Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

Pick a book off your bookshelf. Any book. Turn to page 8. Find the 8th sentence on the page and post it here. (please reference the book you got the line from)

note: If the book doesn't start until after page 8 because of the intro material, pick page 18 or page 80.

After we have a bunch of lines from a bunch of books, the challenge is to create a cut-up poem using the words in the lines posted.

I'll start ....

"But you can't make me believe you've still got anything like that the matter with you." - From "The Magic Mountain" by Thomas Mann

"Nobody said as much, but they'd pretty much given up hope that his condition would improve."

From "Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman" - by Haruki Murakami

"Here at any rate is Ignatius Reilly, without progenitor in any literature I know of—slob extrodinary, a mad Oliver Hardy, a fat Don Quixote, a perverse Thomas Aquinas rolled into one—who is in violent revolt against the entire modern age, lying in his flannel nightshirt, in a back bedroom on Constantinoble Street in New Orleans, who between gigantic seizures of flatulence and eructations is filling dozens of Big Chief tablets with invective."

From Walker Percy's introduction to John Kenedy Toole's novel A Confederacy of Dunces

Woops I miscounted, this is the only the third or fourth sentence on the 8th page of the inroduction to the novel. The Novel itself does not begin until page 13. Maybe I should have chosen another book.

I just like that sentence above by Percy so much. John Kennedy Toole you wrote my life.

Here is the eight sentence:
Really.
___________________________________________________________
"His girlfreind, Myrna Minkoff of the Bronx, thinks he needs sex."

"death can waylay the bridegroom and his bride; death can attend the wedding feast."

Look at Me, Anita Brookner

"Many veterans have a well developed "stab in the back" theory akin to that developed by German veterans of World War 1—that the war could have been handily won had the fighting forces not been betrayed by home-front politicians"

Achilles In Vietnam, Jonathan Shay

Well since some novels don't begin before the 8th page, let's change it to 8th or 18th or 80th. *smile*

(just was a number i chose 'cause this is studio 8 )

thanks, jack and judih! this will be fun!

more?

yes more
I was going nuts trying not to cheat. I picked out
picked out three or four books, one had only four or five sentences on page eight, a couple did not even begin till page 10, 11, or twelve.


on with the challenge



"She just sat there, dusky as a bleached-blonde Negress in her white dress, and sipped daintily at her drink."

The Bell Jar, Sylvia Somebody.

"Old coot! Old coot? McGuinty pushes himself upright, sending his wheelchair flying backward."

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

oops... I donno what page I was on but it wasn't page 8. Geez... my eyes are failing... sighhh....

This is from page 8, 8th sentence... same book... Water for Elephants

"Not that I wouldn't love to have a final roll in the hay – I am a man yet, and some things never die – but the thought of those sweet kernels bursting between my teeth sure sets my mouth to watering."

"Since when was her mother so worried about where she was?"

Blood and Chocolate
A.C. Klause

"One, it is the result of an enormous geographical misperception."

In The Hands Of The Great Spirit
Jake Page

"Pa drew the nibbled stub of a pencil from his trouser pocket and, squirming, leaned toward the little ones, writing on the foot-end of the first born's crib '#1', then, licking the tip, '#2' upon the crib in which Euchrid lay."

And the Ass Saw the Angel
Nick Cave

"His collar was stiff and white and made a clear cut line next to his neck."

Flannery O'Connor, The Complete Stories .... "The Geranium"

"In a sense, I am Jacob Horner."

The End Of The Road, John Barth.

"To mourn his brothers would be to admit an unspeakable pain, so he became an athlete who ran faster than any record ever made in the history of the school, faster than the tears.

The Woman Who Fell From The Sky
Joy Harjo