Another long shot, but is it The Doors of Perception/Heaven and Hell by Aldous Huxley?
Sorry it took me so long to get back to this thread – but Jekeira’s got it. (Damn, and I thought that was a hard one…)
Woo hoo!
Okay, I know you’re thinking, “Great, the last time this chick was up we got an obscure Russian quote about dead horses.” Well, this time I’m going to do an easy one.
Unfortunately I don’t have it with me at work. I’ll go home at lunch time and get it.
By the way, Celyn, why didn’t you guess?
seeing as i cant actually stop anyone, i dont see why we cant have more than one game going at once.
Because I was damn sure which book it was, and it would have been flying in the face of tradition to get the answer too quickly, just because I probably saw the question first. No fun.
Anyway, I was too lazy to go thinking of a passage, as my last one was perhaps not impressive.
Random remarks - how strange that Connor was going to guess At Swim-two-Birds, and also that Quincey’s Confessions… was very nearly what I used instead of Flann O’Brien. Joys of synchronicity.
Question for Fretful Porpentine, despite promising myself not to check if the passage was de Quincey, I did, and found an online version where “Lord Byron” in your quoted passage is replaced by “Jeremy Taylor”. Though there’s no question really - I imagine de Quincey could easily get a bit confused at times.
I once went to a pub in Glasgow in a building where de Quincey used to live, and I and my friend were refused admission for not being being sufficiently tidily dressed. Stuffy lot!
Okey-doke, here’s mine. I’ve (probably unnecesarily) changed the subject character’s name to X.
...and the wedding-cake, which had been a great distress to him, was all eat up. His own stomach could bear nothing rich, and he could never believe other people to be different from himself. What was unwholesome to him, he regarded as unfit for any body; and he had, therefore, earnestly tried to dissuade them from having any wedding-cake at all, and when that proved vain, as earnestly tried to prevent any body's eating it. He had been at the pains of consulting Mr. Perry, the apothecary, on the subject. Mr. Perry was an intelligent, gentlemanlike man, whose frequent visits were one of the comforts of X's life; and, upon being applied to, he could not but acknowledge, (though it seemed rather against the bias of inclination,) that wedding-cake might certainly disagree with many - perhaps with most people, unless taken moderately. With such an opinion, in confirmation of his own, X hoped to influence every visitor of the new-married pair; but still the cake was eaten; and there was no rest for his benevolent nerves till it was all gone.I KNOW that one! Emma by Jane Austen! I’ll have my new one either tonight or tomorrow morning - I ain’t got no books with me.
<--------BTW, check out the post count…pretty cool, huh?
Got it, Connor! Good job.
And congrats on the post count.
ConnorI take it the post count was 1000 when it was mentioned? Congratulations, KiloConnor.
Actually, it was 1111, but thanks! Here’s the excerpt. My easy hint will be that it was a pulitzer prize winner. Its easily my favorite chunk of words.
“It is still the first week in January, and I’ve got great plans. I’ve been thinking about seeing. There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand. But - and this is the point - who gets excited by a mere penny? If you follow one arrow, if you crouch motionless on a bank to watch a tremulous ripple thrill on the water and are rewarded by the sight of a muskrat kit paddling from its den, will you count that sight a chip of copper only, and go your rueful way? It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won’t stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get.”
Good luck! A shiny penny to the one who gets it!
There is something a bit J.P. Donleavy about it. Hmm. Doesn’t sound like something I’ve read, though. Celyn goes to cogitate.
Hey, no fair cogitating after 5 PM. It sounds an awful lot like work
Out of curiousity, did you draw the name Celyn from a Terry Pratchett book, or is it just a fairly strange coincidence?
It’s not because of the Pratchett book, but I did remember the Imp-y-Celyn character as I was choosing a name, and thought “well, that’s no problem, as I like the books”. Otherwise I would have had to change my mind. Also, if I had decided to choose from Pratchett people, I would have had a wild old time with some of the wonderful names, like Constable Visit-the-Ungodly… etc. I have tried being Gytha Ogg, and Magrat, and Granny Weatherwax (eg. for yahoo/hotmail sort of things) but all were taken! “Soul Music” was great fun for guessing which singer/band was meant by which character.
Is this connected with “Star Wars” or the Jedi? I think I am going mad quite quickly.
My personal favorite band in that book was, I think, We’re Certainly Dwarves.
Of course, I’ve managed to pull this thread rather far off course, at this point, but oh well.
And I suppose the lack of Pratchett-name connection means I can’t call you Holly? 
I guess that your search turned up the same sites that mine did then! I did find two books at Amazon, with the title Seeing, but I shan’t guess more than that as I don’t know either author’s style…
Nope. Not science fiction. But it DID win a Pulitzer Prize. Here’s two more hints: female author and Catholic. This is a good one.
And no Googling!
Annie Dillard. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Ding ding! jcgmoi gets the shiny penny! Its a mostly ridiculous book covering about every single subject imaginable, but that paragraph is probably my very favorite ever written. In previous paragraphs, she mentioned that when she was a little girl, she would hide little pennies about the area, and write with chalk on the sidewalk, “Treasure over here!” with arrows. She never understood why people weren’t as excited as she was.
How’d you get it, jcgmoi? Did you have to read for class as well?