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morrisonhotel
Joined: 18 Jul 2009
Location: Gyeonggi-do
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 Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 2:44 am Post subject: |
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| AmericanExile wrote: |
Absolutely not. No. It's terrible. I tend to believe people say this because their teacher said so in High School, but it's boring. This gets my vote for worst opening line ever, and anyone who thinks it is great should be nominated for the conformist of the year award. |
I fail to see why conforming with popular (and critical) opinion would be a bad thing. Having said that, I always preferred Bartleby.
Back on the OT, I've always liked "It began as a mistake". |
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BobbyOrr
Joined: 01 Jun 2009
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| Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 3:47 am Post subject: |
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Maybe not the best one-liner onto itself, but the opening lines of Cormac McCarthy's The Road perfectly sets the tone for the entire book:
When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the earth. |
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roadwork
Joined: 24 Nov 2008
Location: Goin' up the country
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| Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 4:06 am Post subject: |
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| BobbyOrr wrote: |
Maybe not the best one-liner onto itself, but the opening lines of Cormac McCarthy's The Road perfectly sets the tone for the entire book:
When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the earth. |
I can't wait to read this book. I have a whole slew of books bought from another poster a few weeks ago, so I'm kind of busy for the time being. |
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BobbyOrr
Joined: 01 Jun 2009
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| Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 5:39 am Post subject: |
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| roadwork wrote: |
| BobbyOrr wrote: |
Maybe not the best one-liner onto itself, but the opening lines of Cormac McCarthy's The Road perfectly sets the tone for the entire book:
When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the earth. |
I can't wait to read this book. I have a whole slew of books bought from another poster a few weeks ago, so I'm kind of busy for the time being. |
It's very short  |
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peppermint
Joined: 13 May 2003
Location: traversing the minefields of caddishness.
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| Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 6:26 am Post subject: |
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| AmericanExile wrote: |
| ThingsComeAround wrote: |
| Call me Ishmael |
Absolutely not. No. It's terrible. I tend to believe people say this because their teacher said so in High School, but it's boring. This gets my vote for worst opening line ever, and anyone who thinks it is great should be nominated for the conformist of the year award. |
Someone's got issues when it comes to Moby Dick apparently. |
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staticdelusion
Joined: 21 Jul 2009
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| Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 8:14 am Post subject: |
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| The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. |
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staticdelusion
Joined: 21 Jul 2009
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| Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 8:16 am Post subject: |
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| All this happened, more or less. |
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aboxofchocolates
Joined: 21 Mar 2008
Location: on your mind
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| Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 2:53 pm Post subject: |
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http://www.infoplease.com/ipea/A0934311.html
and yet i can't find the book i want. it's about some boy who is a mathmatical genius and a deaf girl and some guy and they do stuff. |
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Leslie Cheswyck
Joined: 31 May 2003
Location: University of Western Chile
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| Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 7:15 pm Post subject: |
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| It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. |
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MollyBloom
Joined: 21 Jul 2006
Location: James Joyce's pants
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| Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 11:29 pm Post subject: |
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No one agrees with me?  |
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blurgalurgalurga
Joined: 18 Oct 2007
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| Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 11:46 pm Post subject: |
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Some nice ones...
"It was the day my Grandmother exploded."
Banks, the Crow Road
"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 house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford
"It was a pleasure to burn."
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
"Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash."
J. G. Ballard, Crash
'I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot," or "That Claudius," or "Claudius the Stammerer," or "Clau-Clau-Claudius" or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius," am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the "golden predicament" from which I have never since become disentangled.'
Robert Graves, I, Claudius
"Harry locked his mother in the closet."
Hubert Selby Jr., Requiem for a Dream |
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yashi
Joined: 19 Jan 2007
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| Posted: Fri Oct 16, 2009 10:45 am Post subject: |
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"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love."
Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Love in the Time of Cholera
"I've been cordially invited to join the visceral realists. I accepted, of course. There was no initiation ceremony. It was better that way."
Roberto Bolano - The Savage Detectives
"The Swede."
Philip Roth - American Pastoral |
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peppermint
Joined: 13 May 2003
Location: traversing the minefields of caddishness.
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| Posted: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:00 am Post subject: |
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| MollyBloom wrote: |
| No one agrees with me? |
I like the cadence of the opening line of Ulysses- it's the rest of the book I find impenetrable.  I suspect if I could just manage to read it in one sitting, it'd be fantastic though. |
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.38 Special
Joined: 08 Jul 2009
Location: Pennsylvania
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| Posted: Fri Oct 16, 2009 4:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Leslie Cheswyck wrote: |
| It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. |
Seconded! I love that line.
And I will see MollyBloom's Ulysses and raise A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:
"Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo. . . ."
That line absolutely slayed my entire AP English class in high school. They had no idea what was going on, even after several chapters.
Ulysses had the same effect on me.  |
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MollyBloom
Joined: 21 Jul 2006
Location: James Joyce's pants
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| Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 6:39 am Post subject: |
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| peppermint wrote: |
| MollyBloom wrote: |
| No one agrees with me? |
I like the cadence of the opening line of Ulysses- it's the rest of the book I find impenetrable. I suspect if I could just manage to read it in one sitting, it'd be fantastic though. |
I know someone at Oxford who is getting her doctorate, focusing on Joyce scholarship. She recently said she felt "hungover and emotionally destroyed" after her Finnegans Wake reading group. That is f'ed up.
But to Special: I agree and do love Portrait. Joyce himself once said the entire book's issues can be summed up in that opening line. |
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