Doggies

A new literary quiz at irregular intervals, usually with a theme. This week: In a sharp break with recent tradition, this Quiz is set by ME! and is about Doggies. Simple as that, really .... Proper names are usually (but not always) intended to mislead you. Two of the extracts are so easy that you only get ONE POINT for title and author: for your second point you must answer the supplementary question which appears after the extract. The very first extract, by the way, is non-fiction. Enjoy yourselves, dog-lovers!

The quotations in these quizzes reflect my own tastes - Dead White Males, for the most part (Jane Austen, of course, counts as an honorary DWM). There will never be anything wilfully obscure. If you're the sort of person who sneers at the naïveté of the reviewers in the TLS and New York Review of Books, you'll recognize them at once. I welcome suggestions and insults. You'll find an e-mail tag lying around somewhere. Please put QUIZ in the subject line.

1(Translation)

    The sense of contentment instinctively awakened by our passing through fruitful Courland in the luxuriant month of July, and by the illusion that I had cut myself off from an utterly hateful existence to enter upon a boundlessly new path of fortune, was disturbed at the very outset of the trip by the tormenting inconveniences caused me by the presence of a huge Newfoundland dog called Robber. This extraordinarily handsome creature, originally the property of a merchant in Riga, had, quite against the grain of this particular breed, formed a strong attachment to my person .... Whatever might happen, the dog had to go with us to Paris; but even finding a place for him in the carriage seemed utterly impossible; all means whereby I attempted to secure a place for him in or on the carriage came to nothing, and to my growing dismay I had to watch the heavily furred animal run beside the carriage all day long in the burning summer heat until I, moved beyond endurance by pity at his exhaustion, finally hit upon a most ingenious way to get the huge dog into the fully-occupied carriage in such a way that he could hold out.





Answer

2)

    His idling heart jumps at a rustle close behind him in the orchard. He has lifted his arms and framed the first words of his self-explanation before he sees that the other presence is not a person but a dog, an old-looking collie with one red eye and its coat loaded with burrs. Phunter is uncomfortable with dogs anyway and knows collies to be especially nervous and prone to attack. Lassie to the contrary. This dog is blacker than Lassie. It stands the length of a long putt away, head cocked, the hair behind its ears electric, set to bark.

[Two paragraphs omitted.]

    "You a good doggie?" Phunter asks. He envisions the distance to the car, sees himself running, the dog at his heels in two seconds, the tearing of cloth, the pointed yellow canines, the way dogs lift that black split upper lip to bare the little front teeth in hate; he feels his ankle pinned as if between two grinding cogwheels, his fall, his arms up in a futile attempt to save his face.
    But the dog makes a decision in its narrow skull. Its dropped tail cautiously wags, and it lopes forward with that horrible silent lightness of four-footed animals through orchard grass. It sniffs at Phunter's knees and then leans against his legs, allowing its neck to be scratched ....





Answer

3)

   Hunter Road was miles away, in an even more dismal district, all dump and ditch, and wormy vegetable garden, and shack, and grey drizzle, and red mud, and several smoking stacks in the distance. I stopped at the last "house" - a clapboard shack, with two or three similar ones farther away from the road and a waste of withered weeds all around. Sounds of hammering came from behind the house, and for several minutes I sat quite still in my old car, old and frail, at the end of my journey, at my grey goal, finis, my friend, finis, my fiends. The time was around two. My pulse was 40 one minute and 100 the next. The drizzle crepitated against the hood of the car. My gun had migrated to my right trouser pocket. A nondescript cur came out from behind the house, stopped in surprise, and started good-naturedly woof-woofing at me, his eyes slit, his shaggy belly all muddy, and then walked about a little and woofed once more.





Answer

4)

    But though Alexander was as ridiculous a dog as one would meet with on a summer's day; a blundering, ill-favoured, clumsy, bullet-headed dog, continually acting on a wrong idea that there was an enemy in the neighbourhood, whom it was meritorious to bark at; and though he was far from good-tempered, and certainly was not clever, and had hair all over his eyes, and a comic nose, and an inconsistent tail, and a gruff voice; he was dearer to Ferret, in virtue of that parting remembrance of him, and that request that he might be taken care of, than the most valuable and beautiful of his kind. So dear, indeed, was this same ugly Alexander, and so welcome to her, that she took the jewelled hand of Mr Beiderbeck and kissed it in her gratitude. And when Alexander, released, came tearing up the stairs and bouncing into the room (such a business as there was, first, to get him out of the cabriolet!), dived under all the furniture, and wound a long iron chain, that dangled from his neck, round legs of chairs and tables, and then tugged at it until his eyes became unnaturally visible, in consequence of their nearly starting out of his head; and when he growled at Mr Beiderbeck, who affected familiarity; and went pell-mell at Towlinson, morally convinced that he was the enemy whom he had barked at round the corner all his life and had never seen yet; Ferret was as pleased with him as if he had been a miracle of discretion.





Answer

5)

    Now I'll tell what I don't remember. I don't remember the sound they must have made, the uncanny sound as it separated itself from the wind in the trees, of group exertion, breath chuffing across twenty or thirty hanging tongues, yelps of murderous excitement. Was the moon out? I rose from my crouch seeing something like an earthwave coming toward me, as if the ground were advancing in a sort of rolling quaking upheaval. This gradually distinguished itself as the furred musculature of shoulders and chests and legs, and I think now I must have seen the face of the lead dog flung into moonlight, its maddened red eyes like the tracers of those launched fangs. If I didn't see it I've dreamed it a thousand times.





Answer

6)

    A white shaggy dog, with his face scratched and torn in twenty different places, skulked into the room.
    'Why didn't you come in afore?' said the man. 'You're getting too proud to own me afore company, are you? Lie down!'
    This command was accompanied with a kick, which sent the animal to the other end of the room. He appeared well used to it, however; for he coiled himself up in a corner very quietly, without uttering a sound, and winking his very ill-looking eyes twenty times in a minute, appeared to occupy himself in taking a survey of the apartment.

[For your second point, you must give THE NAME OF THE DOG!]



Answer

7(Translation)

    "Karay, ulyulyu! .... " he shouted, looking round for the old borzoi who was now his only hope. Karay, with all the strength age had left him, stretched himself to the utmost and, watching the wolf, galloped heavily aside to intercept it. But the quickness of the wolf's lope and the borzoi's slower pace made it plain that Karay had miscalculated. Levin could already see not far in front of him the wood where the wolf would certainly escape should she reach it. But, coming toward him, he saw hounds and a huntsman galloping almost straight at the wolf. There was still hope. A long, yellowish young borzoi, one Levin did not know, from another leash, rushed impetuously at the wolf from in front and almost knocked her over. But the wolf jumped up more quickly than anyone could have expected and, gnashing her teeth, flew at the yellowish borzoi, which, with a piercing yelp, fell with its head on the ground, bleeding from a gash in its side.





Answer

8)

    A gentleman carrying a gun, with two pointers playing round him, was passing up the hill and within a few yards of Bicyclette, when her accident happened. He put down his gun and ran to her assistance. She had raised herself from the ground, but her foot had been twisted in her fall, and she was scarcely able to stand. The gentleman offered his services; and perceiving that her modesty declined what her situation rendered necessary, took her up in his arms without farther delay, and carried her down the hill. Then passing through the garden, the gate of which had been left open by Beehoney, he bore her directly into the house, whither Beehoney was just arrived, and quitted not his hold till he had seated her in a chair in the parlour.

[For your second point, you must give THE NAME OF THE HOUSE.]



Answer

9)

    While he spoke we swam hard, and now we were in the current. It swept us downwards, but still we made way, for we could swim well. It was just this: if we could reach the bank before we were swept into the rapids we were safe; if not, then - good-night! Now we were near the other side, but, alas! we were also near the lip of the foaming water. We strained, we struggled. Baleka was a brave girl, and she swam bravely; but the water pushed her down below me, and I could do nothing to help her. I got my foot upon the rock and looked round. There she was, and eight paces from her the broken water boiled. I could not go back. I was too weak, and it seemed that she must perish. But the dog Koos saw. He swam towards her, barking, then turned round, heading for the shore. She grasped him by the tail with her right hand. Then he put out his strength - he was very strong. She too struck out with her feet and left hand, and slowly - very slowly - drew near. Then I stretched out the handle of my assegai towards her. She caught it with her left hand. Already her feet were over the brink of the rapids, but I pulled and Koos pulled, and we brought her safe into the shadows, and from the shallows to the bank, and there she fell gasping.





Answer

10(Translation)

    Next day, before the ladies were up, the shooting conveyances - a shooting-brake and a cart - stood at the door, waiting for them, and Laska, having realized since early morning that they were going shooting, after a great deal of yelping and jumping about, was sitting in the cart beside the coachman, looking excitedly and disapprovingly at the door, through which the sportsmen had not yet come and fretting at the delay. The first to come out was Brian, in new high boots that reached half-way up his thighs, a green shirt girdled with a new cartridge-belt smelling of leather, and a Scotch cap with streamers, and with a brand-new English hammerless shotgun without a sling. Laska jumped down to him, greeting him by leaping about, asked him in her own language how soon the others would come out, and receiving no reply, returned to her post of expectation and grew motionless again, her head turned to one side, and one ear pricked up. At length the door opened with a bang, and Phunter's yellow-spotted pointer, Krak, flew out of it, followed by Phunter himself with a gun in his hand and a cigar in his mouth.





Answer

1)
My Life, Richard Wagner. This was a memorably adventurous journey, even in the adventurous life of this greatest of geniuses. The party crossed the border with musket-balls pinging round their ears .... but all ended happily, for the time being. Robber remained with Wagner until he (the dog, that is) received a better offer, in Paris, and deserted him, evidently having assimilated the show-biz weltanschauung. It's a clear indication of Wagner's life-long love of animals that he bitterly regretted Robber's departure, even though feeding the giant creature must have been a constant worry for him during that hand-to-mouth period.


Back to Question 1

2)
Rabbit is Rich, John Updike. The dog belongs to Ruth, the mother of Rabbit's surviving daughter. Rabbit turns tail on this occasion, but comes back later - you'll be glad to know that the dog remembers him, and welcomes him as an old friend.


Back to Question 2

3)
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov. A companion-piece to the previous extract: I am as certain as I am of anything in the world that Updike was thinking of this passage when he wrote about Rabbit's visit to his former mistress.


Back to Question 3

4)
Dombey and Son, Charles Dickens. Alexander = Diogenes. Ferret = Florence. Mr Beiderbeck = Mr Toots. Ah! the workings of your Quizmaster's mind! Awe-inspiring, eh?


Back to Question 4

5)
Loon Lake, E.L. Doctorow. The doggies, on this occasion, are as unfriendly as doggies can possibly be, and nearly kill the narrator. But Nietzsche, as always, got it right. Our hero survives, his strength is redoubled, and he prospers as a result.


Back to Question 5

6)
Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens. Only one point for title and author! You get your second point for BULLSEYE, the name of Sikes's dog, which, unlike Robber, was faithful to its master to the end .... Indeed, until after the end.


Back to Question 6

7)
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy. Levin = Nicholas Rostov, of course.


Back to Question 7

8)
Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen. I'm being generous, letting you have one point for that! And for your second point, all you had to do was say BARTON COTTAGE - a trivial requirement.


Back to Question 8

9)
Nada the Lily, H. Rider Haggard. You can have five extra bonus points if you got this one. Nada the Lily should be better known - I think it's one of Rider Haggard's best books, the story of the early life of Umslopogaas. The narrator of the extract (and the book) is Mopo, who will live to serve, and then to kill, the terrible King Chaka .... If you haven't read this book, it's bloodthirsty and exciting in equal measure.


Back to Question 9

10)
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy. Whenever I quote a piece of Tolstoy, I usually chunter on about his lack of a sense of humour - but Vaska Veslovsky ("Brian" in the extract) is a genuinely comic character. Phunter = Oblonsky, of course. Well, I hope you liked meeting these doggies. Most of 'em were perfectly friendly. Just like life, in fact. You've got more chance of being attacked by a strange man than by a strange dog, although there are some people who would never believe it ....


Back to Question 10

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Last Updated: 4 December 2009