Ending the Suspense

Because the world can't stand the suspense any longer, here are the authors of the 15 excerpts posted here a couple days ago:

1-3: Annie Dillard
4: Wallace Stegner
5. S. J. Perelman [Um, actually it's E.B. White. Silly me.-JA]
6. David Sedaris
7. John McPhee
8. Abraham Lincoln
9. Murray Kempton
10-11: Raymond Chandler
12-13: Michael Herr
14: F. Scott Fitzgerald
15. Don Delillo

There is no particular rhyme or reason to this list, and should not be viewed as anything more than a very personal pot luck of good writing that I've stumbled across (is that a mixed metaphor? did I kick the kettle as I stumbled over that pot luck?). The Perelman line -- "Ravaged by pink eye, I lay for a week scarce caring whether I lived or died" -- opens a story of his and is so funny by itself I'm not sure you need to read anything else. The Lincoln quote from the Second Inaugural probably deserves the full context of the address, which isn't that long, really, and is so economical it is chiseled in its entirey on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial. The McPhee line is near the beginning of his book "The Pine Barrens," and the sentence structure, galumphing along, nicely captures the feeling of wandering into a strange person's home. The Delillo paragraph opens his book "Libra."

By  |  April 4, 2005; 9:58 AM ET
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