I’m currently re-reading Lord of the Rings, and ran across a line that would probably sound pretty bad if written in a new book today, but was perfectly normal at the time of writing. It’s from “The Fellowship of the Ring”, at the part where they are trying to get past Caradhras:
“The fire burned low, and the last faggot was thrown on.”
I couldn’t help thinking how an author would probably get lynched for writing this sentence in a book today. (Okay, remember – CONTEXT, people! CONTEXT! )
Anybody else have examples of lines in books that would sound bad in this day and age?
I’ve got one from a song by McGinty. It’s about a cat that argued with a truck and lost. The poor feline is now described in the song as being just 6 lbs of raw minced meat that don’t smell very nice. But the line is:
``Yesterday he purred and played in his pussy paradise’’
There’s a Calvin and Hobbes strip where Susie gets sent to the principal’s office because Calvin started talking to her and the teacher blamed her for it.
While Susie is in the principal’s office, Calvin says, “Oh, no! What if Susie rats on me!? Suppose they make her sing! Suppose she squeals! Suppose she fingers me!”
Yeah, yeah, it’s childish, but I cringe on the inside every time I read that.
In The Pickwick Papers there is a line that says “Consternation sat on every face”. Kind of a Beavis and Butthead moment in the middle of a victorian novel.
If I remember correctly, there’s a Sherlock Holmes story (I believe “The Speckled Band”, but I’m not sure; it’s been awhile since I read it) where Dr. Watson ejaculated in a conversation, which I assume would mean either blurting out or interrupting. Regardless, I read the book in middle school and it was, to that point, one of the funnier things I’ve ever read.
This might be just be an English expression, or it might be out dated, I’m not sure…in a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, Holmes and Watson repeatedly refer to the act of waking each other up early as “getting knocked up.” The expression has to be used at least four times…i forget which case it was in though.
This isn’t a book, but in “Frasier” there’s an episode where Daphne says something about Martin knocking her up early in the morning, to which Frasier responds with a very strange look…I guess it’s just a British-ism, then?
In Huck Finn, when Huck and Jim are on the island toward the beginning and Jim realizes people are after them and they have to go, he wakes Huck up shouting, “Get up and hump yourself, Huck!”
It never struck me as odd until I was reading the book to some ten-year-olds. Hilarity ensued.
This is more a UK/US difference than a time period difference. Fag & faggot mean “cigarette” and “lump of stuff to burn (or a type of food)” in the UK. Mind you, this is no doubt changing as the UK tends to pick up on US slang eventually.
The funniest, bar none, has got to be the passage from the Old Testament (Second Samuel somewhere, I think; my Bible’s in the office) that describes “Golden Hemmerhoids.”
There’s a line in C.S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair from The Chronicles of Narnia where it describes Jill (I think) going around “making love to the maids all morning”.
And let us not forget the line that was used as the title of an essay examining homosexual themes in Twain’s masterpiece: “Come back to the raft ag’in, Huck Honey!”
One of PG Wodehouse’s protagonists, it wasn’t Bertie, although he may have been a Drone, was suffering because the girl he loved wasn’t returning his affection. Anyway apparently he “tossed on his pilow all night”
Not a bad insomnia cure at all, although needlessly messy.
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