Submitted by tillerman35 t3_11503e9 in books
By "subtle" I mean one that you think very few people, if any, would catch. That could be for a number of reasons. Perhaps the way it's presented is very off-hand (some others like to "hide" allusions, others like to knock you over the head with them). Or maybe it's referring to a work that few people would have read, or a passage in a well-known work that isn't often quoted.
I'll give you the one I'm thinking of as an example.
In the book "Little, Big" by John Crowley, the main character (at the time) receives a gift of a hat. The paragraph reads:
> "What more?" Mr. Woods said, looking around him, finger to his lips. Mrs. Underhill with one of her needles pointed to a round leather box on top of the cupboard.
Right! Mr. Woods said. "How about this?" He finger the box from its high place until it fell into his arms. He popped open the lid. "A hat!"
It was a red hat, high-crowned and soft, belted with a little plaited belt in which a white owl's feather nodded. Mr. Woods and Mrs. Underhill said Aaaaah, and watched closely as Mr. Woods fitted it to Smokey's head. ...
I'm spoiler-izing the following few lines so I don't ruin the book for anyone (plus you can make your guess and see if you're right!)
If you need a little hint: >!The book is subtitled "or, The Fairies' Parliament"!<
>!The paragraph I quoted is referring to a poem called "The Fairies," by William Allingham. It starts with:!<
>!Up the airy mountain,!<
>!Down the rushy glen,!<
>!We daren’t go a-hunting!<
>!For fear of little men;!<
>!Wee folk, good folk,!<
>!Trooping all together;!<
>!Green jacket, red cap,!<
>!And white owl’s feather!!**<
>!<
Subtle? Or am I underestimating the number of people who would catch this reference? I'm 100% sure this is an allusion to the work I mentioned because the 6th line quoted above is used in a completely off-hand manner in another of the Author's books.
NOTE: This is a do-over. The first time I submitted this, I had issues using the spoiler tags.
McJohn_WT_Net t1_j8yxnco wrote
In To Kill a Mockingbird, older narrator Jean Louise reports a conversation her younger self, Scout, had with Miss Maudie Atkinson about the notorious neighborhood recluse Boo Radley. Scout tells Miss Maudie the rumors about Boo, and Miss Maudie dismisses them with disdain, blaming them in part on local gossip Stephanie Crawford.
"Stephanie once told me that she woke up in the middle of the night and Boo was standing by her bed, looking down at her," Miss Maudie says. "I asked her, 'What did you do, Stephanie, move over in the bed and make room for him?' That shut her up."
Jean Louise comments, "I was sure it did. Miss Maudie's voice was enough to shut anyone up."
Took me years to get that joke.