Welcome to Author! Author!
This is a game in which the contestants match their wits with a challenger, who suggests a character in literature, non- fiction or fiction. The challenger may or may not provide more clues, his prerogative,, and never more than one a day.
Once a day the challenger will say if the guesses are correct or not. The winning contestant gets lots of acclaim and the chance to pose the next challenge. If he does not want to post a new challenge he can say so and whoever does can begin a new game.
Of course you could look these up on google in an instant, what challenge is that? The idea is to rack one's brain to try to remember where this particular character appeared and who wrote about him/ her. Should be great fun.
The challenger also has the option not to mention the name of the character, but only a description. Authors used so far:Author, Book, Character, Challenger, Post#, winner
Anonymous, Beowulf, Beowulf, PatH, #1301
Atwood, Margaret, The Blind Assassin, Gumtree, #277
Austen, Jane, Pride and Prejudice, Mary Bennett, #158
Banks, Lynn Reid, The L-Shaped Room, Jane Graham, Rosemarykaye, #1785, unguessed
Baum, L. Frank, The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy, JoanK, #342
Bennett, Alan, Uncommon Reader, Queen Elizabeth II, rosemarykaye, #1605, pedln
Blackmore, Richard, Lorna Doone, Lorna Doone, Frybabe, #462
Bronte, Emily, Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff, Gumtree, #252
Buchan, John, 39 steps, Richard Hannay, PatH, #396
Burns, Olive, Cold Sassy Tree, pedln, #1594, rosemarykaye
Carroll, Louis, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Alice, JoanK, # 426
Cervantes, Don Quijote, Don Quijote, PatH, #701
Christie, Agatha, Hastings, JoanK, # 127
Christie, Agatha, Death on the Nile, Hercule Poirot, JoanK, #752
Clancy, Tom, Hunt for Red October, Frybabe, #553
Clarke, Arthur C., Rendezvous with Rama, roshanarose, #2064
Coetzee, J. M., Disgrace, David Little, Straudetwo, #1336
Collins, Wilkie, The Moonstone, Rachel Verinder, PatH, #311
Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness, Marlow, Gumtree, #226
Conroy, Pat, The Great Santini, Conroy's father, JudeS #1319
Cronin, A. J., The Citadel, Andrew Manson, JudeS, #1085
Davies, Robertson, The Cunning Man, Jonathan Hullah, straudetwo, #1382
Dostoevsky, Fyodor, Crime and Punishment, Roskolnikov, JudeS, #1209, 1213
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, Study in Scarlet, Dr. Watson, PatH, #380
Dumas, Alexandre pere, The Three Musketeers, D'Artagnan, PatH, #939, 941
DuMaurier, Daphne, Rebecca, the nameless narrator, Gumtree, straudetwo and rosemarykaye, #1924
Eliot, George, Daniel Deronda, Gumtree, #190
Eliot, T. S., Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, Bustopher Jones, PatH, #110
Essex, Karen, Leonardo's Swans, Isabella d'Este, Mippy, #591
Faulkner, William, The Sound and the Fury, Caddy, 1429, 1439, Frybabe
Galsworthy, John, The Forsyte Saga, Irene, PatH, #615,620
George, Elizabeth, Lynley and Havers, Tomereader1, #168
Gibbon, Edward, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Zenobia, Frybabe, roshanarose, #2003, 2011
Gilbert, W. S., The Savoy Operas, Frederick, or the Pirate King, #1108, 1111, 1112
Goodman, Carol, The Night Villa, the slave girl, Gumtree, # 1165
Greene, Graham, The Third Man, Holly Martins, PatH, ##1175, 1179
Grey, Zane, Riders of the Purple Sage, Frybabe, #294, 299
Hardy, Thomas, Far From the Madding Crowd, roshanarose, #1741, rosemarykaye
Henry, O., Mammon and the Archer, Anthony Rockwall, Ginny #537
Hesse, Herman, The Glass Bead Game, straudetwo, Frybabe, #1962
Hugo, Victor, Les Miserables, JoanK, # 1904, Gumtree
James, Henry, Washington Square, straudetwo, #981, 982
James, Henry, Wings of a Dove, Kidsal, #83
Keller, Helen, The Story of my Life, Anne Sullivan, JoanK #958
Lagerlof, Selma, The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, Nils Holgersson, JudeS #899
Lamb, Charles and Mary, Tales From Shakespeare, Macbeth, JoanK, #1301
Lampedusa, Giuseppe di, The Leopard, Don Fabrizio, Gumtree, Frybabe and straudetwo, #2031, 2032
LeFanu, Sheridan, Carmilla, roshanarose, #769
Li, Cunxin, Mao's Last Dancer, Li Cunxin, Gumtree, #1713, roshanarose
Maupin, Armistead, Tales of the City, rosemarykaye, #1553, pedln
McCourt, Frank, Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt, JoanK, #1062
McCullers, Carson, Member of the Wedding, straudetwo, pedln, #1859
Melville, Herman, Moby-Dick, the whale, PatH, #482
Miller,Arthur, Death of a Salesman, Gumtree, #1005, 1006
Milton, John, Paradise Lost, Frybabe, #413
Mitford, Nancy, roshanarose, #839, 840
Murdoch, Iris, The Sea, the Sea, Charles Arrowby, straudetwo, #1197, 1198
Nabokov, Vladimir, Lolita, Lolita, JudeS, #1124
O’Brian, Patrick, Master and Commander, Jack Aubrey, JudeS, #319
Orwell, George, Frybabe, #97
Ovid, Metamorphosis, Frybabe, roshanarose, #1985
Pearl, Matthew, The Dante Club, pedln, #1629, deems 2
Peterson, Roger Tory, Field guide to the Eastern Birds, Mockingbird, JoanK #202
Potok, Chaim, The Chosen, Danny Saunders, pedln, #1890, JoanK
Potter, Beatrix, Jemima Puddleduck, rosemarykaye, #1478 pedln, #1482 deems2
Plutarch, ----, Themistocles, roshanarose, #1025, 1027
Preston, Douglas, Dinosaurs in the attic, Frybabe, #1456 rosemarykaye
Rand, Ayn, We the Living, Frybabe, #498, 502
Rowling, J. K, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry, PatH, #1409
Rhys, Jean, Wide Sargasso Sea, Jane Eyre, straudetwo, #1230
Saramago, Jose, Blindness, deems 2, #1652, straudetwo
Scott, Sir Walter, Ivanhoe, Ginny, #602
Sewall, Anna, Black Beauty, Frybabe, #1490, Gumtree
Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein, the monster, PatH, #451
Smith, Alexander McCall, Mma Ramotswe, JudeS, #145
Smith, Alexander McCall, 44Scotland Street, Cyril, rosemarykaye, #1238, 1243
Spark, Muriel, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Miss Brodie, Gumtree, #671, 672
Stead, Christina, The Man Who Loved Children, straudetwo, #1690, Gumtree
Steinbeck , John, Journal of a Novel, Gumtree, #53, 60
Stoker, Bram, Dracula, Jonathan Harker, JudeS, #631, 632
Stone, Irving, Depths of Glory, Camille Pisarro, Gumtree, #802
Tolkien, J. R. R., Lord of the Rings, Frodo, PatH, #238, 241
Tolstoy, Leo, War and Peace, Pierre Bezukhov, PatH, #1267
Trollope, Joanna, The Best of Friends, Sophie, Mippy, #218
Tyler, Anne, Digging to America, Maryam Yazdan,Mippy, #735
Urrea, Luis Alberto, The Hummingbird's Daughter, Saint Teresa de Cabora, Frybabe, #1835, straudetwo
Voltaire, Candide, Candide, straudetwo, #1809, Frybabe
Vreeland, Susan, The Forest Lover, Emily Carr, Mippy, #364
Weir, Alison, Innocent Traitor, Lady Jane Gray, roshanrose, #883
Wethers, Beck, Left for Dead, Ginny, #29
Wharton, Edith, The Age of Innocence, Frybabe, rosemarykaye, #2054, Gumtree #2055
Windsor, Kathleen, Forever Amber, Amber, Traude, #927, 928
Wodehouse, P. G., Bertie Wooster, PatH, #1046, 1048
Woolf, Virginia, Flush, Gumtree, #1511, 1513, rosemarykaye
Woolf, Virginia, Orlando, Orlando, PatH, #1141
Xenophon, Frybabe, #173
Zola, Emile, Germinal, Etienne Lentier, Gumtree, #1352
Only the latest heading is up to date.
WINNERS! WINNERS! WINNERS!
FRYBABE AND TRAUDE DO IT AGAIN Yes indeed!
Il Gattopardo or
The Leopard by
Guiseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
And as PatH intimated the character was
The Prince, Don FabrizioGuiseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa was himself a Sicilian nobleman, Duke of Palma and Prince of Lampedusa. He was born in Palermo in 1896 and died in Rome in 1957. He lived the life of a literary dilettante, was familiar with the great literature of the world, and was widely travelled. He published nothing during his lifetime, but bequeathed, in addition to his great novel, a memoir, some short stories, an incomplete novel and some fascinating appraisals of English and French literature...including work on Stendhal among others.
Tomasi wasn't alone in liking Stendhal - I do too- very much, though I won't live long enough to really appreciate him - nor do I have the necessary mastery of French to do so.
Lampedusa was bitterly disappointed that the centuries old palace in Palermo that he called home and which had survived the Germans was destroyed by the Allies during WWII.
It truly is a wonderful book - and yes, as with PatH it was about 30 years since I had read it until the restored movie came out and I read it again -
The novel tells the story of the passing of power in the 1860s from the ruling aristocracy to the new Republican Italians symbolised by Garibaldi. It's set in Sicily with Don Fabrizio, Prince of Salina - the old Gattopardo -observing the changes but too old to change himself whilst his penniless nephew Tancredi Falconeri embraces the changing Italy. The novel encompasses the main revolutionary events of the 'Risorigmento' as the movement for the unification of Italy came to be known and the great changes brought about. Despite this it is fairly short - around 200 pages in paperback. The book is something of a requiem for the past and the passing of an era but above all it is superbly crafted by the author - in all there are only eight chapters each telling one part of the story and the novel is almost entirely seen through Fabrizio's eyes. Fabrizio realises that his family's only hope for survival lies in going with the tide of change. -
as Tancredi says in the famous quote,
"If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change" And things do change but the Salina household is not swept away. As Lampedusa suggests a ruling class that knows how to compromise will defeat attempts to overthrow it.
"...a work that transcends its creator, achieving a sensitivity and intelligence without parallel ... one of the most moving meditations on individual mortality in literature..."The film is superb - nothing less - and directed by Luchino Visconti (who also did one of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice). One reason the film didn't sweep up the Oscars is that when it was released in 1963, it was only shown in the English speaking world in a shortened version and dubbed into English. It was finally shown in full length (three hours) in 1983 but the colour had begun to suffer, and it was only comparatively recently that a full restoration brought the film back to its original glory. The restored film had a very long run here at an art house theatre around 2003/4 and they released the DVD here in 2005.
There's so much to like about the film but the major thing that pops up is the stunning ballroom scene- "the longest and most magnificent thing of its kind in the history of cinema" - the scene runs for close to an hour and is simply sumptuous and without one second wasted.
