51 Of The Most Beautiful Sentences In Literature

[kelber at mindspring.com]

OK, it's not a single sentence, but still one of my favorite Pynchon passages:


"'Twenty-nine's Fell Shadow! O, inhospitably final year of any Pretense to Youth, its Dreams now, how wither'd away … tho' styled a Prime, yet bid'st though Adieu to the Prime of Life! … There, --there, in the Stygian Mists of Futurity, loometh the dread Thirty, -- Transition unspeakable! Prime so soon fallen, thy Virtue so easily broken, into a Number divisible, -- penetrable! -- by six others!'" [M&D, p. 118]

Laura

-----Original Message-----

From: Monte Davis 

Sent: Jan 29, 2015 12:15 PM

To: David Casseres 

Cc: Dave Monroe , pynchon -l 

Subject: Re: 51 Of The Most Beautiful Sentences In Literature



"When the Hook of Night is well set, and when
all the Children are at last irretrievably detain’d within their
Dreams, slowly into the Room begin to walk the Black servants, the Indian
poor, the Irish runaways, the Chinese Sailors, the overflow’d from the
mad Hospital, all unchosen Philadelphia,—as if something outside,
beyond the cold Wind, has
driven them to this extreme of seeking refuge." (M&D 759)
On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 1:21 AM, David Casseres <david.casseres at gmail.com> wrote:
I don't think much of that collection.  Too many easy shots.  How about:
https://theamericanscholar.org/ten-best-sentences/#.VMnKRl7F8ew
http://sobadsogood.com/2013/06/30/100-of-the-greatest-opening-sentences-in-the-history-of-literature/
http://io9.com/great-opening-sentences-from-science-fiction-novels-1657496604
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2013/12/best_books_of_2013_great_sentences_from_great_books.html

...but none of those lists has enough TRP. I used to have a tidy little collection of Our Man's long and winding sentence-organisms, cadence after cadence like Alph the sacred river running down to the timeless sea.  You all know the kind, right? My collection got lost in a computer catastrophe and right now my books are all packed away while we remodel the house.  But let's have a thread of great Pynchon sentences, what do ya say?
On Wed, Jan 28, 2015 at 5:33 PM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
52. "A screaming comes across the sky." --Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's

Rainbow (1973)



http://www.buzzfeed.com/jenniferschaffer/i-am-i-am-i-am

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