Pick-a-Shelf discussion

Class is back in session and we are all taking American Lit for the month of September. Your homework assignment is to leave a quote from your book on this thread. It would be great if the quote highlighted what makes the book classed as American Lit, but really any quote you like is great. IF you are stuck, just pick a page at random and list a quote. I guarantee you will get an A!

I'm not very good at quotes and such but I thought this is good for a laugh.

Angle of Repose

New Almaden, Dec. 11,1876

Darling Augusta -
Unless your eyes trouble you, dear Augusta, please read this to yourself.

I have followed your advice in one of the two ways in which you recommended me to be anticipating the evil day that is coming -as to the hardening of the nipples -but I do not know what you mean by using oil. Is it the abdomen that is to be rubbed? I begin to have a painfully stretched feeling-would oil relieve that?

I spoke to you about the advice Mrs. Prager gave me about the future. Of course I know nothing about it practically, and it sounds dreadful-but every way is dreadful except the one which it seems it cannot be relied on.

Mrs. P. said that Oliver must go to a physician and get shields of some kind. They are to be had at some druggists'. It sounds perfectly revolting, but one must face anything rather than the inevitable results of nature's methods. At all events therei s nothing injurious about this. Mrs. Prager is a very fastidious woman and I hardly think would submit to anything very bad -and yet, poor thing, it is an absolute necessity for her. She is magnificently womanly and strong looking, but really very frail. These things are called "cundrums" and are made either of rubber or skin.

...

A bit of context: she's recently married and is now with child... and she's writing to her BFF

Tien wrote: "I'm not very good at quotes and such but I thought this is good for a laugh.

Angle of Repose

New Almaden, Dec. 11,1876

Darling Augusta -
Unless your eyes trouble you, dear Augusta,..."

OH Tien, that quote made my day, lol. I love the way she says, "Unless your eyes are troubling you, read this to yourself." I can just imagine having such a letter read out loud during that time period!

lol - can you just imagine the embarrassment & the blushes! ;D

I certainly can. And the exclamations! ;D

Hey, Lynn. I just noticed a mispelling in the title of this thread! Back to English class, girl.

Bea wrote: "Hey, Lynn. I just noticed a mispelling in the title of this thread! Back to English class, girl."

LOL, I will have to fix that. Obviously I need something more remedial than American Lit!

I'm reading East of Eden, by John Steinbeck

Unlike with many classics, which I end up suffering through and then wondering why they're considered so great, I've found myself drawn in by Steinbeck's mastery from the first word. For one thing, he's terrific at describing how things are, in ways you might never have thought about.

An early example, from p. 54:

Adam spent his next five years doing the things that an army uses to keep its men from going insane -- endless polishing of metal and leather, parade and drill and escort, ceremony of bugle and flag, a ballet of business for men who aren't doing anything.

My quote is also from Steinbeck, from Of Mice and Men

The two main characters are talking about their dream to buy a little place of their own and telling the story has become a bit of a ritual.

"O.K. Someday - we're gonna get the jack together and we're gonna have a little house and a couple of acres an' a cow and some pigs and--"
"An' live off the fatta the lan'," Lennie shouted. "An' have rabbits. Go on, George! Tell about what we're gonna have in the garden and about the rabbits in cages and about the rain in the winter and the stove, an' how thick the cream is on the milk like you can hardly cut it. Tell about that, George"
"Why'n't you do it yourself? You know all of it"
"No.... you tell it. It ain't the same if I tell it. Go on George. How I get to tend the rabbits."

My quote is from Looking for Alaska by John Green:

(the words of one of the high school instructors on the first day of class)

"And in my classes, I will talk most of the time, and you will listen most of the time. Because you may be smart, but I've been smart longer."
(p. 32)

From Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov. Pnin is a little out-of-step with the world around him:

"As a matter of fact, Pnin at the moment felt very well satisfied with himself. When inviting him to deliver a Friday-evening lecture at Cremona ... Miss Judith Clyde had advised our friend that the most convenient train left Waindell at 1:52 p.m., reaching Cremona at 4:17, but Pnin -- who like so many Russians, was inordinately fond of everything in the line of timetables, maps, catalogs, collected them, helped himself freely to them with the bracing pleasure of getting something for nothing, and took especial pride in puzzling out schedules for himself --- had discovered, after some study, an inconspicuous reference mark against a still more convenient train (Lv. Waindell 2:19 p.m., Ar. Cremona 4:32 p.m.); the mark indicated that Fridays, and Fridays only, the two-nineteen stopped at Cremona on its way to a distant and much larger city, graced likewise with a mellow Italian name. Unfortunately for Pnin, his timetable was five years old and in part obsolete."