Whose is this fragment?

[JuanOlvido]

Hi,

I've been researching for days and days now, not only browsing through anthologies but also asking some universities (such as the University of British Columbia in Canada), about this few words. Our English lit. teacher (I'm a student on English Studies in Spain) challenged us to find out whose author the following lines were:

It started off so well, everybody seems delighted. Even his sister was there looking at him and smiling. However [...]

Just out of curiosity, I've tried hard, but I'm desperate now... The only hints we got from him were that he/she's Canadian and that the fragment is part of a short story. I've checked and it doesn't belong to any of Margaret Atwood's pieces of literature (I'm one hundred per cent sure about this).

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

First post, by the way :)

Kind regards,

Juan

[hoope]

Hi juan..

i will try to help u .. though it might sound really hard..
i can tell its not from a novel quote.. not a quote said by ay one..
Sounds a part of a novel.. so i'll try searching in historical classical novels..

and see what i can find.. wish you all the best.

[JuanOlvido]

Hi juan..

i will try to help u .. though it might sound really hard..
i can tell its not from a novel quote.. not a quote said by ay one..
Sounds a part of a novel.. so i'll try searching in historical classical novels..

and see what i can find.. wish you all the best.

Thanks a lot for your help, hoope. You're a new hoooope altogether now :P

Ok, enough with the bad jokes :D Thing is, I mentioned it did belong to a short story... I know it may not exactly fit in this subforum, but I thought it most appropiate to put it here.

Thanks a lot. Please, keep it coming, I can't find anything anywhere.

[PabloQ]

Juan,
Send a personal message to JBI. JBI is steeped in Canadian literature and may know exactly where this piece comes from.

[JBI]

I have no idea - that is the vaguest sentence I have ever tried to place. It could be anything - and I doubt it is in the public domain, so finding it will be virtually impossible for me. I don't have time to search 100 books - I need about 10 more words.

If I were to lay a guess, I would place it as an Alice Munro story, but who knows.

[JuanOlvido]

Thank you all so much. I asked him if it was Alice Munro, as it sounded pretty much likely to me, but seems like it isn't her, either... I guess I'll just have to give up, since he won't be giving any more hints.

Thanks a lot to all of you for your help.

[PabloQ]

Seems a mean-spirited challenge to me. JBI thinks it's too short and from my chair it seems irrelevant. Doesn't seem to have a clue embedded in it to guide you to its source. Hopefully the rest of this fellow's instruction isn't as obscure as this quote.

[JuanOlvido]

It is really hard indeed. Something I found quite important is the fact that it's the VERY beginning of the short story, so it wouldn't be that hard to find out which it belongs to by just browsing through the first page of stories in anthologies. Unluckily, the libraries I have access too had few Candian short stories anthologies...

[hoope]

hey am still searching.... there is still a "hope "lol aslong as we dnt lose it
& i find the same search in couple other places
one was in yahoo.. & the otehrt on gbntemp..
is that you too.. or you classmates .

best of wishes ...
by the way when is the deadline?

[JuanOlvido]

The one over on yahoo, I've got no idea who it is. On Gbatemp, that's me. As of now, if anyone gets to tell me, even if one of my classmates tells the teacher before I do, I'll be satisfied.

The deadline is today, but he says he'll still be rewarding people after it. Not so generously, but still...

Something I thought might be of help is the use of both tenses in the same sentence as in "started" and "seems"... Maybe if someone found an author using the same technique of mixing both present and past tenses, we could be a step closer to finding out whose the fragment is.

[hoope]

have searched in the writing of a canandian author named Morley Callaghan or Alice Munro.. i am rtyring to see their writing in short stories .. they r pretty well known that is why i tried them.

[JuanOlvido]

I've been trying with Alice Munro, but I'm not so confident right now that it's her. Didn't try with Morley Callaghan though.

Also, I've tried to find Graeme Gibson's short stories, as his style seems to fit the one in the two lines, more or less. However, there doesn't seem to be anything on the net and I looked through every anthology in my university's library with no success.

Thanks a lot, hoope!

[JBI]

Oh - I didn't know it was from the beginning - that changes everything.

[JuanOlvido]

Hot news!!! I got some hints from the professor. He says the author "official" job is not that of a writer, and is in fact more well known because of tasks others than writing. His full name contains is 11 letters in length and his initials are R.P. Ah, and it's a he.

I hope you will be find this information useful, as I'm not really in contact with Canada. Thanks a real lot to all of you, really.

[JuanOlvido]

I just got two names. I think Robert Priest is the most likely:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Priest

There's also some RP MCIntyre. He's some editor who's won several prizes on short stories... What do you think? The 11 letters hint may not have been 100% correct, by the way.

[JuanOlvido]

I'v tried with R. Priest and RP McIntyre and none of them worked... This is impossible.