Gollum Converses With Elizabeth Bennet?! Tell Me More…

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Raskolnikov

Book lovers have a problem: The fictional people in the many novels we’ve read over the years can blur together in our memories. So, theoretically, there might be false recollections of characters interacting with each other across different books…

Sherlock Holmes: “Yikes! Two people have been murdered in Crime and Punishment! I need Jack Reacher to help me investigate. Are you ready, Jack?”

Reacher: “Good to go.”

Captain Ahab: “Jack and Sherlock, unless Moby-Dick visits the Hermitage Museum, I’m not transporting you along the Neva River to St. Petersburg.”

Ishmael: “Call me…not surprised.”

Huck and Jim: “We’ll take anyone anywhere on our raft!”

Maggie and Tom Tulliver: “Not interested, H and J, in ‘the Twain shall meet.’ After what happened in The Mill on the Floss, we’re steering clear of water.”

The Joad Family: “We got rather soaked walking one day near the end of The Grapes of Wrath.”

Jane Eyre: “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.”

Scout Finch: “Jane, I don’t walk sometimes because I’m scared of Boo, though it was even scarier that the actress who played me on screen didn’t have much of a film career.”

Binx Bolling: “As the moviegoer in The Moviegoer, I noticed that.”

Ignatius J. Reilly: “But, Binx, that Walker Percy novel you starred in was published before To Kill a Mockingbird was filmed!”

The Time Traveler’s Wife: “So?”

Hermione Granger: “I used a time-turner in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.”

Gollum: “My preciousssss.”

Elizabeth Bennet: “Your ‘preciousssss’ was a ring, not a time-turner, you Tolkien-created idiot.”

Lily Bart: “Damn, a Jane Austen character doesn’t talk like that.”

Anne Shirley: “Damn, an Edith Wharton character doesn’t talk like that.”

Pip: “Damn, an L.M. Montgomery character doesn’t…oh, the hell with it.”

Ursula Iguaran: “The punishment for all of you is one hundred nanoseconds of solitude.”

Edmond Dantes: “Ursula, I was imprisoned a lot longer than that in the early 1800s.”

Lisbeth Salander: “Did you have a computer in your cell, Edmond?”

Dorian Gray: “The selfie I took on my smartphone is looking rather strange…”

Harry Haller aka Steppenwolf: “Born to be W-i-i-i-i-ilde!”

Jay Gatsby: “Better than listening to ‘The Wreck of the F. Scott Fitzgerald.'”

Offred: “The author who created me in The Handmaid’s Tale is Canadian like Gordon Lightfoot, but I prefer the less-patriarchal Joni Mitchell.”

Ove: “Discussing music makes me even grumpier.”

Olanna: “Wow — two names that start with ‘O’? I’m in a relationship with Odenigbo in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun.”

Hester Prynne: “Speaking of letters, Olanna, imagine having an ‘A’ on your clothes rather than on your report card.”

Don Quixote: “Hi, Hester! I’m the protagonist of a book written during the same century Hawthorne put you in.”

Sethe: “Don, my story begins in 1873.”

Isabel Archer: “Sethe from Beloved? I’m from 1881’s The Portrait of a Lady. Probably would’ve been better for us to live in the 20th or 21st century, don’t you think?”

Big Brother: “Careful what you wish for.”

Jo March: “I wish I wasn’t named after the third month of the year. Jo June has a nicer ring to it.”

Tyrion Lannister: “Jo, you little woman, can you write rings around the guy who authored A Game of Thrones?”

Anna Karenina: “She can hold her own, Tyrion, you little man.”

Madame Bovary: “That doesn’t sound like something a Tolstoy character would say. Or a Dostoyevsky character, for the matter.”

Scarlett O’Hara: “Emma, I think Sherlock and Reacher will catch Raskolnikov tonight. After that, well, tomorrow is another day.”

(Raskolnikov is pictured atop this blog post.)

My literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column for Baristanet.com. The latest piece — about a continuing Board of Education controversy, Super Tuesday, and more — is here.

41 thoughts on “Gollum Converses With Elizabeth Bennet?! Tell Me More…”

      • Governor Cuomo has taken on decidedly realistic aspects since this crisis began. Before, I could hardly stand to hear him for longer than a soundbite, however novel his pronouncements. Now I look forward to his assessments and plans, at whatever length he chooses to speak, having found literally nobody in the national administration worth listening to for so long as a silly syllable.

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        • I also have had very mixed feelings about Gov. Cuomo, but he has some competence and is capable of coming through when needed. What a contrast with the sheer stupidity, ignorance, self-servingness, etc., of Trump and everyone in his administration.

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  10. Dave, you have taken your false recollection theory well beyond my ability to apply it other than – possibility, ” See Spot run” to which Mortimer Snerd replies, “Yep!”

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      • Hi Dave,

        Sorry for the late reply. And for the lack of substance in said reply. When I read this earlier in the week, I thought I had lots of witty things to add, but I was wrong. Your post jogged some memories of books I’ve read in the past, and there are similarities to books that I’m reading now, but that’s about it.

        But I will again say that it was VERY entertaining. I might need to bookmark this one for when I’m having a bad day. I particularly liked the line from Not Surprised. Thanks 🙂

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        • No problem, Susan! And glad you liked that Ishmael line! The first line of “Moby-Dick” is always good for parodying. 🙂 I remember Mad magazine, many years ago, doing an illustrated spoof that had Melville’s narrator saying “Call me Fishmeal.” Not technically true given who survived in the novel, but…

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  13. Thanks to Mary Jo Malo and “Michelle at The Green Study” for recommending Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie! Her “Half of a Yellow Sun,” briefly mentioned in this blog post, will be one of the novels I’ll discuss in my March 22 piece in two weeks.

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