Best Opening Lines: Literature Edition
Susan last year did a great post on opening lines. It was all music though. So let’s switch it. What are your thoughts on the best opening lines in literature? There are some I love even when I’ve never read the book. (i.e. the classic, “it was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly a shot rang out.”)
So, in no particular order. Here are a few of mine.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. (Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)
I can’t stand to read Dickens. But I love that opening. It really sets the novel up. And let’s face it. If you hear those few few words you immediately recognize it.
Call me Ishmael. (Melville, Moby Dick)
Moby Dick, like Ulysses, is one of those books I’ve tried to read dozens of times but never quite made it far. Both also are not about what they appear to be about. They are odd musings on the nature of man and metaphysics told in quite an unique way. One day I hope to read them.
To break the pretentiousness of that paragraph let me say that the funniest thing I ever heard was someone doing a Gilbert Gottfried impersonation of Gottfried reading the first page of Moby Dick. I still laugh when I think about it.
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. (Tolstoy, Anna Karenina)
An other classic I’ve never read although with perhaps fewer excuses than Melville and Joyce. But what a great line. If somewhat depressing. But then it is Russian literature.
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. (Lytton, Paul Clifford)
Never read it. Never will. I know it purely because of Snoopy. But it’s a classic opening line. See the wiki if you’re interested.
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort. (Tolkien, The Hobbit)
I just love this opening. There are a lot of great books with bad openings. But this really sets the stage for the book and Tolkien’s frankly extremely unique story telling style.
I’ll leave it there so you can add your own.
“The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.”
–Stephen King, “The Gunslinger.”
Comment by Dan — March 31, 2008 @ 3:42 am
Italo Calvino, If on a winter’s night a traveler
Gariel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
Comment by Norbert — March 31, 2008 @ 7:32 am
I was also going to say One Hundred Years of Solitude, but Norbert beat me to it.
A Wrinkle in Time also begins “It was a dark and stormy night…”
Comment by BTD Greg — March 31, 2008 @ 7:59 am
1. Kafka — Die Verwandlung:
This is, of course, one of the most famous opening lines in all of literature and also one of the best.
2. Henry James — The Portrait of a Lady:
Not as obvious a great opening line, but it perfectly captures the essence of James — his work, and thisnovel, is very much an exploration of what the precise circumstances of “under certain circumstances” lead to the agreeableness or more likely disagreeableness of the small ceremonies of genteel, esp. English, life.
3. Wilkie Collins — the Women in White:
What’s amazing about this opening line is that it explicitly states yet doesn’t fully capture the incredibly sinister nature of the story.
4. Gabriel Garcia Marquez — The Autumn of the Patriarch:
Comment by William Morris — March 31, 2008 @ 8:06 am
I think Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice deserves a mention: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Sets the tone for the whole book. And yes, I’m an Austen apologist.
Comment by BTD Greg — March 31, 2008 @ 8:11 am
“A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy ballon of a head.”
After that you know it’s going to be good (A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole)
“My wife Norma had run off with Guy Dupree and I was waiting around for the credit card billings to come in so I could see where they had gone.”
(The Dog of the South - Charles Portis)
“People were already beginning to forget we were veterans after the Second World War and that the government no longer owed us a living. Face-lifting, hair replacement, and breast enhancement hadn’t yet come into vogue and people still believed there were other kinds of contentment. Especially when television was just beginning to pleasantly paralyze the nation. The forces of commercialism and survival were hard at work doing a lot of us down, and I was at the time at a loose emotional end, as you might say, when she came into my life in the cold blue winter before Christmas.”
(Wrong Information is being Given Out at Princeton - J. P. Donleavy)
“I am an American, Chicago born – Chicago, that somber city – and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent.”
(The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow)
Comment by Bill — March 31, 2008 @ 8:34 am
I really want to read One Hundred Years of Solitude.
I just went to my shelves and pulled out a few of my favorite books to see if any had good opening lines. Does a poem count? Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself has one of my faves:
Of course it’s even better when you read the final lines of the poem:
Ordinary People by Judith Guest:
A Summer to Die by Lois Lowry:
This is a young adult book I read as a kid and loved. I recently picked it up and re-read it to see if it was as good as I remembered. It is. It’s a really sad story. Molly and Meg are sisters, and Molly is the cheerleader, the popular one. Meg is quiet and shy and feels inferior. Molly dies.
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller:
My favorite book, so funny and serious at the same time.
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott:
Amazing how she establishes all four girl’s personalities in the first four sentences.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon:
The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy:
If you can’t tell, I love depressing books.
Comment by Susan M — March 31, 2008 @ 8:37 am
Geeze, sorry so long, got carried away.
Comment by Susan M — March 31, 2008 @ 8:38 am
Nice, Susan. Catch 22 and Curious Incident are fantastic. Here are my additions:
Kenzaburo Oe, The Silent Cry:
Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red:
Irving Welsh, Trainspotting:
John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces:
Comment by Scudworth — March 31, 2008 @ 10:34 am
Tolstoy, Anna Karenina:
Melville, Moby Dick:
They’re called classics for a reason.
Comment by Supergenius — March 31, 2008 @ 10:42 am
“A screaming comes across the sky.”
- Gravity’s Rainbow
Comment by Bill — March 31, 2008 @ 10:47 am
Supergenius, did you bother to read the post?
Comment by Bill — March 31, 2008 @ 10:47 am
“Louie pulled off his bra and threw it down upon the casket.”
–Nick Tosches, In the Hand of Dante
Comment by Brian V — March 31, 2008 @ 10:59 am
Yeah, that King one is great. The first edition (before he rewrote it to blend with the rest of the series) is King’s best work ever. And it was all oriented around that opening line.
Comment by Clark — March 31, 2008 @ 11:40 am
William, I nearly thought of adding Kafka. But I vastly prefer his short stories to his novels.
Comment by Clark — March 31, 2008 @ 11:47 am
“All children, except one, grow up.”
- Peter Pan
“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
- Neuromancer
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.”
- The Call of Cthulu
Comment by John C. — March 31, 2008 @ 11:48 am
Bill: no.
Comment by Supergenius — March 31, 2008 @ 12:07 pm
Here’s a listing of some good opening lines.
Comment by Susan M — March 31, 2008 @ 12:14 pm
-Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White
-Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
-Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
-The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice
Comment by tracy m — March 31, 2008 @ 12:26 pm
Clark:
Good call on King. I completely agree. I’m still bitter about how that series fell to pieces (about half way through Wolves of Calla).
And that Kafka opening line is from a short story (or novelette) — Metamorphosis.
One of the best closing lines ever is from the Kafka short story “Ein Landarzt” (A Country Doctor):
“Einmal dem Fehlläuten der Nachtglocke gefolgt – es ist niemals gutzumachen.” (Once a false alarm in the night is answered — it can never be made right. Never. [translation mine] )
Comment by William Morris — March 31, 2008 @ 12:36 pm
And I am of the opinion that it’s much easier to write a good opening line than a great closing one and that, on average, short stories usually have stonger opening and closing lines than novels. Of course, they have to.
Comment by William Morris — March 31, 2008 @ 12:38 pm
Fun read.
Comment by annegb — March 31, 2008 @ 12:49 pm
John, three great choices.
William, I consider the Metamorphisis a novella myself. I really, really like his shorter works. Although I like the Metamorphisis as well. (Can you tell I don’t read German?) For some reason I assumed it was the opening to The Trial which is what so many quote for opening lines.
Regarding the Gunslinger series. He’d go to pot and then come back several times. The first two books were great. I really liked the fourth as well. But yeah, he definitely lost it towards the end.
Comment by Clark — March 31, 2008 @ 12:54 pm
Salinger: “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”
Nabakov: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.”
Orwell: “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
Twain: “You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter.”
Comment by Greg — March 31, 2008 @ 12:57 pm
An other one. While I loved Edgar Rice Burroughs as a kid (and even managed to collect several first editions of the early works) I have to admit that as an adult he’s hard to read. Still the opening to Tarzan of the Apes is great.
Here’s an other good one. You’ll think it’s Ann Rice but it’s not. I’ll give you the book in a subsequent post.
See if any of you can guess. (No googling…)
BTW William. I think you’re right about opening lines vs. closing lines. But there are lots of great novels with so-so openings. And lots of great openings that don’t go far. But closing is hard in both novels and movies. Maybe next week I’ll do great closings. (Hint, the above book has an equally great closing)
BTW2. Someone mentioned Lovecraft. He has both great openings and closings. I’ll see if I can’t post some of his great openings when I get home.
Comment by Clark — March 31, 2008 @ 12:58 pm
[...] Best Opening Lines in Literature. Great discussion. [...]
Pingback by Best openings in lit : Mormon Metaphysics — March 31, 2008 @ 1:12 pm
I love that Confederacy of Dunces opening. Here’s a few others:
Paul Auster, City of Glass
JG Ballard, Empire of the Sun
Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm
Tom Robbins has great first lines, too, but I don’t have any in the house.
Comment by Norbert — March 31, 2008 @ 1:54 pm
10th place of this year’s (2001) Bulwer Lytton contest (run by the English Dept of San Jose State University), wherein one writes only the first line of a bad novel.
10) “As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break wind in the echo chamber he would never hear the end of it.”
Comment by Curtis — March 31, 2008 @ 4:04 pm
LOL. That’s awesome Curtis. Someone ought to finish that book.
Comment by Clark — March 31, 2008 @ 4:09 pm
“All this happened, more or less.” - Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (Also, “Call me Jonah.” - Cat’s Cradle)
“Who is John Galt?” - Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
The first one I thought of was A Wrinkle in Time, as already mentioned.
From a fascinating children’s book I recently read, that gripped me from start to finish:
“It began as it always did with sweet, solitary notes of music that called to her from somewhere beyond the sky, a single piper’s cry that reached down for her and scooped her over roof tops and streets, office blocks and electric pylons, railway stations, shops, and parks.” - Pauline Fisk, Midnight Blue
Here’s an interview with Nancy Pearl (you may know her from the librarian action-figure) on NPR about first lines.
Comment by Heather P. — March 31, 2008 @ 5:39 pm
“Sitting beside the road, watching the wagon mount the hill toward her, Lena thinks, ‘I have come from Alabama: a fur piece’” - William Faulkner, Light in August
Comment by Brian V — March 31, 2008 @ 5:57 pm
I don’t know if Madeleine L’Engle was criticized a lot for her “It was a dark and stormy night” beginning line for “A Wrinkle In Time” … but she more than made up for it in the first line of “A Wind in the Door” … which has one of my favorite opening lines for a book. It reads:
I don’t think it can get much more original or unusual than that one.
Comment by danithew — March 31, 2008 @ 7:19 pm
What, no love for Dante?
Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself in a dark wood
Also, you have to give props to Brady Udall (The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint) for this:
“If I could tell you only one thing about my life it would be this: when I was seven years old the mailman ran over my head.”
Comment by S. P. Bailey — March 31, 2008 @ 7:59 pm
This one (Richard Bausch, Nobody in Hollywood) makes me chuckle too:
“I was pummeled as a teenager. For some reason I had the sort of face that asked to be punched.”
Comment by S. P. Bailey — March 31, 2008 @ 8:17 pm
Josephine Hart - Damage
Comment by MCQ — March 31, 2008 @ 11:47 pm
Norman MacLean - A River Runs Through It
Comment by MCQ — March 31, 2008 @ 11:52 pm
“The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house all that cold, cold, wet day.” Dr. Seuss - The Cat In The Hat.
Comment by Abby — April 1, 2008 @ 9:43 am
No one guess that first line I gave? It’s from the first John Carter of Mars book: A Princess of Mars. I tried to read it last year and it was almost unreadable to my adult eyes. But I loved it as a kid. What’s weird is that there’s this mystic element to the beginning and end that is almost like a vampire novel. But he never does anything with it anywhere else.
Comment by Clark — April 1, 2008 @ 10:24 am
You know, I actually read that book when I was a kid too. It was an ancient edition from the 1920s or ’30s with pages gone sepia and woodblock illustrations. Very cool. And very weird, I seem to remember.
Comment by William Morris — April 1, 2008 @ 7:53 pm
All of the good classics have already been taken, so here’s a fantastic opening line from contemporary southern lit:
“There are gods in Alabama: Jack Daniel’s, high school quarterbacks, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus. I left one back there myself, back in Possett. I kicked it under the kudzu and left it for the roaches.” Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama
And here’s another from what will become a classic:
“I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975.” Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
Comment by Maera Winters — April 1, 2008 @ 9:20 pm
I a fan of the muscular writing of Philip Roth and Cormac McCarthy. I’m at work and Amazon won’t let me see any excerpts from McCarthy, but here are a couple of good ones from Roth:
“She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year in school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise.”
Portnoy’s Complaint, by Philip Roth
“Either forswear f—ing or the affair is over… this was the ultimatum, the maddeningly improbable, wholly unforseen ultimatum, that the mistress of fifty-two delivered in tears to her lover of sixty-four on the anniversary of an attachment that had persisted with an amazing licentiousness — and that, no less amazingly, had stayed their secret — for thirteen years.
Sabbath’s Theatre, by Philip Roth
“My desert-island, top five most memorable split-ups, in chronological order: 1. Allison Ashworth; 2. Penny Hardwick; 3. Jackie Allen; 4. Charlie Nicholson; 5. Sarah Kendrew.”
High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby
John Irving’s work is pretty hit or miss, but A Prayer For Owen Meany has a classic opening line…
“I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice — not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.”
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
“In the hospital of the orphanage — the boy’s division at St. Cloud’s, Maine — two nurses were in charge of naming the new babies and checking that their little penises were healing from the obligatory circumcision.”
The Cider House Rules, by John Irving
Comment by Matt Thurston — April 2, 2008 @ 2:06 pm
Sorry if someone already mentioned it, but I think Camus’ The Stranger MUST be on the list…
“Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours. That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.”
Comment by lora — June 21, 2008 @ 7:55 pm
“Charlie lived in a place where the illegal was legal, where the immoral was moral, and where some people’s fantasies were other people’s realities. So, he lived every day in anticipation of the fantastic. And why not? It was the night before his birthday, the start of another marvelous year in a place where anything could happen.”
An Island Away by Daniel Putkowski
Comment by Sara — July 12, 2008 @ 1:01 pm