The Wombat File Is Yours to Keep

Quiet around here today...

For the bonus: On the Beach by Nevil Shute?

Nope.

How about Psycho for the bonus?

I know who wrote Fail-Safe -- because it's sort of science fiction, and one of the books that Dr Strangelove loosely comes out of -- but damned if I know anything else they wrote (together or apart).

Clue: Brando starred in the film adaptation.

I've googled it so I'll sit on my cheatin' hands, but it's a good'un, Bill! I so can't wait for the Quztacular Quiznational (or whatver it's called) and want to know what's the handicap for the sleep deprived?

The Mouse that Roared

James wins the Ingenious Guess award.

But he doesn't get it.

Laura, the whole idea of team play is that your mates can carry you when you're a-nappin'....

After concluding that Bridge Over the River Kwai and Catch-22 can't possibly be right, I'll go with The Ugly American.

Reflections in a Golden Eye? I'm trying to get my Brando mojo working.

Could also be Viva Zapata I guess (certainly not the Wild One).

Bonus: Catcher in the Rye?

Wait Viva Zapata wasn't set in Sarkhan and I don't recall Golden Eye! being much of a catchphrase.

Apocalypse Now! (not much of a catchphrase either, I guess)

But wait again, Apocalypse Now was based on Heart of Darkness, so hmmm. (If no one answers my guesses, I'll have to do so myself).

Umm: Did Sidney Lumet work with Brando?

Jonathan takes it! The book was loosely based on William Lederer's military experience in Southeast Asia, during which he witnessed what he saw as a fatally myopic American attitude toward the cultures Americans were ostensibly trying to support. He wrote it with co-author Burdick, who went on to pen a number of cold war thrillers, the most famous of which is Fail-Safe.

Ironically, in the book itself the phrase refers to an "ugly" American not afflicted with the self-regard and insularity which afflicts the other Americans. However, the book quite clearly classifies the type we now call "Ugly Americans." A fictional Bumese journalist says: "For some reason, the people I meet in my country are not the same as the ones I knew in the United States. A mysterious change seems to come over Americans when they go to a foreign land. They isolate themselves socially. They live pretentiously. They're loud and ostentatious. Perhaps they're frightened and defensive, or maybe they're not properly trained and make mistakes out of ignorance."

Well done, Mr. K.

Now, anyone want to take a shot at the bonus? It's much more well known than The Ugly American, still highly esteemed by many, and was written by a man who, while he was an Englishman who died in France, is memorialized in the American West, where his ashes now are.

Hoar frost on sedge grass,
scent of beaver and bear on the wind...

Somewhere between Eliot and Camus, I'm having real trouble getting out to the American West. Not Brett Harte, or Sergio Leone, or Hemingway, or London...

Guh, Patrick O'Brian?

A trick bonus question! It's Lady Chatterley's Lover, right?

I didn't think it was a trick -- yep, that was the year Lawrence's celebration of gamekeeper-virility hit U.S. bookshelves...Scraps gets the bonus, and allows me the opportunity to quote one of my favorite Tom Lehrer lyrics: "Some people have hobbies/like tennis or philately/I've got a hobby/Rereading Lady Chatterly..."

Oh, here's something actually pretty recent from the NY Times about Lawrence's life in New Mexico, with a photo essay.