AdamSmith Posted April 29, 2012 Share Posted April 29, 2012 The Guardian gifts us with yet more goals to aspire to (read: reasons to feel inadequate)... http://m.guardian.co.uk/ms/p/gnm/op/sfioWFXk6cILR-DQO91AOkg/view.m?id=15&gid=culture/gallery/2012/apr/29/ten-best-first-lines-fiction&cat=culture Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members MsGuy Posted April 29, 2012 Members Share Posted April 29, 2012 Anthony Burgess Earthly Powers (1980) “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.” Ok, I can not imagine how I could possibly have missed reading this 30 years ago, but, if read it I did, I have so thoroughly forgotten it it that it will probably seem like new the second go around. Thanks, AS, now I have something interesting to put on my Summer reading list. Wonder if it's available on Amazon? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamSmith Posted April 30, 2012 Author Share Posted April 30, 2012 You noticed! ...Isn't everything available on Amazon nowadays? Except, possibly, catamites. Unless they are tagged under some euphemism. Must figure out how to add them to my Recommendations algorithm. To the point, just about any first line by Burgess is a tour de force... "What's it going to be then, eh?" There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. Ok, 2 lines. Or the start of Napoleon Symphony where he miraculously transliterates the opening bars of Beethoven's third -- From bivouac to bivouac to bivouac to bivouac and all the way with torches held aloft... or something like that, and so on. (http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/30/home/burgess-novel.html) Hmm...how hallucinatory would it be to make this summer's project a plow-through of all things Burgess? "...I was cured, all right!" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamSmith Posted April 30, 2012 Author Share Posted April 30, 2012 P.S. Sorry, correction. Meant to say the Napoleon Symphony quotation riffs the opening of the symphony's scherzo movement, not the first movement. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest CharliePS Posted April 30, 2012 Share Posted April 30, 2012 I can't tell you how many essays written by Asian students I have read recently, that begin "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that...[fill in any generalization you want]." Apparently the English-language cram schools in Seoul/Shanghai/Osaka, etc., teach that this is a surefire opening to any topic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members lookin Posted April 30, 2012 Members Share Posted April 30, 2012 To the point, just about any first line by Burgess is a tour de force..."What's it going to be then, eh?" There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. A tour de force no doubt but I'd hate to have to diagram it in front of a large crowd. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members lookin Posted April 30, 2012 Members Share Posted April 30, 2012 I'm working on a bit of fiction myself. "Let's just stay in tonight and enjoy ourselves.", whispered the gerontophilic twink, slipping a blue pill under my tongue and kissing me hard so I couldn't spit it out. Haven't got to the second line yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamSmith Posted April 30, 2012 Author Share Posted April 30, 2012 A tour de force no doubt but I'd hate to have to diagram it in front of a large crowd. Beautiful mind! (Your'n. ) Exquisite nugget at heart of the question is how to diagram the relationship between privileged modifier "winter" and those secondary others "flip dark chill." Ah, Anthony! Second in some ways only to the divine Nabokov. ...the tongue taking a trip of three steps to tap at the teeth... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamSmith Posted April 30, 2012 Author Share Posted April 30, 2012 "Let's just stay in tonight and enjoy ourselves.", whispered the gerontophilic twink, slipping a blue pill under my tongue and kissing me hard so I couldn't spit it out. My after-hours-poolhall Irish boy on the DL from his mates. You must know him! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members lookin Posted April 30, 2012 Members Share Posted April 30, 2012 My after-hours-poolhall Irish boy on the DL from his mates.You must know him! How very kind of you! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamSmith Posted April 30, 2012 Author Share Posted April 30, 2012 How very kind of you! !!! The verb was, indeed, meant in all its senses. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
