Jokes1 min ago
Favourite opening lines of a novel?
41 Answers
I can't think of mine.
Maybe "This is not for you" printed on a blank page at the beginning of Mark Z Danielewski's "House of Leaves"?
Or maybe any of McCarthy's run-on lines, like in Child of God:
"They came like a caravan of carnival folk up through the swales of broomstraw and across the hill in the morning sun, the truck rocking and pitching in the ruts and the musicians on chairs in the truckbed teetering and tuning their instruments, the fat man with guitar grinning and gesturing to others in a car behind and bending to give a note to the fiddler who turned a fiddlepeg and listened with a wrinkled face"
I know Lolita is suggested a lot.
What's yours?
Maybe "This is not for you" printed on a blank page at the beginning of Mark Z Danielewski's "House of Leaves"?
Or maybe any of McCarthy's run-on lines, like in Child of God:
"They came like a caravan of carnival folk up through the swales of broomstraw and across the hill in the morning sun, the truck rocking and pitching in the ruts and the musicians on chairs in the truckbed teetering and tuning their instruments, the fat man with guitar grinning and gesturing to others in a car behind and bending to give a note to the fiddler who turned a fiddlepeg and listened with a wrinkled face"
I know Lolita is suggested a lot.
What's yours?
Answers
"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionabl e end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun."
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
21:19 Wed 30th May 2012
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.
One that has always stuck in my mind is from 'A Tale of Two Cities' Dickens.
'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness...'.etc
'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness...'.etc
The old classic... "It was a dark and stormy night;... the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.” — Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)".
Especially the contests the first part of the line propigate; except if it's Friday and one has to empty the garbage before the pick-up men come, which isn't always the same day if a holiday falls during the week, in which case, it could be missed or perhaps exchanged for Thursday (well... you get the idea).
Especially the contests the first part of the line propigate; except if it's Friday and one has to empty the garbage before the pick-up men come, which isn't always the same day if a holiday falls during the week, in which case, it could be missed or perhaps exchanged for Thursday (well... you get the idea).
I quite like this one from Count Zero by William Gibson
THEY sent A SLAMHOUND on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted
it to his pheromones and the color of his hair. It caught up
with him on a street called Chandni Chauk and came scram-
bling for his rented BMW through a forest of bare brown legs
and pedicab tires. Its core was a kilogram of recrystallized
hexogene and flaked TNT.
He didn't see it coming. The last he saw of India was the
pink stucco facade of a place called the Khush-Oil Hotel.
Because he had a good agent, he had a good contract.
Because he had a good contract, he was in Singapore an hour
after the explosion. Most of him, anyway The Dutch surgeon
liked to joke about that, how an unspecified percentage of
Turner hadn't made it out of Palam International on that first
flight and had to spend the night there in a shed, in a support
vat
THEY sent A SLAMHOUND on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted
it to his pheromones and the color of his hair. It caught up
with him on a street called Chandni Chauk and came scram-
bling for his rented BMW through a forest of bare brown legs
and pedicab tires. Its core was a kilogram of recrystallized
hexogene and flaked TNT.
He didn't see it coming. The last he saw of India was the
pink stucco facade of a place called the Khush-Oil Hotel.
Because he had a good agent, he had a good contract.
Because he had a good contract, he was in Singapore an hour
after the explosion. Most of him, anyway The Dutch surgeon
liked to joke about that, how an unspecified percentage of
Turner hadn't made it out of Palam International on that first
flight and had to spend the night there in a shed, in a support
vat
I think there can only be one, and that is the opening of the Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake.
The novel could have slowly and ponderously sewn doubts in your mind about the actual nature of Gormenghast. Instead, it hits you with it in the first line. But, cleverly, it's only when you're into the book and you look back that you think ... "So is Gormenghast something different from the actual stone from which it is built?"
The opening is ...
'Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls.'
The novel could have slowly and ponderously sewn doubts in your mind about the actual nature of Gormenghast. Instead, it hits you with it in the first line. But, cleverly, it's only when you're into the book and you look back that you think ... "So is Gormenghast something different from the actual stone from which it is built?"
The opening is ...
'Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls.'