Excerpts of excellence

[Animavore]

I think some people need to look up the word "excerpt".

There is a thread for poems here.

[Feck]

Ian M Banks...... Consider Phlebas

From chapter 6 The Eaters

Horza recalled that the Culture's attitude to somebody who believed in an omnipotent God was to pity them, and to take no more notice of the substance of their faith than one would take of the ramblings of somebody claiming to be Emperor of the Universe. The nature of the belief wasn't totally irrelevant - along with the person's background and upbringing, it might tell you something about what had gone wrong with them - but you didn't take their views seriously.
That was the way Horza felt about Fwi-Song. He had to treat him as the maniac he obviously was. The fact that his insanity was dressed in religious trappings meant nothing.

[Trolldor]

I do not like them
Sam I am.
I do not like Green Eggs and Ham.

[Pappa]

I do not like them
Sam I am.
I do not like Green Eggs and Ham.

Eat your fucking food or your not getting anything else.

[Animavore]

In the darkness spirit hands were felt to flutter and when prayer by tantras had been directed to the proper quarter a faint but increasing luminosity of ruby light became gradually visible, the apparition of the etheric double being particularly lifelike owing to the discharge of jivic rays from the crown of the head and face. Communication was effected through the pituitary body and also by means of the orangefiery and scarlet rays emanating from the sacral region and solar plexus. Questioned by his earthname as to his whereabouts in the heavenworld he stated that he was now on the path of prãlãyã or return but was still submitted to trial at the hands of certain bloodthirsty entities on the lower astral levels. In reply to a question as to his first sensations in the great divide beyond he stated that previously he had seen as in a glass darkly but that those who had passed over had summit possibilities of atmic development opened up to them. Interrogated as to whether life there resembled our experience in the flesh he stated that he had heard from more favoured beings now in the spirit that their abodes were equipped with every modern home comfort such as tãlãfãnã, ãlãvãtãr, hãtãkãldã, wãtãklãsãt and that the highest adepts were steeped in waves of volupcy of the very purest nature. Having requested a quart of buttermilk this was brought and evidently afforded relief. Asked if he had any message for the living he exhorted all who were still at the wrong side of Mãyã to acknowledge the true path for it was reported in devanic circles that Mars and Jupiter were out for mischief on the eastern angle where the ram has power. It was then queried whether there were any special desires on the part of the defunct and the reply was: We greet you, friends of earth, who are still in the body. Mind C.K. doesn't pile it on. It was ascertained that the reference was to Mr Cornelius Kelleher, manager of Messrs H.J. O'Neill's popular funeral establishment, a personal friend of the defunct, who had been responsible for the carrying out of the interment arrangements. Before departing he requested that it should be told to his dear son Patsy that the other boot which he had been looking for was at present under the commode in the return room and that the pair should be sent to Cullen's to be soled only as the heels were still good. He stated that this had greatly perturbed his peace of mind in the other region and earnestly requested that his desire should be made known. Assurances were given that the matter would be attended to and it was intimated that this had given satisfaction.

Ulysses - James Joyce.

[JacksSmirkingRevenge]

I very seldom read these days - indeed, I hardly ever used to read in the past either. However, the style of Peter Tinniswood made a deep impression on me. - English eccentricity at it's best. Sample:-

Extract from Tales From Witney Scrotum
The Brigadier meets the author off the train at Graveney Junction...

The headlamps of the trusty Lanchester picked out the startled eyes of badger and hare and Minor Counties umpires up to no good.

We passed through the villages of Milton Abbas and Milton Arthur. We wheezed our way slowly up the steep incline out of Crowe Magna and at the summit paused to give a moment's respite to the panting Lanchester.

And there below us slumbering peacefully in the damp tuck of the valley lay the village of Witney Scrotum.

I could dimly make out the lights of the Golf Ball Museum and the glow from the eternal bonfire in old Grannie Swanton's garden as she burned yet another remaindered copy of Miss Jilly Cooper's The Book Of The Green Wellie.

The Brigadier handed me his hip flask filled to the brim with home-made gin distilled, as he told me later, from a pair of redundant binoculars, and presently we commenced the descent into the village.

How familiar the scene.

How the heart soared and fluttered as we entered the outskirts of Witney Scrotum.

Nothing had changed.

Oil lamps burned faintly in the windows of the cottages of the long-defunct gimlett and tremlett makers, who once long ago in the days of their prime had supplied the implements for toad circumcision the length and breadth of the nation.

We passed the water meadows at Cowdrey's Bottom, skulking darkly in the deep black shadows cast by the massive buttresses of Botham's Gut.

The night shift at Fearnley's Mill was hard at work turning out yet another special consignment of thatched space invader machines for the Belgian royal family.

The village idiot, old Ben Stansgate, was relieving himself contentedly in the Ned Sherrin memorial horse and cattle drinking trough outside the Baxter Arms.

Old Squire Brearley sat high astride the wrought iron gates outside his exquisite Queen Anne mansion baying at the moon, and outside the Cricket Bag Repository Prodger the poacher waved gaily at us and exposed himself.

Superb...

[owtth]

Ian M Banks...... Consider Phlebas

From chapter 6 The Eaters

Horza recalled that the Culture's attitude to somebody who believed in an omnipotent God was to pity them, and to take no more notice of the substance of their faith than one would take of the ramblings of somebody claiming to be Emperor of the Universe. The nature of the belief wasn't totally irrelevant - along with the person's background and upbringing, it might tell you something about what had gone wrong with them - but you didn't take their views seriously.
That was the way Horza felt about Fwi-Song. He had to treat him as the maniac he obviously was. The fact that his insanity was dressed in religious trappings meant nothing.

I fucking loved that

The only excerpt from a book that I learned by heart (without it being required in school) was the closing paragraph from "On the Road", It just gives me shivers.

So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.

[Animavore]

This is my favourite chapter ever from Naked Lunch.

He laughed, black insect laughter that seemed to serve some obscure function of orientation like a bat's squeak. The Sailor laughed three times. He stopped laughing and hung there motionless listening down into himself. He had picked up the silent frequency of junk. His face smoothed out like yellow wax over the high cheek-bones. He waited half a cigarette. The Sailor knew how to wait. But his eyes burned in a hideous dry hunger. He turned his face of controlled emergency in a slow half pivot to case the man who had just come in. "Fats" Terminal sat there sweeping the cafe with blank, periscope eyes. When his eyes passed the Sailor he nodded minutely. Only the peeled nerves of junk sickness would have registered a movement.

Isn't that just beautiful?
Stuff like that speaks to me more than Shakespeare.

[charlou]

Yes, I agree, Ani.


Kafka .. surreal ...

A Walk

I walked on, unperturbed. But since, as a pedestrian, I dreaded the effort of climbing the mountainous road, I let it become gradually flatter, let it slope down into a valley in the distance. The stones vanished at my will and the wind disappeared.
I walked at a brisk pace and since I was on my way down I raised my head, stiffened my body and raised my arms behind my head. Because I love pinewoods I went through woods of this kind, and since I like gazing silently up at the stars, the stars appeared slowly in the sky, as is their wont. I saw only a few fleecy clouds which a wind, blowing just at their height, pulled through the air, to the astonishment of the pedestrian.
Opposite and at some distance from my road, probably separated from it by a river as well, I caused to rise an enormously high mountain whose plateau, overgrown with brushwood, bordered on the sky. I could see quite clearly the little ramifications of the highest branches and their movements. This sight, ordinary as it may be, made me so happy that I, as a small bird on a twig of those distant scrubby bushes, forgot to let the moon come up. It lay already behind the mountain, no doubt angry at the delay.
But now the cool light that precedes the rising of the moon spread over the mountain and suddenly the moon itself appeared from beyond one of the restless bushes. I on the other hand had meanwhile been gazing in another direction, and when I now looked ahead of me and suddenly saw it glowing in its almost full roundness, I stood still with troubled eyes, for my precipitous road seemed to lead straight to this terrifying moon.
After a while, however, I grew accustomed to it and watched with composure the difficulty it had in rising, until finally, having approached one another a considerable part of the way, I felt overcome by an intense drowsiness caused, I assumed, by the fatigue of the walk, to which I was unaccustomed. I wandered on for a while with closed eyes, keeping myself awake only by a loud and regular clapping of my hands.
But then, as the road threatened to slip away from under my feet and everything, as weary as myself, began to vanish, I summoned my remaining strength and hastened to scale the slope to the right of the road in order to reach in time the high tangled pinewood where I planned to spend the night that probably lay ahead of us.
The haste was necessary. The stars were already fading and I noticed the moon sink feebly into the sky as though into troubled waters. The mountain already belonged to the darkness, the road crumbled away at the point where I had turned toward the slope, and from the interior of the forest I heard the approaching crashes of collapsing trees. Now I could have thrown myself down on some moss to sleep, but since I feared to sleep on the ground I crept - the trunk sliding quickly down the rings formed by my arms and legs - up a tree which was already reeling without wind. I lay down on a branch and, leaning my head against a trunk, went hastily to sleep while a squirrel of my whim sat stiff-tailed at the trembling end of the branch, and rocked itself.

[Trolldor]

It is quite a task to combat the absolutists and the relativists at the same time: To maintain that there is no totalitarian solution while also insisting that yes, we on our side have unalterable convictions and are willing to fight for them.

[Pappa]

Kafka

I ♥ Kafka.

[Trolldor]

I got bored of Kafka.

[Pappa]

I got bored of Kafka.

You're dead to me now.

Have you read the Castle and Amerika?

[Trolldor]

Last thing I read was... I think 'metamorphosis'.

[Pappa]

Last thing I read was... I think 'metamorphosis'.

It's ok, but nowhere near his best. The Trial is his best novel. The other two novels are actually unfinished (one ends part way through a sentence) and both also make very little sense at all, but I still think they are fucking brilliant.