Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant

Fun With Amazon's SIPs

Spurned on in part by Maud, here are some statistically improbable phrases from certain books:

• Absalom! Absalom!: "monkey nigger," "balloon face," "dont hate," "right all right all right"
• American Psycho: "little hardbody," "wool tuxedo," "her asshole," "urinal cake," "clock reservation," "drink tickets," "spread collar," "dry beer," "pocket square"
• Atlas Shrugged: "furnace foreman," "young brakeman," "tower director," "transcontinental traffic," "superlative value," "best railroad"
• Beloved: "men without skin," "white stairs," "baby ghost"
• Blindness: "black eyepatch," "white sickness," "milky sea," "emergency stairs"
• Brick Lane: "multicultural liaison office, "tattoo lady," "ignorant types," "girl from the village"
• Cloud Atlas: "steely gate," "our dwellin" (Only four come up, despite the presence of the "Sloosha's Crossin'" section!)
• Concrete Island: "overturned taxi," "route indicators," "metal crutch," "feeder road," "paraffin stove," "bruised skin"
• The Corrections: "country ribs"
• A Death in the Family: "her trumpet"
• Empire of the Senseless: "red sponge"
• Gravity's Rainbow: "pig suit," "rocket field," "firing site," "runcible spoon"
• The Great Gatsby: "old sport"
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: "fucking wallet," "green fluid"
• I Am Charlotte Simmons: "ilial crest," "very hide," "sobs sobs sobs sobs," "compressed his lips," "library tower," "depressed girl," "camper top"
• Mrs. Dalloway: "solitary traveller"
• One Hundred Years of Solitude: "porch with the begonias," "insomnia plague," "banana company," "ermine cape," "eating earth"
• Oryx and Crake: "fridge magnets"
• The Recognitions: "tall bellboy," "small man with beer," "plexiglass collar," "distinguished novelist," "weh weh," "bull figure," "hand mounting," "youthful portrait," "yetzer hara"
• Revolutionary Road: "rubber syringe" (Well, who else referred to it so obliquely?)
• Slaughterhouse-Five: "old war buddy"
• The Sot-Weed Factor: "bit oft," "poet exclaimed," "our barge," "ocean isle," "silver seal"
• This Is Not a Novel: "died mad"
• Tropic of Cancer: "rich cunt," "guys upstairs"
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: "man with the guitar case," "vinyl hat," "macaroni gratin," "telephone woman," "cooking spaghetti," "vacant house"