Literature's greatest opening paragraphs

[Rich Clavey]

One of my favourite first lines:

It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.
Anthony Burgess: Earthly Powers
z.

http://www.macclaveyphotography.com/


--- On Thu, 8/30/12, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: Literature's greatest opening paragraphs
> To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Thursday, August 30, 2012, 10:33 PM
> in his _how to read novels like a
> professor_, foster includes one
> chapter on why novels have fist pages, pick-up lines and
> opening
> seductions...and he talks about how the opening is a form of
> seduction
> and a contract and also a lesson in how to read the rest of
> the work.
> McHale provides an excellent analyis of how the opening of
> GR teaches
> the reader how to read the rest of the book. Agree or
> disagree with
> his analysis, but ity is difficult to disagree with the idea
> that the
> opening is worth a very close examination. In fact, this is
> the case
> with most works, when we turn to the opening after reading
> the work
> weoften  discover what has been packed into the
> powerful opening.
> Foreshadowing is difficult to see clearly the first go roud
> and
> returning to the opening we often discover this subtle
> technique.
> 
> 
> In any event, foster provides a nice list of things the
> opening of a
> work can establish: style,  tone, mood, diction, pov,
> narrative
> presence and attitude, time frame and management, place,
> motif, theme,
> irony, rhythm, pace expectations, character, instruction in
> how to
> read the novel.
>