Literature Game

Cafe Society
1

Okay, the way this works is that you write a passage that parodies the style of a writer or work of literature. What you write should be original to you, NOT a copy from the original work. We want to recognize the style (through parody), not the content.

Make your best guess, and then you can post one. But all submissions remain open until the author declares who got it right.

Okay, here’s the first one.

Salena bent full backwards, draping herself across Crocker’s ebony desk. “I give myself to you,” she declared, “not because of some intrinsic value that I discern in you. Rather, it is my own pleasure that I seek to fulfill.”

Crocker gripped her legs and pushed them forcefully apart. “Be quiet, woman!” he said in a voice that was deliberate and masculine. “I choose to have my way with you, not because I think it might surcease or statisfy whatever longings you may possess, but because I seek to mitigate the primal fire that burns within me — the fire that is man.”

Salena swept away the items on the desk all around her, sending them crashing to the floor, desperately clutching Crocker’s head as he nibbled hungrily between her breasts. “Oh, I do not love you! But if I were to love you, it would not be the kind of empty, charitable love that recognizes within you any quality that might merit my admiration, which I reserve unto myself, but rather the kind of love that one animal has for another, knowing that its only chance for survival is to form a bond with another, a bond not based on weakness, but upon strength.”

Cradling her hips and heaving his massive body against hers in long, deliberate, rhythmic, quiescent pulses, Crocker gasped “I love not you, but myself. For I am man, the paragon of earth’s creatures, given the means, not by God but by nature, to please a woman in the manner that she ought to be pleased. I care not for your love, and would refuse it were you to offer it to me. I seek from you nothing more than the completion of my own desire. Man does not exist for the purpose of making women whole, but for the purpose of making them swoon to his wishes.”

The crushing blows of his invasive undulations drove Selena into a state of madness, a state of unmitigated pain and pleasure, in which she wallowed until the mighty power of her pent-up ebullition burst forth and consumed her. She screamed out loudly between her clenched teeth, “This is the end for which I have used you as a means! This orgasm is not a gift from you, but rather something I have given to myself! I take it from you! Despite whatever motive might have been behind your actions, I recognize nothing about you that might benefit me, other than this!”

The deep and violent rumblings from Crocker’s own loins erupted in a swell of electrical surges that raced through his contracted muscles. “I AM MAN!” he growled, “the noblest of all the creatures and the crowning achievement of evolution! This is my reward for suffering through my association with you! Were it not for this moment, you would have been a waste upon this earth!”

In the quiet afterglow, she struggled to breathe under his heavy weight. “Was it good for me?” she asked.

He looked into her eyes, and saw there the adoration he had sought. “You are so dutiful. I nearly value you.”

2

That’s got to be Ayn Rand. :smiley:

3

Ding! You got it! Okay, next?

4

Ding. Libertarian sounded the chime. I looked to see whose turn it was. It was mine.

5

peepthis, are you Hemingway?

6

peepthis,

Hmmm… John Donne?

7

Yeah, Ernest it is. I took the short way out, just feeling too lazy to do anyone else!:slight_smile: Going Faulkner-esque would’ve given me carpal tunnel, without a doubt!

(And I know you said to make it original, but I couldn’t help but work in a (slight) reference to For Whom the Bell Tolls.

8

Heck, after doing Rand, I find myself thinking in speeches! :smiley:

9

“You may change your mind about resisting our companies’ merger, Mr. Stanford,” said Harkal, his face twisting into a cruel sneer, “when you learn I have captured your CEO!”

Robert thought of his CEO: the beautiful Llara, whose mane of black tresses flowed down past the bejewelled leathern straps of her garments – and the thin veneer of civilization fell away from him.

With a bloodcurdling scream he drew his letter-opener and leaped across the boardroom table at Harkal.

Harkal had taken Robert’s measure and instantly, it seemed, there was a narrow, curved sword in each of his four hands…

10

This sounded more like Bret Easton Ellis to me.

For Hemingway, I would have done this:

Libertarian sounded the chime. The chime needed to be sounded, and now it had. Libertarian regarded the chime that had now sounded. It had sounded well. It needed to be sounded and had now sounded well. Previously, there was no chime. Now there was chime. Libertarian had sounded it.

11

Dead Giveaway by Nostradamus.

Along about 4 o’clock one morning I am walking the pavement outside Windy’s restaurant, thinking about where I am going to find the scratch to bet on a good thing which runs at Belmont later that day, and this particular good thing is like finding money in the street, if I can find the stake to put on it.

Now, a good thing is a horse which cannot lose unless the jockey falls out of the plate, or he does not know one end of a horse from the other, although it is most surprising to me how many jocks cannot tell this difference, and of course this is the reason why I have no scratch to put on the good thing at Belmont.

Well, I am thinking about this when I observe a guy coming down the street, and this guy seems more than somewhat familiar, although I do not recall his name, and he walks up and gives me a big hello.

‘Why,’ he says, ‘how is it going with you? It is indeed a long time since I last see you, at that.’

Of course, I recognise the guy’s voice straight off, and I say to him as follows:

‘I know you,’ I say, ‘you are Holmes. The famous detective who currently lies at the bottom of the Reichenbach Fall. How do you come to be here on Broadway when you are generally considered to be dead?’

‘I am never at the bottom of the Reichenbach Fall’, explains Holmes, ‘and furthermore I am never deceased. You are thinking of Moriarty, an entirely different citizen altogether, and good riddance to him is what I say.’

Now this information is greatly surprising to me, as I do not see Holmes since he leaves our shared rooms in Baker Street, which is in London, England, and I come to Broadway to do the best I can in this great city.

‘Well,’ I say, ‘I am pleased you are here at this time, and I am wondering if you can run to a temporary loan of a C note, so that I can invest in the chances of the Whitney filly in the fourth at Belmont this afternoon. What is your opinion in the matter?’

‘You may have the C note with pleasure,’ says Holmes, ‘but do not invest in the filly. It has no chance against Walkabout, which I have on top by seven pounds in my figures. This is elementary. Let us go inside and drink some coffee. It is cold out here.’

And so it comes about that Holmes and myself renew our acquaintance inside Windy’s, and not in The Adventure Of The Empty House, as is generally thought by scholars, and this is a matter I am glad to put straight.

Although I am pleased to meet him again at this time, I am somewhat less than impressed when the Whitney filly beats Walkabout six lengths in the fourth at Belmont, as my C note is on Walkabout, and I remember too late that Holmes is always a bad handicapper when it comes to matters of the turf.

12

Nostradamus, Anthony Burgess?

(It reminds me of A Clockwork Orange, without the Russglish…)

13

Funny, Fiver, I had somehow never pictured Burroughs putting the heroic John Carter into a corporate America setting…

14

Chronos called it: Edgar Rice Burroughs.

As for John Carter (or David Innes, or Von Horst, or John Clayton) in corporate America, don’t you think it’s appropriate? With the hostile takeovers, the Draconian layoffs…and species with four arms symbolize workaholics.

Nostradamus, I’m guessing Dick Francis for yours.

15

Nostradamus is doing Damon Runyon. (Please stop, it was only funny once)

16

On the day of his second anniversary in captivity, C.G. rode a bike. Although the day was warm and sunny, it was not his original intention to ride, and therefore he could take no pleasure in the soundness of the idea. He merely set himself on the bike, more out of impulse than a sense of the suitability of the weather. Even now, he agonized over his decision not to walk to the Dempsy Drug Store.

As he brought the bike to the end of the driveway, he felt, rather than heard a beckoning call from behind. Turning, he observed as the man in the khaki called out to him threateningly, “George!! What did I tell you about keeping that damn litter box clean?”

“Ah, my captor!” thought C, “How enormous he appears! And what’s with that stupid yellow hat?!”

His rather vague mission, complete, he went to cross the bike at the local intersection, guarded by a traffic guard with an indeterminately intimidating air.

“May I be permitted to cross here?” asked C

“Perhaps later,” replied the crossing guard with an expression of private mirth, “Only not now”

This confused C. He felt that the intersection was open to everyone who came to cross it. He commenced to walk across the bridge, but hit a bump and plummeted over the edge into the swirling river.

At that moment, a seemingly endless parade of traffic flowed across the road above the river.

17

I’m always psyched to see Curious George references in life. H.A. Rey would be proud, indeed!

18

Ah, you’re right Curious George, but it’s not H. A. Rey I’m imitating.

19

quarx : I’m guessing Franz Kafka.

[Edited by Eutychus55 on 10-18-2001 at 06:15 PM]

20

You got it, Euty!!