The Wombat File Is Yours to Keep: The Friday Quiz: Hit the Books

I got nothing by way of a preamble, here. Oh, the SHAME of it!

Born with the first name of Pearl (later dropped), this author hit the Publishers Weekly annual bestseller lists for the first time in 1914, and his first yearly No. 1 was published four years later. It opened with a quotation from Robert Louis Stevenson, and its first chapter was one 256-word-long sentence of description, which concluded with "...and where, out beyond the golden land, asleep and peaceful, stretched the illimitable Pacific, vague and grand beneath the setting sun."

The author's last book to make the annual list was published in 1924, though the writer continued to have a flourishing career until dying in 1939.

Who is the author?

First correct answer posted to comments wins a Groat o' Johns. No Googling and no hiring one of those new SAT prep tutors to try to cram your head with synonyms for antipathy and antonyms for synesthesia (although if you can think of an antonym for synesthesia, I'd be most grateful. Stupid crossword puzzle!). One guess per comment but if you don't comment often the editors of National Lampoon will shoot that puppy.

UPDATE: This remains unsolved as of Saturday night...we'll keep going at least through Monday if no one comes up with the correct answer sooner. See the comments for additional clues.

Comments

TIME ZONE ADVANTAGE!!!!

um, comes to naught....

OK, well 256 words in a single sentence implies Faulkner, but he was working and living later than the timeframe here...

Pearl John Steinbeck?

Posted by: art | March 2, 2007 03:47 AM

OK, I'll admit, I think Steinbeck is from a little bit later on as well, but he is from California where the Pacific is (the sea that stretches from your nation to mine...citizenship interview is Tuesday)

How about Pearl Owen Wilson? No, that's another lame joke. C'mon Art, think Boy's Own Adventure. Pearl Herman Melville?

Posted by: art | March 2, 2007 04:03 AM

obviously, wronng time period

Pearl Erich Maria...can't remember

Pearl writer about Pirates! Pearl John Barrie.

Posted by: art | March 2, 2007 04:13 AM

Pearl Bailey

Posted by: james | March 2, 2007 09:17 AM

Jack London

Posted by: james | March 2, 2007 09:18 AM

Nothing yet!

-Pearl BT

Posted by: BT | March 2, 2007 09:48 AM

Fearl Scott Fitzgerald.

Posted by: boxjam | March 2, 2007 09:59 AM

Pearl Sinclair Lewis.

Posted by: boxjam | March 2, 2007 10:00 AM

Pearl Necklace by ZZ Top?
Oh wait, that's the answer to a different online quiz I'm playing at HirsuteTexasArenaRockBandsofYore.com

Posted by: Errata | March 2, 2007 10:22 AM

That's the answer to the question, "Most embarrassing song to have playing on the car radio when you're going someplace with your Dad in 1985."

It's not the answer to anything else.

Posted by: BT | March 2, 2007 11:37 AM

No Nobel Prizewinners need apply either.

Posted by: BT | March 2, 2007 11:39 AM

Pearl Rice Burroughs.

Posted by: boxjam | March 2, 2007 11:44 AM

I don't know who your wordy girl-name guy is, bud, but the antonym for synesthesia is synthcheesia, the reason all burgers from Wendy's taste the same.

Posted by: shananan | March 2, 2007 11:58 AM

I am the color taster in service to the Queen.

Posted by: shananan | March 2, 2007 12:04 PM

No right answers yet, except shananan's, which is the rightest of all right answers ever.

Posted by: BT | March 2, 2007 12:08 PM

pee cummings

Posted by: boxjam | March 2, 2007 12:43 PM

pgk chesterton

Posted by: boxjam | March 2, 2007 12:44 PM

Nope.

I will add: American.

Posted by: BT | March 2, 2007 01:58 PM

The only Pearl I know of is Pearl S Buck, but she was female, right? You didn't mention a sex change. And there's Minnie Pearl, but that's just wrong. 1-guess rule clause B says 2 guesses are okay if they are stoopid.

Posted by: shananan | March 2, 2007 02:06 PM

Oh... AH-MER-ican. Well then.

Um...

Face it, pearlbat. The commenters who know something about authors had actual work to do today. If you want this thing solved, you have to play down to my level. I don't even know if GK Chesterton was American or not.

HG Wells.

Posted by: boxjam | March 2, 2007 02:22 PM

How about a new contest in which you make up hobo names that used to contain "Pearl" (later dropped)?

Posted by: james | March 2, 2007 03:44 PM

Earl Monroe would be a good hobo name, if he'd ever thought to drop "the pearl."

Posted by: boxjam | March 2, 2007 03:59 PM

OK, I'm awake again....

I slept on it and the answer is Pearl Jack Kerouac's grandfather. Or dad. Or uncle-in-law.

Posted by: art | March 2, 2007 05:14 PM

Wait, I won with Dashiell Hammett once before. Can I try that again? (I saw Jack London fly by too).

Pearl Dashiell Hammett.

Posted by: art | March 2, 2007 05:16 PM

Pearl Raymond Chandler?

Posted by: art | March 2, 2007 05:17 PM

Pearl James M. Cain? (Was it an M, I can't remember and I think I'm out of hardboiled detective writers too)

Posted by: art | March 2, 2007 05:18 PM

Pearl Ernesto Hemingway

Posted by: Jonathan | March 2, 2007 07:33 PM

Pearl Horatio Alger

Posted by: Jonathan | March 2, 2007 07:37 PM

There have been some not-unreasonable guesses, but nobody's gotten to the pearl yet.

Posted by: lewombat | March 2, 2007 10:50 PM

Pearl Sinclair Lewis

Posted by: art | March 2, 2007 10:57 PM

Pearl Upton Sinclair

Posted by: art | March 2, 2007 10:58 PM

Just don't tell me Pearl S. Buck was a man, okay? Let me carry on in ignorant bliss.

Posted by: shananan | March 3, 2007 10:36 AM

Pearl-o-thon, day 2:

O. Henry, whose real name I cannot remember and fear to google

Posted by: james | March 3, 2007 12:15 PM

William Henry Porter

There, I remembered it.

Posted by: james | March 3, 2007 03:14 PM

OK, William Sidney Porter and WRONG.

Posted by: james | March 3, 2007 05:32 PM

Tiffany Thayer?

Posted by: Scraps | March 3, 2007 06:32 PM

Dixon Hill.

Posted by: boxjam | March 3, 2007 09:28 PM

Franklin W. Dixon

William Saroyan.

Posted by: boxjam | March 3, 2007 09:30 PM

He's written almost 100 books, and been adapted for the screen more often than that. Fishing was one of his enthusiasms, and one of his less well-known books celebrates New Zealand as an angler's "El Dorado," while another chronicles his experiences as "An American Angler in Australia." In keeping with this interest he was a longtime contributor to Outdoor Life magazine. But it's fiction that made his name and for which he is still known and indeed fairly widely read.

Posted by: BT | March 3, 2007 11:12 PM

thanks for the clues!

um, Pearl Zane Grey?

Posted by: art | March 4, 2007 07:19 AM

ding ding ding....Peal Zane Grey was born in Zanesville, Ohio, a town founded by his ancestor Ebenezer Zane. He was the author of Riders of the Purple Sage, The Thundering Herd, West of the Pecos, and Don, the Story of a Dog. Plus a few others....

Clearly, Art, matrimony has sharpened your quizability. Let the world be on its guard!

Posted by: lewombat | March 4, 2007 07:30 AM

Zane Grey was American?

Posted by: boxjam | March 5, 2007 11:18 AM

He was also Col. Potter's favorite author.

Posted by: james | March 8, 2007 10:07 AM

The Wombat File Is Yours to Keep

The Wombat File is a Delaying Tactic that May Save Your Life

The Friday Quiz: Hit the Books

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