QUIZ — LIMERICK SUMMARIES

[Anonymouṡ No.20395493]

[Anonymouṡ No.20395494]

It's quiz time again! One hundred summaries, in limerick form, of well-known works. Novels, short stories, drama, poetry, perhaps a splash of non-fiction. The majority are mentioned regularly on /lit/. Hints on request.

The authors:


EDWARD ABBEY, DANTE ALIGHIERI, JANE AUSTEN, SAMUEL BECKETT, ROBERT BOLT, CHARLOTTE BRONTE, ALBERT CAMUS, LEWIS CARROLL, RAYMOND CARVER, MIGUEL CERVANTES, JOHN CHEEVER, G. K. CHESTERTON, AGATHA CHRISTIE, JOSEPH CONRAD, JOHN CROWLEY, DANIEL DEFOE, P. K. DICK, CHARLES DICKENS (X2), FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY, BRET EASTON ELLIS, GEORGE ELIOT, WILLIAM FAULKNER (X2), EDWARD FITZGERALD, F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, IAN FLEMING, WILLIAM GOLDING, ROBERT GRAVES, THOMAS GRAY, DASHIELL HAMMETT, THOMAS HARDY, ROBERT HEINLEIN, JOSEPH HELLER, ERNEST HEMINGWAY, JAMES HILTON, RUSSELL HOBAN, HOMER, KAZUO ISHIGURO, JAMES JOYCE, ERNST JUNGER, FRANZ KAFKA, JOHN KEATS, JACK KEROUAC, DANIEL KEYES, D. H. LAWRENCE (X2), H. P. LOVECRAFT, THOMAS MANN, DAPHNE DU MAURIER, CORMAC MCCARTHY, CARSON MCCULLERS, LARRY MCMURTRY, HERMAN MELVILLE, WALTER MILLER, A. A. MILNE, YUKIO MISHIMA, MARGARET MITCHELL, VLADIMIR NABOKOV, NAEL (AGE 6), FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, PATRICK O'BRIEN, FLANNERY O'CONNOR, GEORGE ORWELL, MERVYN PEAKE, SYLVIA PLATH, EDGAR ALLEN POE, EZRA POUND, MARCEL PROUST, ALEXANDER PUSHKIN, THOMAS PYNCHON, AYN RAND, ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY, J. D. SALINGER (X2), SAMUEL, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (X3), G. B. SHAW, MARY SHELLEY, SHI NAI'AN, JOHN STEINBECK, LAURENCE STERNE, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, BRAM STOKER, ALFRED LORD TENNYSON, DYLAN THOMAS, HUNTER S. THOMPSON, J. R. R. TOLKIEN, LEO TOLSTOY, JOHN KENNEDY TOOLE, MARK TWAIN, UNKNOWN AUTHOR, JULES VERNE, KURT VONNEGUT, H. G. WELLS, E. B. WHITE, OSCAR WILDE, JOHN WILLIAMS

[Anonymouṡ No.20395500]

1)
A schoolboy's no scholar, but foxy:
Through knowledge of people and moxie
And shrewd common-sense
He can whitewash a fence
With the strenuous part done by proxy.


2)
This novel's a barrel of fun:
The war has been practically won;
So one man's position
Is "That's my last mission —
I'll jump out the window and run!"


3)
A skinflint, with stubborn persistence,
Keeps human affairs at a distance;
But glimpsing his fate
When it's almost too late
Makes him flip to a kinder existence.


4)
My story is very traumatic:
At first I was sad, then ecstatic:
I thought I'd found love,
But alas! — up above
Was a nasty surprise in the attic.


5)
Some readers (whose hearts must be stony)
Call this 'over-rated baloney':
They think someone sucks
If he cares about ducks
And believes other people are phoney.


6)
A gentleman somewhere in Spain
Reads fiction which muddles his brain:
His plans all go wrong,
But he keeps right along
Till his follower thinks he's insane.


7)
In days full of trembling and dread,
The gentry are losing their heads:
But when one's for the chop
An acquaintance says "Stop!
I'll be noble — chop mine off instead!"


8)
An island — no adults — how cool:
We'll hunt things and make our own rules!
Let's caper and shout!
Oops — the fire just went out
With a ship sailing past. We're such fools.


9)
This book is first-rate, most agree,
But it's too long and boring for me,
With its endless dissection
Of Sapphic affection
And dipping your cake in your tea.


10)
An aristocrat from the east
Reminds us of someone deceased:
He tours the UK,
Where he causes dismay
When a bedroom is poorly policed.

[Anonymouṡ No.20395509]

11)
A thinker spends years in a cave,
Then claims: "It's disciples I crave!"
What first meets his eyes?
A funambulist dies:
So he says: "Here's to you, you were brave."


12)
Your neighbour's a filthy old witch:
So finish her off — you'll be rich!
But you cannot get past
Your own conscience. At last
You just turn yourself in. Life's a bitch.


13)
This gate-crasher's truly a pain:
He comes back again and again,
Till a bouncer's called in
To put paid to his sin —
Then his mother goes round to complain!


14)
An item that's shiny and rare
Might not be the best thing to wear:
You've a long way to go
To get rid of it (though
Why on earth not just travel by air?)


15)
His landlady's dull conversation
Increases our hero's frustration:
He first rents a room
And then finds he's a groom —
Still, he does enjoy *one* compensation.


16)
This book isn't hard. It's a breeze:
Just follow four siblings. Of these,
One's hate makes us shiver,
One jumps in the river,
One's dopey and one smells of trees.


17)
Our hero is due to be killed,
But his friend is judicious and skilled:
She wards off his fate
By explaining he's great —
And then perishes, feeling fulfilled.


18)
This novel has humour and woe,
A hero who's taking life slow,
Itinerants, felons,
A lover of melons,
And hundreds of words you don't know.


19)
This author includes no apology
For constantly breaking chronology,
With lengthy digressions
To vent his obsessions —
Viz. whiteness and God and cetology.


20)
Despite his obscure occupation,
A gamekeeper earns approbation,
Discharging his chores
In all weathers, outdoors,
While relieving a lady's frustration.

[Anonymouṡ No.20395513]

21)
A teacher's emotional strife
Is mute but intense when his wife
(Who should visit a shrink)
Drives his daughter to drink
And he loses the love of his life.


22)
Our hero at first scarcely tries
To relate to his guest. But — surprise!
By the last page we find
That it's not the one blind,
But his host who has opened his eyes.


23)
A kitchen-boy's only desire
Is rising first high and then higher.
He bends all the rules,
And inveigles two fools
Into setting a library on fire.


24)
To deaden the post-sixties pain,
A journalist scrambles his brain
With a vast potpourri
Of grass, beer, LSD,
Ether, mescaline, rum and cocaine.


25)
Our hero explains he'd prefer
Two soulmates: a ma'am and a sir.
But alas! when his bro
Wanders off in the snow,
He's obliged to make do with just her.


26)
A gentleman hunting big game
Turns tail, to his infinite shame;
He recovers next day,
But things don't end OK,
And we're left to decide who's to blame.


27)
Six Japanese teenagers, smitten
By things they think Nietzsche has written
(All misunderstood)
Cause a lot of no good
For a sailor and — much worse — a kitten.


28)
Though hunting a statue is thrilling,
Obtaining it proves unfulfilling:
We're left with our duty —
To punish a QT
For lying and scheming and killing.


29)
A man gets no rest in his house:
He's told: "Be a man, not a mouse!
Keep killing! Don't stop
Till you rise to the top" —
Fellows, don't take advice from your spouse.


30)
Our heroine yearns after A,
But weds, in a cynical way,
First B and then C,
And then winds up with D,
Till her foolishness drives him away.

[Anonymous No.20395518]

>>20395500
1. Tom Sawyer
3. Christmas Carol
6. Don Quixote
8. Lord of the Flies

[Anonymouṡ No.20395523]

31)
Is this an artistic success,
Or just a grandiloquent mess?
It wows us and woos us
With words which amuse us,
All sandwiched by stately and yes.


32)
This novel's a cute miscellania
Of incidents zany then zanier,
When two boozy friends
Try to iron out the bends
In the border of south Pennsylvania.


33)
A ragbag of lunatic folk
Exist under tyranny's yolk:
Insurgency's planned
By an amputee and
A computer who values a joke.


34)
It's comic without being merry,
When someone you're anxious to bury
Needs miles of transporting
And hurdles keep thwarting
Your efforts. (How mad is this? Very.)


35)
Suppressing all signs of emotion,
A man serves his boss with devotion:
It's a waste of a life,
With no girlfriend or wife,
And not even a chance of promotion.


36)
Compelled by his mother's anxiety,
A wastrel attempts a variety
Of ridiculous jobs,
While deploring the slobs
Who have vulgarized modern society.


37)
Our hero is sadly alive
When only conformists can thrive;
He tries to rebel
But it doesn't end well —
He admits 2+2=5.


38)
Exposing a cheat at canasta
Leads straight to a criminal master;
Our hero then blocks
An assault on Fort Knox,
Thereby saving the world from disaster.


39)
Trench warfare must suck when you're in it —
More so when your side doesn't win it —
But through all the fear
And the pain, it's quite clear
That he secretly loved every minute.


40)
Our heroine's fantasy swells
At stories an officer tells:
But soon she's a fan
Of a quite different man,
With a sweet tooth and lots of hotels.

[Anonymouṡ No.20395531]

41)
When facing a threat that's quite new,
There's often not much one can do:
You struggle on pluckily,
But lose — until, luckily,
Your foes all come down with the flu.


42)
A prelate declines to endorse
A most expeditious divorce:
He claims its a sin,
But the young Miss Boleyn
And her charms prove the mightier force.


43)
In fiction, we're told, it's required
That a gun, once displayed, must be fired:
But two men who wait
For a stranger, who's late
And then never turns up — that's inspired!


44)
A doctor, a Mormon, a Jew,
A green-beret veteran too,
Think 'progress' corrosive,
So make some explosive,
And eco-adventures ensue!


45)
Our hero drives rashly for kicks,
Till prison puts paid to his tricks;
His home's overrun,
But is quickly re-won
By judicious employment of sticks.


46)
A dissolute heir to the throne
Provokes his sick father to groan:
But all this, in fact,
Is a nicely-judged act,
And he later comes into his own.


47)
You know you've gone badly astray,
When a leopard keeps blocking your way:
You're scared it's the end,
But a dead heartthrob sends
You a ghost to help make things OK.


48)
A gentleman quite enigmatic
Indulges in whimsy acquatic;
He then goes inside,
Where he wakes up his bride
In a manner abrupt and dramatic.


49)
A man makes compendious notes,
Whilst keeping a lookout for boats:
We'd witness him pining,
If not for the dining
Potential of turtles and goats.


50)
We start with a groom and his bride,
The magical merely implied;
But leaving less doubt
Are the man who's a trout
And the mansion that's bigger inside.

[Anonymouṡ No.20395535]

51)
With sentiments riffing on Tao,
This novel elucidates how
The results might displease
If we made water freeze
At a temperature higher than now.


52)
A morsel of meek masculinity
Sees wickedness nearing infinity;
Then fortune Praetorian
Presents our historian
With status not far from divinity.


53)
A chap enigmatic and dapper
Yearns hopelessly after a flapper:
His eagerness hurts
When he woos her with shirts
While the reader wants only to slap her.


54)
Our heroine weds a professor
Whose dreariness comes to depress her:
She's faithful until
His departure, but still
He's vindictive against his successor.


55)
A gentleman tapping his feet
Keeps missing the musical beat,
He then gets corrected,
Which most unexpected-
-ly starts up a friendship quite sweet.


56)
Though thousands of years have gone past,
A man puts together, at last,
Through scraps of mythology,
Forgotten technology —
And blows off his head with the blast.


57)
A man who is just an initial
Meets one then another official:
He argues a while,
But is beaten in style
Spirit-crushingly dull and judicial.


58)
This seminal three-part invention
Narrates our prolonged re-ascension,
As men meek and pure
Keep old knowledge secure,
Though entirely without comprehension.


59)
Two fellows effectively woo,
But weddings, it seems, won't ensue —
Till hurdles, at last,
Are removed when the past
Is untangled and lies become true.


60)
It's shameful to show the white feather
Because of a bit of bad weather —
The whole of the crew
And the passengers too,
After all, are all in it together.

[Anonymouṡ No.20395540]

61)
This wayfaring beat-culture preacher
Is hardly a praiseworthy creature:
He leaves girls bereft,
Wrecking lives right and left,
Whilst absolving himself using Nietzsche.


62)
A picture leads adults to make
A distressingly simple mistake:
They argue it's merely
A hat when it's clearly
An elephant filling a snake.


63)
This writer meanders around,
With discourse profane and profound;
He starts with the thought
That there's times when one ought
To ignore that a clock should be wound.


64)
Two lawmen in Texas (retired)
Hear someone who leaves them inspired;
They boldly set forth
Taking cattle up north,
Coming home after one has expired.


65)
Round someone who speaks not a word,
A number of stories are heard:
From a restaurant head,
A physician, a red,
And a girl who likes Beethoven's Third.


66)
A shopkeeper, humble and poor,
Sells knick-knacks from decades before,
Whilst occultists say
That America may
Not have lost in the Second World War.


67)
A baker's assistant (a clown)
Surpasses the sharpest in town:
He hits the books gladly,
But finds, very sadly,
That what goes up often comes down.


68)
A church-bell's crepuscular sounding
Accompanies lofty expounding:
Men laid in the earth,
Says a poet, had worth
Hid away in their humble surrounding.


69)
At dinner a group are aghast,
Confronted with sins of their past:
Each pays for his crime
In the style of a rhyme,
Till we wonder who did it, at last.


70)
Despite all the feminist fawning,
This book is worth reading. But — warning!
She's madder than rabies
And only likes babies
And riding a horse in the morning.

[Anonymouṡ No.20395545]

71)
A family load up their car
In search of new prospects afar:
Though things all go wrong
They are carried along
By the figure known only as 'Ma'.


72)
Before he begins his career,
A man seeks a healthier sphere:
But up in the peaks,
Just a couple of weeks
Are extended to many a year.


73)
Though much modern verse is maligned,
This work is quite rightly enshrined:
In twelve words we feel
All the timeless appeal
Of a ravening beast unconfined.


74)
Believing all passion a sin
Is not a good state to be in:
Things come to a head
When your wife ends up dead
And you blame a well-played violin.


75)
Though murder is never OK
(No matter how sunny the day)
You're mostly reproved
For appearing unmoved
When a relative passes away.


76)
An aircraft escapes revolution
To crash near a strange institution:
The passengers wind
Up sojourning, and find
Ataraxis beyond the Confucian.


77)
A little antarctic exploring
Finds things we were better ignoring:
One glimpse from a plane
Drives a fellow insane —
Still, at least he can't say it was boring.


78)
Persisting through endless frustration,
An architect earns admiration;
He puts up some flats,
But they're altered, and that's
The last straw. His reply: detonation.


79)
World shipping is thrown into panic
By rumours of something satanic —
A monster at sea —
Which then turns out to be
Very tangible (just not organic).


80)
A girl meets a man in a hat,
A grin sometimes seen on a cat,
A monarch, his spouse,
A somniculous mouse,
And a trio of rose-painters (flat).

[Anonymouṡ No.20395548]

81)
A reader, sat lonely and pensive,
Is made even more apprehensive
By commentary heard —
Though it's only a bird,
And its lexicon isn't extensive.


82)
A man, long thought dead, reappears,
Reducing his servant to tears:
He's none too impressed
With his unwanted guests,
So he shoots them, and everyone cheers.


83)
A scientist, wise and respected,
Assembles components collected:
His work's a success
But it causes distress
When the work is itself disaffected.


84)
He might leave some folk looking ashen,
But still, this MC does have passion:
He loves 80s pop
And the right names to drop
And the latest in business-card fashion.


85)
An island-state's ageing patrician
Expresses one restless ambition —
To call up the gang
And go out with a bang
In a perilous last expedition.


86)
This volume will tie you in knots,
Attempting to join all the dots:
They tangle a fellow
In Homer, Sordello,
And bankers' usurious plots.


87)
This heroine shrinks on the page,
With little of passion or rage:
Her bravest oration?
A shy hesitation
To act on the amateur stage.


88)
Though marriage enriches your life,
You suffer emotional strife:
It's cool that your spouse
Has a large country house —
But does he still love his first wife?


89)
Some outlaws in hiding create
A band of 108:
Although they're all hardened
They mostly get pardoned,
As part of protecting the state.


90)
A man of inferior station
Has hopes of a good education:
But life is no fun,
And it's worse when his son
Gets convinced he's excess population.

[Anonymouṡ No.20395554]

91)
A father of four, on a whim,
Embarks on an afternoon swim:
He ticks off the pools,
But the atmosphere cools
Till it ends up surprisingly grim.


92)
A king should be sternly aloof
When a girl takes a bath on the roof:
But lust is instilled,
And her husband gets killed,
And the king earns a lofty reproof.


93)
A map comes with no guarantees,
But boldly you take to the seas:
Then murder discussed
Makes it clear you can trust
Only six (and a man who likes cheese).


94)
A girl with a master's degree
Thinks life as inane as can be:
She fancies she's wise,
But receives a surprise
When a man cuts her off at the knee.


95)
A handsome and cynical rake
Finds hearts very easy to break:
He lives through a duel,
But life can be cruel —
Proposing can't fix his mistake.


96)
A fellow hangs verses on trees
For someone he's eager to please:
He must be a chad
Since they're all pretty bad
But they still make her weak at the knees.


97)
When days held no stress or alarm,
Your summers were spent on a farm:
You loved running wild
As an innocent child —
How quickly life loses its charm!


98)
This ballad (whose title is French)
Should cause all ascetics to blench;
A knight by a lake
Made a dreadful mistake —
He was wooed by the wiles of a wench.


99)
A priest who appears naive
Is sharper than people believe:
With all the transgression
He's heard in confession,
He's shockingly hard to deceive.


100)
This poem addresses, unblinking,
The fact of our lives ever shrinking;
Its quatrains opine
That the answer is wine
And the soundest philosophy, drinking.

[Anonymouṡ No.20395572]

>>20395518
Yup. No-one will notice this answer tucked away in the middle but of course when the VALUABLE PRIZES are awarded, it's only the first correct answers that qualify.

[Anonymous No.20395652]

>>20395509
14. The Lord of the Rings

>>20395535
57. The Trial

>>20395545
75. The Stranger

>>20395548
81. The Raven I've only seen the Simpsons parody

[Anonymous No.20395668]

>>20395500


6. d. quixote
8. lord of the flies
12. crime & punishment
24. fear and loathing LV
32. m&d
57 the process
58 divine comedy
71 grapes of wrath
84 american psycho

[Anonymous No.20395689]

>>20395545
73 - The Tiger
74 - The Kreutzer Sonata
75- The Stranger
77 - At the Mountains of Madness?
80 - Alice in Wonderland

>>20395548
82 - The Odyssey. kek
83 - Frankenstein
84 - American Psycho

[Anonymouṡ No.20395709]

>>20395652
Yup, all correct.

[Anonymouṡ No.20395730]

>>20395668
All correct except 58. The three-part bit is a red herring I guess. (Divine Comedy is elsewhere in the list.)

[Anonymouṡ No.20395753]

>>20395689
Yup, all correct. Some tricky ones there I thought, so you get two thumbs up instead of just one.

[Anonymouṡ No.20396843]

Bedtime bump

[Anonymous No.20398672]

>>20395548
don't let this die without giving away the answer to 86, it reminds me of something but I can't right place it

[Anonymouṡ No.20398864]

>>20398672
Hint for 86:
20th century poetry

[Anonymous No.20398877]

>>20395500
2) Catch-22
5) The Catcher in The Rye
6) Don Quixote
8)LOTF
>>20395509
12) Crime and Punishment
16)TSATF
>>20395513
24)Fear and Loathing
27)The Sailor Who fell
>>20395523
31) Ulysses
32)Mason and Dixon
36) Confederacy of Dunces??
37) 1984
>>20395531
43) Waiting for Godot
>>20395540
66) Man in the high castle
>>20395545
75)The stranger
77) At the mountains of madness??
>>20395548
84) American Psycho
>>20395554
98) L'mort D'Arthur

[Anonymouṡ No.20399077]

>>20398877
All right, except (sort of) 98. That wasn't what I had in mind, but it does (sort of) fit. I thought some of them might have plausible alternative answers. That's why I put the list of authors. Thomas Malory isn't there so this can't be the intended answer.

[Anonymous No.20399085]

There once was a man from Nantucket
Who's dick was so long he could suck it
He wiped off his chin, and said with a grin
"If my ear were a cunt I could fuck it"

[Anonymous No.20399086]

>>20395509
9) In Search of Lost Time
>>20395509
19) Moby Dick
>>20395513
21) Stoner
>>20395540
61) on the road
>>20395545
72) The Magic Mountain
>>20395554
95) The Red and The Black would fit perfectly but Stendhal is not on the list :(

[Anonymouṡ No.20399123]

>>20399086
All correct, yes. I thought 19 would be one of the first solved but you'll be getting the VALUABLE PRIZE for that.

95 — I haven't read TRATB but I was indeed a bit worried about this one because it's the sort of general plot that might fit loads of romantic fiction.
Hint: Russian
Second hint: Poem

[Anonymous No.20399279]

>>20395513
Is 29 Macbeth?

[Anonymous No.20399307]

>>20395523
35) Remains of the day??

[Anonymouṡ No.20399338]

>>20399279
Yes.

[Anonymouṡ No.20399342]

>>20399307
Correct.

[Anonymous No.20399366]

>>20395523
34) As I lay dying

[Anonymouṡ No.20399401]

>>20399366
Yes indeed.

[Anonymous No.20399555]

4) Jane Eyre
53) Great Gatsby
76) Lost Horizon
99) This sounds somewhat like Edmond Dantes posing as a priest, but I don't see Dumas on the list...

[Anonymouṡ No.20399598]

>>20399555
4, 53, 76 correct. 99 isn't Monte Cristo. It describes pretty closely the book overall, not just one scene.

Trips ought to get an animated gif I guess but I don't have any more so you'll have to make do with Best Girl Kurisu.

[Anonymouṡ No.20401522]

39/100 solved and several (relatively) easy ones still there to be claimed...