An Update is available for Lounge: Classic literary opening lines

[UTUSN]

This is a recurring Lounge theme, if not so recurring as lots of things whose listing we will forego. The specimen below, while including the obligatory "best of times/worst of times," is way more modern than I could contribute to since I stopped reading fiction a few decades ago (in favor of non-fiction; didn't say stopped *reading*).

None of the threads have given any validation to my personal favorite, from Carson McCULLERS' Reflections in a Golden Eye, with a great movie by HUSTON: "There is a fort in the south where a few years ago a murder was committed. The participants were: two officers, a soldier, two women, a filipino, and a horse."

In checking the line in my acid disintegrating paperback, I discovered my memory FAIL (again), since it is not an *opening* line, but rather at the end of the opening PARAGRAPH.

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http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20406194,00.html

[font size=5]21 Classic Opening Lines in Books[/font]

By Tina Jordan | Nov 25, 2012

First thoughts that last in our memory from Jane Austen, Hunter S. Thompson, J.K. Rowling, Ray Bradbury, others

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[HopeHoops]

1. "It was a dark and stormy night."

[UTUSN]

2. That one even has its own Wiki entry, to wit:

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"It was a dark and stormy night" is an infamous phrase written by Victorian novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton at the beginning of his 1830 novel Paul Clifford.[1] The annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest uses the phrase as a signifier of purple prose. The original opening sentence of Paul Clifford is an example:


"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."

It is also used as the opening sentence of the 1902 novel The Monkey's Paw by W. W. Jacobs[2][3]:


"It was a dark and stormy night. The wind howled and twigs and leaves scuffled and rattled past the house. Mr and Mrs White sat in the parlour of their cosy home, in front of a blazing fire. Mr White played chess with his only son, Herbert. His wife sat in a rocking chair knitting and watching as they played."

And in the 1962 novel A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle[4]:


"It was a dark and stormy night. In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraithlike shadows that raced along the ground."

The opening was popularized by the Peanuts comic strip, in which Snoopy's sessions on the typewriter usually began with this exact phrase[5].

"It was a dark and stormy night" - pastiching Bulwer-Lytton and his satirists - was the title and beginning of a 1993 illustrated childrens' book by Janet and Allan Ahlberg, about a Sicilian boy kidnapped by a gang of brigands on a dark and stormy night; they demand he tells them a story: he begins, of course, 'It was a dark and stormy night...'[6]

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest was formed in 1982. The contest, sponsored by the English Department at San Jose State University, recognizes the worst examples of "dark and stormy night" writing.[7]

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When I first saw your post I was going to say that that line was all line and no book to follow it, having forgotten that it is, in fact, the opening line of an actual book. Its status in being deemed "infamous" is an achievement unto itself!1

[HopeHoops]

3. Call me Ishmael.

[UTUSN]

4. That one's in the link, I think. Good to see you up & about, as a Life Member of the

Recurring Themes department of Lounge!1

[HopeHoops]

6. Okay, okay, so I don't always read everything before posting a response.

I was just thinking of the movie "Matilda".

[UTUSN]

8. I've been flamed much for posting w/o reading. Care to explain the movie "Matilda"?!1 n/t

[HopeHoops]

9. Oh, you SO have to see it. Danny DeVito narrates and also plays the asshole father.

Matilda is an exceptionally intelligent girl born into a family of moron assholes. She also develops "special powers" that allow her to manipulate her environment, at least on a physical level. Miss Trunchbull is the principle of her school (foul beast, that) and Miss Honey is her teacher. It's an awesome movie.

[hobbit709]

16. "It was a stark and dormy night"

[Aristus]

5. "It was a cold day in April, and the clocks were just striking thirteen."

One of my favorites...

[UTUSN]

7. Wow, Google seldom fails to amaze me!1 I, of course, read that book but so long ago

that the weight of its cultural influence for the rest of my life has outstripped my reading of it in the first place, and my memory doesn't extend to quotations.

But Google, wow, just the first few words results in the whole enchilada!1 Google says the word "bright" is missing from the quote.

[Aristus]

11. I did it from memory; I knew a word was missing,

but I thought it was 'clear'. Thanks for the help.

[UTUSN]

15. Impressive (quoting from memory)!1 I was embarrassed

when somebody was "testing" me over my English Lit major and challenged me to identify a famous quotation. The words rang very familiar but I couldn't place it. My answer was Sinclair LEWIS. Wrong. It is one of THE most famous quotes ever, the last sentence from The Great Gatsby.

Besides that any pretender to literacy should know that quote, making it totally crappy for me was that one of the major (for me) papers I did was on FITZGERALD!1

[intaglio]

10. Some that I've loved

LOTR "When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton."

From a play "Under Milk Wood"
"To begin at the beginning:

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless
and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched,
courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the
sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboatbobbing sea.
The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night
in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat
there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock,
the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds.
And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are
sleeping now."

[Zorro]

12. The sea is high again today, with a thrilling flush of wind.

In the midst of winter you can feel the inventions of spring. A sky of hot nude pearl until midday, crickets in sheltered places, and now the wind unpacking the great planes, ransacking the great planes....

Justine by Laurence Durrell.

[UTUSN]

13. Wow, just wow on you, thanks!11 n/t

[Honeycombe8]

14. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens.

[OxQQme]

17. I loves me some historical fiction

1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

[UTUSN]

18. Bwah-hah!1 You are a secular humanist after mine own heart!1 n/t

[LNM]

19. "In St. Paul, gansters can fuck in the street."

From "St. Mudd" by Steve Thayer. Not a classic, but it's a great book.