Novel openings with weather

[Heikki R]

"There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry
Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair
and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every
booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving
knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even
get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge."

Raymond Chandler: "Red Wind" (1938)


On Wed, Mar 29, 2017 at 7:58 AM, Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
wrote:

> If you wanna be the heart of midnight
> You've gotta be either cynical or dead
> All those you hold in estimation
> You can no longer count among your friends
>
> Your friends look to surprise you
> As friends they always will
> So hold on to the extraordinary - hold on to the skill
> And start the easy listening, we're coming home again
> Stab the back of hell and heroes until we meet again
>
> Listen for the slamming doors
> Listen on the ship to shore
> Listen hard
> Everytime the dogs bark
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc9Us6qX-Ic
>
> 2017-03-29 6:00 GMT+02:00 Laura Kelber <laurakelber at gmail.com>:
>
>> It has no meaning ... unless the person hearing it is David Berkowitz.
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 11:40 PM, Becky Lindroos <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net
>> > wrote:
>>
>>> LOL! -    the “barking dog(s)”  is an old trope without meaning - (the
>>> meaninglessness is the meaning).
>>> http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2010/06/somewh
>>> ere_a_dog_barked.html
>>> (many examples and very funny)
>>>
>>> Becky
>>>
>>>
>>> > On Mar 28, 2017, at 8:05 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > I was on a panel for a local book prize last year and the winner of
>>> the fiction section was a novel that abused the weather rule so much I was
>>> flabbergasted. The weather was literally a reflection of how any character
>>> was feeling at the time, and not ironically or knowingly so. At one point
>>> someone has a dramatic realisation and the incessant rain suddenly stops
>>> outside as they ponder its ramifications. Then someone says something dark
>>> and it starts pissing down again.
>>> > Also I think five of the seven category winners included a variation
>>> of "somewhere in the distance, a dog barked."
>>> >
>>> > On Wed, Mar 29, 2017 at 1:53 PM, Becky Lindroos <
>>> bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>> > No one has mentioned:
>>> > “It was a dark and stormy night …”
>>> > From Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Paul Clifford -  (1830)
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > "There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been
>>> > wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning;
>>> > but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early)
>>> > the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a
>>> > rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of
>>> > the question.”
>>> > Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (1847)
>>> >
>>> > I believe Ruskin called it the “pathetic fallacy” or something - not
>>> because it was pathetic as we understand the  term,  but because the
>>> weather use used to set an emotional tone -  empathetic/sympathetic/patheti
>>> c.
>>> >
>>> > Becky
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > > On Mar 28, 2017, at 1:18 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> > >
>>> > > Perhaps only a few geniuses, one of them Pynchon, could open a
>>> story, Entropy, with an epigraph about weather---
>>> > > Miller from Tropic of Cancer--check it out--- and end the story with
>>> weather (or the lack of it, so to speak).
>>> > >
>>> > > On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 8:46 AM, Jochen Stremmel <
>>> jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > > "The madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through. You
>>> could feel it: something terrible was going to happen. The sun low in the
>>> sky, a minor light, a cooling star. Gust after gust of disorder. Trees
>>> restless, temperatures falling, the whole northern religion of things
>>> coming to an end."
>>> > >
>>> > > Jonathan Franzen: The Corrections.
>>> > >
>>> > > That's more like it. Thrown snowballs that carry hats into the wind
>>> and star sides of cousins – I wouldn't call that opening with weather.
>>> > >
>>> > > 2017-03-28 8:24 GMT+02:00 Kai Frederik Lorentzen <
>>> lorentzen at hotmail.de>:
>>> > >
>>> > > "Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr'd the Sides of the
>>> > > Outbuildings, as of Cousins, carried Hats away into the brisk Wind
>>> off
>>> > > Delaware, --- (...)."
>>> > >
>>> > > Thomas Pynchon: Mason & Dixon
>>> > >
>>> > >
>>> > >  > ... Elmore Leonard, who was a very successful novelist, had said,
>>> > > "Never open a book with weather." This is also advice found in a lot
>>> of
>>> > > writing guides ... <
>>> > >
>>> > > -
>>> > > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>> > >
>>> > >
>>> >
>>> > "One ought not to allow oneself the luxury of losing one’s head."
>>> > —Vita Sackville-West
>>> >
>>> > -
>>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>> >
>>>
>>> "One ought not to allow oneself the luxury of losing one’s head."
>>> —Vita Sackville-West
>>>
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>>
>>
>>
>
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