The Shipping News

The Shipping News

by

Annie Proulx

Ed Punch is the managing editor of the Mockingburg Record, the newspaper where Partridge and Quoyle work. He’s a hard-nosed, dominant man who gives Quoyle the job almost as a favor and who annually lays the man off when better employees (local college students back from school) become available. He dies when a disgruntled reader attacks the newspaper offices.

Ed Punch Quotes in The Shipping News

The The Shipping News quotes below are all either spoken by Ed Punch or refer to Ed Punch . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Love and Family Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1: Quoyle Quotes

The truth was Punch had noticed that Quoyle, who spoke little himself, inspired talkers. His only skill in the game of life. His attentive posture, his flattering nods urged waterfalls of opinion, reminiscence, recollection, theorizing, guesstimating, exposition, synopsis and explication, juiced the life stories out of strangers.

And so it went. Fired, car wash attendant, rehired.

Fired, cab driver, rehired.

Back and forth he went, down and around the county, listening to the wrangles of sewer boards, road commissions, pounding out stories of bridge repair budgets. The small decision of local authority seemed to him the deep workings of life. In a profession that tutored its practitioners in the baseness of human nature, that revealed the corroded metal of civilization, Quoyle constructed a personal illusion of orderly progress. In atmospheres of disintegration and smoking jealousy he imagined rational compromise.

Related Characters: Quoyle , Ed Punch
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7: The Gammy Bird Quotes

“Now, what I want you to do. I want you cover local car wrecks, write the story, take pictures. We run a front-page photo of a car wreck every week, whether we have a wreck or not. […]

“And the shipping news. Get it from the harbormaster. What ships come into Killick-Claw, what ones goes out. There’s more every year. I got a hunch about this. We’re going to play it by ear. See what you can do.”

“Like I said on the phone,” said Quoyle, “I haven’t had much experience with ships.” Car wrecks! Stunned with the probabilities of blood and dying people.

“Well, you can tell your readers that or work like hell to learn something. Boats is in your family blood. You work on it. And fill in where Tert Card tells you.”

Related Characters: Quoyle (speaker), Jack Buggit (speaker), Petal Bear , Tert Card, Ed Punch
Page Number: 69
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8: A Slippery Hitch Quotes

The aunt drove her needles furiously. Wool twitched through her fingers.

“Of course you can do the job. We face up to awful things because we can’t go around them, or forget them. The sooner you get it over with, the sooner you say ‘Yes, it happened, and there’s nothing I can do about it,’ the sooner you can get on with your own life. You’ve got children to bring up. So you’ve got to get over it. What we have to get over, somehow we do. Even the worst things.”

Sure, get over it, thought Quoyle. Ten-cent philosophy. She didn’t know what he had been through. Was going through.

Related Characters: Agnis Hamm (speaker), Quoyle , Guy Quoyle , Mrs. Mavis Bangs, Ed Punch , Dick Quoyle
Page Number: 72
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17: The Shipping News Quotes

“All right, then,” said Buggit, “This is what it is. This little piece you’ve wrote and hung off the end of the shipping news—”

“I thought it’d perk the shipping news up a little bit, Mr. Buggit,” said Quoyle. An unusual boat in the harbor and—”

“‘Jack,’” said Buggit.

“I don’t have to write another one. I just thought—.” Reporter Licks Editor’s Boot.

“You sound like you’re fishing with a holed net, shy most of your shingles standin’ there hemming and hawing away.” Glared at Quoyle who slouched and put his hand over his chin.

“Got four phone calls last night about that Hitler boat. People enjoyed it. […] Course you don’t know nothin’ about boats, but that’s entertaining, too. So go ahead with it. That’s the kind of stuff I want. From now on I want you to write a column, see? The Shipping News.”

Related Characters: Quoyle (speaker), Jack Buggit (speaker), Tert Card, Guy Quoyle , Ed Punch
Page Number: 143
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 25: Oil  Quotes

Quoyle was incensed, some well of anger like a dome of oil beneath innocuous sand, tapped and gushing.

“This is a column,” bellowed Quoyle. “You can’t change somebody’s column, for Christ’s sake, because you don’t like it! Jack asked me to write a column about boats and shipping. That means my opinion and description as I see it. This”—he shook the paper against the slab cheeks—“isn’t what I wrote, isn’t my opinion, isn’t what I see.”

“As long as I’m the managing editor,” said Tert Card, rattling like pebbles in a can, “I’ve the right to change anything I don’t think fit to run in the Gammy Bird. And if you don’t think so, I advise you to check it with Jack Buggit.” Ducked under Quoyle’s raised arms.

And ran for the door.

Related Characters: Quoyle (speaker), Tert Card (speaker), Jack Buggit , Ed Punch
Page Number: 203
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 36: Straitjacket Quotes

“This guy sent an anonymous letter saying riots were necessary to purge the system and redistribute wealth and they didn’t print it. So he came down with a machine gun […] Quoyle, they shot at Mercalia on the freeway last week. Show you how crazy the scene is, I made a joke about living in California, about LA style. Fucking bullet holes through her windshield. Missed her by inches. She’s scared to death and I’m making jokes. It hit me after Edna called what a fucking miserable crazy place we’re in. There’s no place you can go no more without getting shot or burned or beat.”

Related Characters: Partridge (speaker), Quoyle , B. Beaufield Nutbeem, Bayonet Melville, Silver Melville, Ed Punch
Page Number: 290-291
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Shipping News LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Shipping News PDF

Ed Punch Quotes in The Shipping News

The The Shipping News quotes below are all either spoken by Ed Punch or refer to Ed Punch . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Love and Family Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1: Quoyle Quotes

The truth was Punch had noticed that Quoyle, who spoke little himself, inspired talkers. His only skill in the game of life. His attentive posture, his flattering nods urged waterfalls of opinion, reminiscence, recollection, theorizing, guesstimating, exposition, synopsis and explication, juiced the life stories out of strangers.

And so it went. Fired, car wash attendant, rehired.

Fired, cab driver, rehired.

Back and forth he went, down and around the county, listening to the wrangles of sewer boards, road commissions, pounding out stories of bridge repair budgets. The small decision of local authority seemed to him the deep workings of life. In a profession that tutored its practitioners in the baseness of human nature, that revealed the corroded metal of civilization, Quoyle constructed a personal illusion of orderly progress. In atmospheres of disintegration and smoking jealousy he imagined rational compromise.

Related Characters: Quoyle , Ed Punch
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7: The Gammy Bird Quotes

“Now, what I want you to do. I want you cover local car wrecks, write the story, take pictures. We run a front-page photo of a car wreck every week, whether we have a wreck or not. […]

“And the shipping news. Get it from the harbormaster. What ships come into Killick-Claw, what ones goes out. There’s more every year. I got a hunch about this. We’re going to play it by ear. See what you can do.”

“Like I said on the phone,” said Quoyle, “I haven’t had much experience with ships.” Car wrecks! Stunned with the probabilities of blood and dying people.

“Well, you can tell your readers that or work like hell to learn something. Boats is in your family blood. You work on it. And fill in where Tert Card tells you.”

Related Characters: Quoyle (speaker), Jack Buggit (speaker), Petal Bear , Tert Card, Ed Punch
Page Number: 69
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8: A Slippery Hitch Quotes

The aunt drove her needles furiously. Wool twitched through her fingers.

“Of course you can do the job. We face up to awful things because we can’t go around them, or forget them. The sooner you get it over with, the sooner you say ‘Yes, it happened, and there’s nothing I can do about it,’ the sooner you can get on with your own life. You’ve got children to bring up. So you’ve got to get over it. What we have to get over, somehow we do. Even the worst things.”

Sure, get over it, thought Quoyle. Ten-cent philosophy. She didn’t know what he had been through. Was going through.

Related Characters: Agnis Hamm (speaker), Quoyle , Guy Quoyle , Mrs. Mavis Bangs, Ed Punch , Dick Quoyle
Page Number: 72
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17: The Shipping News Quotes

“All right, then,” said Buggit, “This is what it is. This little piece you’ve wrote and hung off the end of the shipping news—”

“I thought it’d perk the shipping news up a little bit, Mr. Buggit,” said Quoyle. An unusual boat in the harbor and—”

“‘Jack,’” said Buggit.

“I don’t have to write another one. I just thought—.” Reporter Licks Editor’s Boot.

“You sound like you’re fishing with a holed net, shy most of your shingles standin’ there hemming and hawing away.” Glared at Quoyle who slouched and put his hand over his chin.

“Got four phone calls last night about that Hitler boat. People enjoyed it. […] Course you don’t know nothin’ about boats, but that’s entertaining, too. So go ahead with it. That’s the kind of stuff I want. From now on I want you to write a column, see? The Shipping News.”

Related Characters: Quoyle (speaker), Jack Buggit (speaker), Tert Card, Guy Quoyle , Ed Punch
Page Number: 143
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 25: Oil  Quotes

Quoyle was incensed, some well of anger like a dome of oil beneath innocuous sand, tapped and gushing.

“This is a column,” bellowed Quoyle. “You can’t change somebody’s column, for Christ’s sake, because you don’t like it! Jack asked me to write a column about boats and shipping. That means my opinion and description as I see it. This”—he shook the paper against the slab cheeks—“isn’t what I wrote, isn’t my opinion, isn’t what I see.”

“As long as I’m the managing editor,” said Tert Card, rattling like pebbles in a can, “I’ve the right to change anything I don’t think fit to run in the Gammy Bird. And if you don’t think so, I advise you to check it with Jack Buggit.” Ducked under Quoyle’s raised arms.

And ran for the door.

Related Characters: Quoyle (speaker), Tert Card (speaker), Jack Buggit , Ed Punch
Page Number: 203
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 36: Straitjacket Quotes

“This guy sent an anonymous letter saying riots were necessary to purge the system and redistribute wealth and they didn’t print it. So he came down with a machine gun […] Quoyle, they shot at Mercalia on the freeway last week. Show you how crazy the scene is, I made a joke about living in California, about LA style. Fucking bullet holes through her windshield. Missed her by inches. She’s scared to death and I’m making jokes. It hit me after Edna called what a fucking miserable crazy place we’re in. There’s no place you can go no more without getting shot or burned or beat.”

Related Characters: Partridge (speaker), Quoyle , B. Beaufield Nutbeem, Bayonet Melville, Silver Melville, Ed Punch
Page Number: 290-291
Explanation and Analysis: