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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Unintentionally funny lines found in books

23:42 / 15.11.06

I found this book in a second hand bookshop in Galway city. Its haggard as hell, its called "The Heckler" and is apparently the 12th in a 31 book series about the 81st precinct of a fictional city (which is quite obviously New York). It says on the inside that Ed Mc Bain is one of Americas most respected novelists which cant be true can it? Anyways the book is atrocious but well worth owning beause it is so often unintentionally funny. My favourite line at the moment is "He ran the precint with the ruthless savagery of an Arabian stablekeeper"

00:09 / 16.11.06

When you say 'The Heckler' and 'Ed McBain', do you really mean 'Infinite Jest' and 'David Foster Wallace'?

I'm sure that line rings a bell from somewhere, in that.

I don't know if anyone would like to go back and check ...?

00:12 / 16.11.06

Another Heckler classic "Her breasts frolicked beneath her blouse in time to the accompanying jiggle of her buttocks".Can Wallace be that bad?

00:22 / 16.11.06

Ed McBain was a pseudonym for Evan Hunter, and he was indeed a well-regarded and terrifically prolific writer. The 87th Precinct books are pulp, obviously, but pretty well-written for what they are.

Also: I wouldn't be so sure that the humor is unintentional. McBain is self-consciously working in the hard-boiled tradition, in the footsteps of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, and a certain outré quality to the similes just comes with the territory. Or are you gonna tell me that Chandler's "I lit a cigarette that tasted like a plumber's handkerchief" is simply bad writing?

Cos if you are, I'm gonna have to beat you up.

00:28 / 16.11.06

Na see that most definetly is good. Mc bain is for the most part awful though by book 12 he may have been running out of a steam a little. His descriptions of things frequently fail and he'll revert back to telling you the first line of the description of again with "if there's one thing it was, this is it". He's like the Garth Marenghi of the crime novel

00:52 / 16.11.06

It's cheap, but ever since English A-Level, I've been fond of

'"Humph", she ejaculated',

from 'The Woodlanders'.

The best line Thomas Hardy ever wrote, and the only time he ever wrote realistic dialogue for women.

11:23 / 16.11.06

"Dorothea fingered the edge of her reticule"
-Middlemarch.

It just sounds filthy.

Glenn Close But No Cigar

11:35 / 16.11.06

How about Wilkie Collins' 'A Terribly Strange Bed', which contains the line:

"He solemnly ejaculated 'coffee!'".

Equally, this from 'Moby Dick':

"…indeed everything was filled with sperm, except the captain's pantaloons pockets, and those he reserved to thrust his hands into, in self- complacent testimony of his entire satisfaction."

Go, Ahab, go.

11:51 / 16.11.06

Either Holmes or Watson ejaculated in almost every story.

Glenn Close But No Cigar

12:04 / 16.11.06

Yeah, but neither of them were capable of ejaculating coffee. The best Holmes could manage was Earl Grey, while Watson came Dr. Pepper in buckets.

Whisky Priestess

12:49 / 16.11.06

Either Holmes or Watson ejaculated in almost every story.

And they say romance is dead.

Glenn Close But No Cigar

13:08 / 16.11.06

How about this from King Lear?

"Life and death! I am ashamed
That thou hast power to shake my manhood thus;
That these hot tears, which break from me perforce..."

Crux Is This City's Protector.

15:39 / 16.11.06

It's a little sad that nearly every one of these lines is nothing more than a crude sexual pun—a little sad, but mostly hilarious.

Glenn Close But No Cigar

17:58 / 16.11.06

From Conan-Doyle's 'The Red Headed-League':

"I ejaculated after I had twice read over the extraordinary announcement. Holmes chuckled and wriggled in his chair, as was his habit."

From 'Wind in the Willows':

"Out of the centre of the pond rose a fanciful erection clothed in more cockle-shells and topped by a large silvered glass ball that reflected everything all wrong and had a very pleasing effect."

War of the Worlds:

"After two days I grew tired of his constant ejaculation"

Holmes again, this time 'A Case of Identity':

"She pulled a little handkerchief out of her muff and began to sob heavily into it."

17:59 / 16.11.06

What is it about ejaculation and coffee in the 19th century novel? The above 'Moby Dick' quotation's immediately preceeded by

'it was humorously added, that the cook had clapped a head on his largest boiler, and filled it; that the steward had plugged his spare coffee-pot and filled it; that the harpooneers had headed the sockets of their irons and filled them; that indeed everything was filled with sperm...' and so on.

I know it's lonely at sea, but plugging your spare coffee pot? Jesus.

18:32 / 16.11.06

Aw I swear I'm pissing myself after some of those, theyre so good

19:39 / 16.11.06

"This very night I may fondle strange breasts."

From Whitley Streiber's The Wild - a man at a point of mid-life desperation, in a hotel room, briefly contemplating cheating on his wife with the first woman he meets in the bar.

My initial response upon reading this line was a slightly panicked, "how strange are they??"

Whisky Priestess

08:57 / 17.11.06

Not in a book yet (from NaNoWriMo), but give it time:

Christian, I thought, Christian, you traitorous, magnificent bastard.

Who needs context?

09:34 / 17.11.06

HEY!!!

Glenn Close But No Cigar

12:13 / 17.11.06

From Crime and Punishment:

"'Just fancy, Rodion Romanovitch, we found a gingerbread cock in his pocket. He was coming home dead drunk, but he did not forget the children.'

'A cock? Did you say a cock?' the gentleman from the commissariat cried."

Pray God his drinking makes him forget the children next time...

00:28 / 20.11.06

Someone once posted a Harry Potter quote along those lines....

Ah. here

"Yes, I remember it well. Containing a single hair from the tail of a particularly fine unicorn....must have been seventeen hands; nearly gored me with its horn after I plucked his tail. Twelve and a quarter inches...ash...pleasantly springy. It's in fine condition....you treat it regularly?"

"Polished it last night," said Cedric, grinning.

Harry looked down at his own wand. He could see finger marks all over it. He gathered a fistful of robe from his knee and tried to rub it surreptitiously. Several gold sparks shot out of the end of it.

Glenn Close But No Cigar

11:53 / 20.11.06

"Is that a wand in your pocket, Cedric?"

"No, 'tis a gingerbread cock"

"Well", said Ahab " my pantaloons pocket are reserved to thrust my hands into, in self- complacent testimony of my entire satisfaction. Everything else is covered in sperm".

Holmes said nothing. He merely ejaculated coffee and golden sparks, while his client - having no pockets in her dress - tearfully pulled a handkerchief from her muff.

03:37 / 21.11.06

and here i used to giggle over "your cunt is sublime".

'twas a year nine chemistry joke, y'see subliming is the chemical transition whereby something goes from a solid (oh, i typed 'soild' first time round - hee!) state into a gaseous one, without becoming liquid.

from memory diamond does this when it's heated far enough.

we imagined her legs falling off. we were fourteen.

Ex

07:49 / 21.11.06

More puerile giggling, but I loved this one so much because it's not a throwaway line, it's one of the emotional climaxes of the book. It's Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence - look away for spoilers.

The central plot is a chap who loves a lady, but because they're late Victorians in sticky situations, they can't do anything about it.

Years later, in the final scene, the hero's son (by another lady) is taking the hero to a party, and the hero's Former Love is to be there. Hero isn't sure he can face it. Touchingly, his son reveals that the kids always knew that their dad gave up his True Love to devote himself to his family. His son explains this in a beautiful moment of empathy by comparing his father's True Love to his own current fiancee.
But his fiancee has an unfortunate name, so the son cries out:

"Dash it, Dad, don't be prehistoric! Wasn't she -
once - your Fanny?"

(The reader has been primed by the earlier throwaway reference to the heroine's "tiny green monkey muff; I never saw her so stylishly dressed"...)

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

14:59 / 21.11.06

On a related note, a friend of mine has recently become obsessed with Lady Chatterley's Lover, and at the most inappropriate moments will suddenly bark "'appens oi fuck thee, milady!" in a truly appalling accent.

21:11 / 21.11.06

No more invites to Buckingham Palace for you, then. Or perhaps rather more than you'd expected.

miss wonderstarr

21:34 / 21.11.06

we imagined her legs falling off. we were fourteen.

You were fourteen, and laughing at a chemistry connotation to the term "sublime", instead of the rude word? I may be missing levels of intentional irony here... or maybe I went to a ruff skool.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:25 / 22.11.06

Heh... that's exactly what I was thinking. I'm nearly 35, and still find the swear funnier. But that could just be me.

03:31 / 23.11.06

i was a wee flower. and a large geek. and you definitely went to a rougher school than me.

see 'cunt' is funny, but too obvious for our 'we must be smarter than you' compulsions, so an obscure chemistry joke was most satisfying to us.

09:39 / 23.11.06

if you're 14, i think i must be 12. i just laughed at 'wee flower', despite my once-proud pseduo-celtic heritage.

a robert browning klassik, from the end of 'Pippa Passes':

but at night, brother howlet, over the woods,
toll the world thy chantry;
sing to the bats' sleek sisterhoods
full complines with gallantry:
then, owls and bats,
cowls and twats,
monks and nuns, in a cloister's moods,
adjourn to the oak-stump pantry!'

most obviously, browning thinking that a nun's twat is part of her headgear's quite tittersome, but the 'coincidental' mention of something called a 'sleek sister-hood' is just icky. moreover, from this day forth, all requests for oral sex should be delivered in the form,

'ADJOURN TO THE OAK-STUMP PANTRY!'

23:31 / 23.11.06

"prithee fair maiden, may I avail myself of your sleek sister hood?"

09:04 / 04.12.06

There are hundreds and hundreds of hilarious clangers in Steve Alten's ghastly giant shark novel Meg. There's pretty much a genuine lol on every page from stuff like "He kicked over the empty coffee thermos, causing a brown stain to pour out into the carpet" through to dialogue like "Sir! I think the Megalodon is trying to bite through the hull" and (of the shark) "That bitch ate the only woman I ever loved."

But anyway, my absolute favourite was the unfortunate similie "He sat in the front seat of the car, fingering his ponytail like a schoolgirl."