Thursday, January 12, 2012
25 Best Opening Lines in Western Lit
I read a list of the 25 best lines here:
http://www.shmoop.com/news/2010/07/13/best-opening-lines-literature/
And it didn’t contain my favorite, from A Prayer for Owen Meany. So I wrote my own. A couple of points:
· The order – after the first two – is a bit random. Maybe I’ll think about it a bit more, and try to get the order right.
· Short first lines can be good, but I tend to like the longer ones; the ones that give the reader a true glimpse into what’s to come.
· One thing that makes it difficult for me to order these lines is my difficulty with deciding whether the order should be based on the greatness of the line itself, or of the book. For #1 on the list, it’s not an issue: A Prayer for Owen Meany is the greatest book I’ve ever read, and the first line is the greatest first line ever written. IMHO, of course. But after that, there are lines from books I’ve not read, or maybe didn’t consider great. So it muddies the waters for me a bit when I try to order them.
1. A Prayer for Owen Meany
Opener: “I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.”
Author: John Irving
Why it is great: First, it is a great book. And this sentence tells you so much about what’s to come, and what is important to the narrator. The single, greatest first line ever.
2. The Fall of the House of Usher
Opener: “DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher.”
Author: Edgar Allen Poe
Why it is great: It sets the oppressive nature that Poe continues to develop throughout the story. Every word is necessary.
3. 1984
Opener: “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”Author: George Orwell
Why it is great: I guess I always loved the idea—especially the oddness—of a clock that can strike thirteen. Plus, it is nice and short, so it is easy to remember and quote.
4. The Gunslinger
Opener: “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
Author: Stephen King
Why it is great: A bunch of people recommended it from the comments I saw online. I love Stephen King, and want to read this series, so I include the line. It does catch your attention; and I imagine it sets the mood for the 7 books to follow.
5. A Clockwork Orange
Opener: “There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry.”
Author: Anthony Burgess
Why it is great: To be honest, I haven’t read the book. But the movie starts with the same line, I believe, and I’m prejudiced in favor of this book because the slang contains a lot of bastardized Russian.
6. A Tale of Two Cities
Opener: “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, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
Author: Charles Dickens
Why it is great: I’ve always loved the duality; and especially the first comparison. Everyone knows that part by heart.
7. Fahrenheit 451
Opener: “It was a pleasure to burn.”Author: Ray Bradbury
Why it is great: It is a great line–I love fire–but it is a bit short. Still, though, a great line from a classic book.
8. Metamorphosis
Opener: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect-like creature.”
Author: Franz Kafka
Why it is great: I like the translation of the German word, Ungeziefer, as “cockroach,” but that isn’t really accurate. Actually translation is “unclean animal not suitable for sacrifice.” Still, a great first line.
9. The Hobbit
Opener: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien
Why it is great: first line of a classic. Actually, it seems like two lines, but I’ll let it go in this case.
10. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Opener: “You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.”
Author: Mark Twain
Why it is great: Mostly because it is considered the greatest novel in American history. And I like the self-referential aspect to the sentence.
11. Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers
Opener: “Describe, using diagrams where appropriate, the exact circumstances leading to your death”
Author: Grant Naylor
Why it is great: I must admit that I haven’t read the book. However, the TV series was excellent. And this is a very funny first line; the part of diagramming your death adds that extra bit of craziness.
12. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Opener: “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”
Author: Hunter S. Thompson
Why it is great: Good line, and probably a good book. I didn’t read it, but from what I’ve heard, this first line seems to do a good job in capturing the atmosphere of the book.
13. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Opener: “Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”
Author: Douglas Adams
Why it is great: It serves as a good introduction to one of the funniest books I’ve read. While good, there is a paragraph in this book that serves as one of my favorite couple of paragraphs of all time.
Here’s the quote (actually from Life, The Universe, and Everything, the third book in the series):
The technology involved in making anything invisible is so infinitely complex that nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand million, nine hundred and ninety-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a billion it is much simpler and more effective just to take the thing away and do without it. The ultra-famous sciento-magician Effrafax of Wug once bet his life that, given a year, he could render the great mega-mountain Magramal entirely invisible.
Having spent most of the year jiggling around with immense Lux-O-Valves and Refracto-Nullifiers and Spectrum-Bypass-O-Matics, he realized, with nine hours to go, that he wasn't going to make it. So, he and his friends, and his friends' friends, and his friends' friends’ friends, and his friends' friends' friends' friends, and some rather less good friends of theirs who happened to own a major stellar trucking company, put in what now is widely recognized as being the hardest night's work in history, and, sure enough, on the following day, Magramal was no longer visible.
Effrafax lost his bet—and therefore his life—simply because some pedantic adjudicating official noticed (a) that when walking around the area that Magramal ought to be he didn't trip over or break his nose on anything, and (b) a suspicious-looking extra moon.
14. Neuromancer
Opener: “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
Author: William Gibson
Why it is great: I included it from the other list, because the juxtaposition of the words is interesting–assigning television a color is off-kilter enough to tickle me.
15. Moby Dick
Opener: “Call me Ishmael.”
Author: Herman Melville
Why it is great: Well, it is a great opening line, and everyone knows it. Plus, it can serve as a reminder that Moby Dick is the worst book that I ever read all the way through. How this piece of crap can be considered a classic is beyond me – 500 pages of excruciating details about 19th century whaling in New England. Just about completely unreadable.
I just saw a cool web page that compiles a bunch of 1-star Amazon review of this book:
http://www.cynical-c.com/2009/04/08/you-cant-please-everyone-moby-dick/.
16. Gravity’s Rainbow
Opener: “A screaming comes across the sky”
Author: Thomas Pynchon
Why it is great: Honestly, I’m not sure—I haven’t read the book, and the line is a little short to convey very much about the book to follow. But several people commented that this line should be included.
17. Steel Beach
Opener: “In five years, the penis will be obsolete.”
Author: John Varley
Why it is great: It’s funny. But it is rather short, and I haven’t read the book. I’m including it on the recommendation of one of the comments I read.
18. The Catcher in the Rye
Opener: “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.”
Author: J.D. Salinger
Why it is great: Well, the line itself isn’t that great. But it is the introduction to one of the great fictional characters of all time, Holden Caulfield, so in that respect, it belongs on the list.
19. Pride and Prejudice
Opener: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
Author: Jane Austen
Why it is great: I wasn’t going to include it, but it seems to be prevalent in these kind of lists. And it is quite crisp and universal in its message. Though, a bit dated, now that society is so much more equal for men and women.
20. Anna Karenina
Opener: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Why it is great: I’ve not read the book, but it is a classic. And the line is good, with a message that holds up today.
21. David Copperfield
Opener: “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”
Author: Charles Dickens
Why it is great: I’m not sure if I read this book. Either way, though, it is a good way to start a book, with the narrator not knowing if he’s the hero or villain.
22. The Razor’s Edge
Opener: “I have never begun a novel with more misgiving.”
Author: W. Somerset Maugham
Why it is great: I love Somerset Maugham. In addition to living an interesting life (he was a spy for Britain in WWII), he wrote great prose. I like the honesty of this first line—warning the reader, essentially, that this novel could be troublesome.
23. Middle Passage
Opener: “Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I’ve come to learn, is women.”
Author: Charles Johnson
Why it is great: Yup.
24. The Outsiders
Opener: “When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had just two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home.”
Author: S. E. Hinton
Why it is great: Mainly, I’m adding it as a note to myself to read this book. Plus, I think this is also the last line of the book, as well as the first.
25. The Austere Academy.
Opener: “If you were going to give a gold medal to the least delightful person on Earth, you would have to give that medal to a person named Carmelita Spats, and if you didn’t give it to her, Carmelita Spats was the sort of person who would snatch it from your hands anyway.”
Author: Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler)
Why it is great: While I don’t think I’ll ever read these books, they fascinate me nevertheless. And I like the idea of reading about a character who is the “least delightful person on Earth.”
