most beautiful novel opening

[Bryan Snyder]

always considered the opening of GR to be a total mindf*** and not beautiful
... but something to push away casual readers early on... a perfect prelude
to the book.

M&D: I'm reading now, but every 5 pages... return to that opening paragraph
and read it again... I now it by heart now!!  It's something miraculous
almost considering the year of pub and the year of the language!



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf
Of Ian (Hank Kimble) Scuffling
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2007 1:06 PM
Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: most beautiful novel opening

I thought we were talking "beautiful" rather than great or even
wonderful.  Who of us P-listers doesn't love the the opening of MD
(that's Moby Dick, not M&D) and of GR, but are they beautiful, i.e is
the image described or the sound of the words (or preferably both)
beautiful in the same way as "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from
the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor
lay crossed," or the opening lines of any number of Shakespeare's
play?

AsB4,

Henry Mu
http://www.urdomain.us/kcuf.htm

On Nov 9, 2007 10:37 AM, Robert Mahnke wrote:
> I like the first paragraph of the book I'm reading right now:
>
> Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having
little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on
shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the
world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the
circulation.