Cold Weather
In the Five Towns, and probably elsewhere, when a woman puts her head out of her front door, she always looks first to right and then to left, like a scouting Iroquois, and if the air nips she shivers — not because she is cold, but merely to express herself.
Cold Weather
In the Five Towns, and probably elsewhere, when a woman puts her head out of her front door, she always looks first to right and then to left, like a scouting Iroquois, and if the air nips she shivers — not because she is cold, but merely to express herself.
Arnold Bennett - The Matador of the Five Towns (1912}
The Wireless
There was a man sitting on the roof of Old Place with a coil of wire, and another sitting on the chimney. Though listening-in had not yet arrived at Riseholme, Georgie at once conjectured that Olga was installing it, and what would Lucia say? It was utterly un-Elizabethan to begin with, and though she countenanced the telephone, she had expressed herself very strongly on the subject of listening-in. She had had an unfortunate experience of it herself, for on a visit to London not long ago, her hostess had switched it on, and the company was regaled with a vivid lecture on pyorrhea by a hospital nurse . . .
The Wireless
There was a man sitting on the roof of Old Place with a coil of wire, and another sitting on the chimney. Though listening-in had not yet arrived at Riseholme, Georgie at once conjectured that Olga was installing it, and what would Lucia say? It was utterly un-Elizabethan to begin with, and though she countenanced the telephone, she had expressed herself very strongly on the subject of listening-in. She had had an unfortunate experience of it herself, for on a visit to London not long ago, her hostess had switched it on, and the company was regaled with a vivid lecture on pyorrhea by a hospital nurse . . .
E. F. Benson – Lucia in London (1927)
The Radio Gramophone
"You wouldn’t give anything cheap to your wife, would you, Mr. Cross? That’s why you’ve given her this radio gramophone that must have cost at least thirty pounds. Just think of that—ten weeks’ pay gone in one fell swoop for a radio gramophone!”
The Radio Gramophone
"You wouldn’t give anything cheap to your wife, would you, Mr. Cross? That’s why you’ve given her this radio gramophone that must have cost at least thirty pounds. Just think of that—ten weeks’ pay gone in one fell swoop for a radio gramophone!”
Nicholas Brady - Week-End Murder (1933)
2 comments:
Exactly. The lies come today from placing ideology above entertainment. We have to be changed, lectured, and evangelised by the author. Tedious in the extreme.
Sam - it is tedious and maybe entertainment generally is much more divisive than it was because of the embedded ideology. I've recently been rereading a few Dickens novels and find they take me further away from daily life than they did when I first read them.
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