May 22, 2007

Getting names right

Trying to get the names of some authors and their books right is not easy sometimes... Here is a text (written originally in Portuguese) by Luis Fernando VerĂ­ssimo.

- Ok, let’s start again. It´s D.H. Lawrence, of Arabia. T.S. Lawrence wrote ‘Lady Chatterley…’.
- Exactly. Wait! No. It´s T.S. Lawrence of Arabia. D.H. Lawrence wrote ‘Lady Chatterley…’.
- Are you sure?
- Wait a minute. It´s not T.S. Lawrence. It´s T.S. Eliot.
- Eliot of Arabia?
- No! Eliot the poet. It´s E.M. Lawrence.
- E.M. Forster. A Passage to India.
- Then it´s H.G. Lawrence!
- Isn´t it H.G. Wells? War of the Worlds?
- That’s right… So the guy from Arabia is…
- D.H.!
- D.H. wrote Lady Chatterley. Didn’t he?
- Ok, so it´s D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot, E.M. Forster, H.G. Wells and… W.H.! That´s it! W.H. Lawrence, of Arabia!
- W.H. is Auden.
- So it must be V.S.. V.S. Lawrence, of Arabia.
- It´s V.S. Naipaul. Or is it W.H. Naipaul and V.S. Auden?
- Naipaul?
- Of India?
- Bingo!
- Why ‘Bingo’???
- I don't know… Oh well, let´s start again…

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