/lit/ - Literature

>>19512414
yo wtf

>>19512414
>picrel isn't Lolita
yeah that's just trash

>>19512414
It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times

Call me Moby Dick
or uhh something like that lol idk i didnt read it

>>19512414
>"the following is based on real life events"
>genre: high fantasy

>When half way through the journey of our life
I found that I was in a gloomy wood,
because the path which led aright was lost.

>>19512432
stupid monkey

>>19512414
En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, aderga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor. Una olla de algo más vaca que carnero, salpicón las más noches, duelos y quebrantos los sábados, lantejas los viernes, algún palomino de añadidura los domingos, consumían las tres partes de su hacienda. El resto de ella concluían sayo de velarte, calzas de velludo para las fiestas, con sus pantuflos de lo mismo, y los días de entresemana se honraba con su vellorí de lo más fino.

>>19512414
>I once won a poker hand with an expired lottery ticket and an old business card. But that's a story for another time

>>19512414
>Call me Ishmael
As if I can speak to him...

>>19512414
what novel

>>19512651
It's not just that, it even has a period.
He literally just bluntly goes "Call me Ishmael."

>Howard Roark laughed.

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

All happy families are more or less dissimilar; all unhappy ones are more or less alike," says a great Russian writer in the beginning of a famous novel (Anna Arkadievitch Karenina, transfigured into English by R.G. Stonelower, Mount Tabor Ltd., 1880).

>>19512610
Where's that from?

>>19512653
not OP, but I'm pretty sure this is coin locker babies or something by this Japanese author

>>19512783
Fuck Americami

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice “without pictures or conversations?”

inb4 Genesis

>>19512749
>>19512765
kino

>>19512600
Peligrosamente basado

>>19512766
My novel. You can steal it if you want.

I was the shadow of the waxeing, slain
By the false azure in the windowpane...

>>19513176
*waxwing

A screaming comes across plump Buck Mulligan

>>19512414
For a long time I would go to bed early.

>>19512849
2 seconds later and my post would have been in the wrong place.

Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr'd the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins, carried Hats away into the brisk Wind off Delaware,— the Sleds are brought in and their Runners carefully dried and greased, shoes deposited in the back Hall, a stocking'd-foot Descent made upon the great Kitchen, in a purposeful Dither since Morning, punctuated by the ringing Lids of various Boilers and Stewing-Pots, fragrant with Pie-Spices, peel'd Fruits, Suet, heated Sugar,— the Children, having all upon the Fly, among rhythmic slaps of Batter and Spoon, coax'd and stolen what they might, proceed, as upon each afternoon all this snowy Advent, to a comfortable Room at the rear of the House, years since given over to their carefree Assaults.

>>19512414
Mother died today. Or was it yesterday?

You can't convince me that this isn't the greatest introduction to a fantasy world ever.

"One cannot raise walls against what has been forgotten.
The citadel of Ishuäl succumbed during the height of the Apocalypse. But no army of inhuman Sranc had scaled its ramparts. No furnace-hearted dragon had pulled down its mighty gates. Ishuäl was the secret refuge of the Kûniüric High Kings, and no one, not even the No-God, could besiege a secret.
Months earlier, Anasûrimbor Ganrelka II, High King of Kûniüri, had fled to Ishuäl with the remnants of his household. From the walls, his sentries stared pensively across the dark forests below, their thoughts stricken by memories of burning cities and wailing multitudes. When the wind moaned, they gripped Ishuäl’s uncaring stone, reminded of Sranc horns. They traded breathless reassurances. Had they not eluded their pursuers? Were not the walls of Ishuäl strong? Where else might a man survive the end of the world?
The plague claimed the High King first, as was perhaps fitting: Ganrelka had only wept at Ishuäl, raged the way only an Emperor of nothing could rage. The following night the members of his household carried his bier down into the forests. They glimpsed the eyes of wolves reflected in the light of his pyre. They sang no dirges, intoned only a few numb prayers.
Before the morning winds could sweep his ashes skyward, the plague had struck two others: Ganrelka’s concubine and her daughter. As though pursuing his bloodline to its thinnest tincture, it assailed more and more members of his household. The sentries upon the walls became fewer, and though they still watched the mountainous horizon, they saw little. The cries of the dying crowded their thoughts with too much horror.
Soon even the sentries were no more. The five Knights of Trysë who’d rescued Ganrelka after the catastrophe on the Fields of Eleneöt lay motionless in their beds. The Grand Vizier, his golden robes stained bloody by his bowel, lay sprawled across his sorcerous texts. Ganrelka’s uncle, who’d led the heartbreaking assault on Golgotterath’s gates in the early days of the Apocalypse, hung from a rope in his chambers, slowly twisting in a draft. The Queen stared endlessly across festering sheets."

>>19513293
>Mother died today. Or was it yesterday?
>Mother


GAHGAHWGHAWHGAHWGHAGHAGHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAH

*inhale*

BWAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHHAHAHAHA

>>19513299
Bakker does it again. He's even surpassed Waldun

>>19513299
>greatest introduction to a fantasy
What is it with children always making the most absurdist claims about their favorite kiddie fiction?

Either this:

The first ray of light which illumines the gloom, and converts
into a dazzling brilliancy that obscurity in which the earlier
history of the public career of the immortal Pickwick would
appear to be involved, is derived from the perusal of the following
entry in the Transactions of the Pickwick Club, which the editor
of these papers feels the highest pleasure in laying before his
readers, as a proof of the careful attention, indefatigable assiduity,
and nice discrimination, with which his search among the multifarious
documents confided to him has been conducted.

Or the opening line of Great Expectations/A Tale of Two Cities

Dickens knows how to start a novel

>>19513412

Pardon the formatting lads

Call me Incel.

>>19513293
God, anglos translations are dogshit.

Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors? Out they toddled from rugged Avila, wide-eyed and helpless-looking as two fawns, but with human hearts, already beating to a national idea; until domestic reality met them in the shape of uncles, and turned them back from their great resolve. That child-pilgrimage was a fit beginning. Theresa’s passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. She found her epos in the reform of a religious order.

That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago, was certainly not the last of her kind. Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion. With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but after all, to common eyes their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness; for these later-born Theresas were helped by no coherent social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently willing soul. Their ardor alternated between a vague ideal and the common yearning of womanhood; so that the one was disapproved as extravagance, and the other condemned as a lapse.

Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women’s coiffure and the favorite love-stories in prose and verse. Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centring in some long-recognizable deed.

A screaming comes across the sky.

"FUCK YOU AND YOUR GOAT-LOVING ANALSAUSAGE FUCK FACTORY!" Lucifer Niggerbastard screamed, giving the shape in the window a double-handed flip-off. Mr. Moneyballs could go fuck himself.

”Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know.”

I was 20 and I had too many opportunities still, and too many people loved me still, and so I couldn't die, I told her and then she cast her tiny body into the hungry sea below under a morning December sky and the splash was enormous; The water hit my already soaked shoes.

"William Stoner entered the University of Missouri as a freshman in the year 1910, at the age of nineteen. Eight years later, during the height of World War I, he received his Doctor of Philosophy degree and accepted an instructorship at the same University, where he taught until his death in 1956. He did not rise above the rank of assistant professor, and few students remembered him with any sharpness after they had taken his courses. When he died his colleagues made a memorial contribution of a medieval manuscript to the University library. This manuscript may still be found in the Rare Books Collection, bearing the inscription: "Presented to the Library of the University of Missouri, in memory of William Stoner, Department of English. By his colleagues.

An occasional student who comes upon the name may wonder idly who William Stoner was, but he seldom pursues his curiosity beyond a casual question. Stoner's colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now; to the older ones, his name is a reminder of the end that awaits them all, and to the younger ones it is merely a sound which evokes no sense of the past and no identity with which they can associate themselves or their careers."

>>19512414
>they call me uylsses, uylsses f grant

>>19514517
Fuck me, Stoner was so god damn good.

>>19513293
Reddit opening and Reddit book, why The Stranger is more well-regarded than The Plague fucking astounds me

>Call me Ishmael.

Everyone cums over "Call me Ishmael," but that's not really a good line in itself. What's good is the really funny description of his mental state that follows.

R A G E
A
G
E

>>19514910
It's just how he delivers it. Just a blunt, "Call me Ishmael." That might not even be his name for all we know

>>19514910
There's really a lot to it.
The fact that he begins the book with a command, as if it were a face-to-face conversation, the fact that he insists you merely "call" him that and it clearly isn't his real name, and the biblical allusions of specifically choosing the name Ishmael are all very cleverly delivered in just three words.

>>19514915
>Tell me about a complicated man.
BRAVO NOLAN

>>19513299
>word-vomit of shit that is completely meaningless to the new reader
Cringe as fuck. What's so hard about starting simple and introducing the world-building concepts as they're needed?

>>19512414
Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo.

>>19512414
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.

>>19513206
Truly Dexterian

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

Pausing in their circumambulation of the verdancy, the duo jocularly noted a bi-canine (that is, a duplication of Fidos, one perched atop deux) in 4/4-time venereal congress amid the rhododendra.

>>19514910
Absolute brainlet take. The line is good for a million reasons but above all because it immediately establishes the main theme of the book, the creation of identity

>>19515403
I mean Melville puts it just as bluntly later on
> Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

>>19515166
The author is a failed academic so he copes by writing a teen edgy power fantasy or something with philosophical hot takes that would make Reddit proud.

>>19514962
Moby Dick is an odd book, professing to be a novel; wantonly eccentric; outrageously bombastic; in places charmingly and vividly descriptive. The author has read up laboriously to make a show of cetalogical learning. Herman Melville is wise in this sort of wisdom. He uses it as stuffing to fill out his skeleton story. Bad stuffing it makes, serving only to try the patience of his readers, and to tempt them to wish both him and his whales at the bottom of an unfathomable sea. Mr. Melville cannot do without savages so he makes half of his dramatis personae wild Indians, Malays, and other untamed humanities. What the author’s original intention in spinning his preposterous yarn was, it is impossible to guess.

Deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?

>>19513163
Based

Amazon.com passed many milestones in 1997: by year-end, we had served more than 1.5 million customers, yielding 838 percent revenue growth to $147.8 million, and extended out market leadership despite aggressive competitive entry.

Amazon.com passed many milestones in 1997: by year-end, we had served more than 1.5 million customers, yielding 838 percent revenue growth to $147.8 million, and extended our market leadership despite aggressive competitive entry.

>>19512414
>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
The catcher in the rye

>>19513176
Not the opening sentence though

Ça a débuté comme ça

>>19512414
Well, post source and more excerpts nigger.

>>19512414
it was the dopest of times, it was the whackest of times, on that dark and stormy night during the summer of our indifference

>>19514667
kek

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

>>19512414
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

>>19512414
Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo.

Not the greatest of all time, but one of my personal favorite openings
>When they came south out of Grant County Boyd was not much more than a baby and the newly formed county they'd named Hidalgo was itself little older than the child. In the country they'd quit lay the bones of a sister and the bones of his maternal grandmother. The new country was rich and wild. You could ride clear to Mexico and not strike a crossfence. He carried Boyd before him in the bow of the saddle and named to him features of the landscape and birds and animals in both spanish and english. In the new house they slept in the room off the kitchen and he would lie awake at night and listen to his brother's breathing in the dark and he would whisper half aloud to him as he slept his plans for them and the life they would have.
The entirety of The Crossing is good, but that first chapter is great, and those first few pages are amazing; something about the style really makes it feel like a vignette, it's very simple and melancholy, almost nostalgic

>>19513229

Always personally disliked that one because I couldn't relate to it.

>>19512765
Ada, or Ardor if anybody is wondering.

>>19514455
This prologue was so kino it made me immediately get the book. Talk about a hook.

>>19512414
>"The industrial revolution and its consequences have been a..." The bearded man lowered his pencil and looked up at the ceiling, pondering. A miracle? A problem? No. Several minutes later, he took his pencil back up and finally resumed writing. "...disaster for the human race."

>>19512414
One of my favorite lines I saw on lit a long while ago was
>It was a dark and stormy night somewhere else.

>>19515166
>INHUMAN Sranc
>HIGH KING of Kûniüri
>CITADEL of Ishuäl
>"bro wtf are the made up words talking about?"
The explanations are all there, if not the details. The only thing uncertain is the Apocalypse and why _made up kingdom_ is hiding, which no doubt is intentional.

Its only impossible to understand for people who skim read, like (you).

>>19512414
>This is my diary desu. Please do not read my diary desu.
This is how I begin my diary desu called "On My Diary: A History of Me Desu"
Any criticisms?

>>19512414
Honestly didn't make me want to read this.

>>19512414
>The indicator turned green as Eddington crossed the road in a straight line.
The repressed homosexual subtext in this line is pure kino. Not "signal" but "indicator" which elicits the idea of social constraint while subtly hinting there are deeper implications here. The colour "green" which is a marker of acceptability as well as "sickness" or even "jealousy." The idea of the "straight line" marking socially acceptable gender norms; Eddington is conforming to heteronormativity but he is also in motion--crossing the road he is the line.

>>19515460
I feel like you stole this review from someone else

I am a ridiculous person. Now they call me a madman. That would be a promotion if it were not that I remain as ridiculous in their eyes as before. But now I do not resent it, they are all dear to me now, even when they laugh at me - and, indeed, it is just then that they are particularly dear to me. I could join in their laughter--not exactly at myself, but through affection for them, if I did not feel so sad as I look at them. Sad because they do not know the truth and I do know it. Oh, how hard it is to be the only one who knows the truth! But they won't understand that. No, they won't understand it.

>>19517595
So, this is what passes as children's fiction these days? God, I feel sorry for children everywhere.

if Gospels count
>In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

>>19512600
speak american you asshole

>>19513299
What the fuck are these names? I feel like in another few decades, "fantasy" names will resemble corrupted strings of text from switching unicode.

I am in my mother's room now. It's I who live there now. I don't know how I got there.

This or, everyone's favorite, the opening to Lolita
>>19513266
>>19514457
I prefer the M&D opening line, but the opening scene to GR is otherworldy

>>19515727
OP said the greatest opening sentence in a novel, not of a novel. That line opens the poem, ergo, it isn opening sentence in the novel.

>>19518187
*it is an opening sentence

>>19512414
>now this is a story all about how my life got flipped turned upside down...

The sky was the color of static television

O egg custard!

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

>>19512749
I like that book but I never understood this one. All happy families are happy because of, I assume, love, good fortune, success, etc. All unhappy families are unhappy because of misfortune, hatred/enmity, poverty. What's the catch?

>It is an old saying, that he who seeks what he should not, finds what he would not. Every one has heard of the ape who, in trying to pull on his boots, was caught by the foot. And it happened in like manner to a wretched slave, who, although she never had shoes to her feet, wanted to wear a crown on her head.

>>19518290
Television tuned to a dead channel. So it was bright blue with NO SIGNAL in the corner.

>>19518809
what book?

THE SALINAS VALLEY is in Northern California. It is a long narrow swale between two ranges of mountains, and the Salinas River winds and twists up the center until it falls at last into Monterey Bay.

I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer—and what trees and seasons smelled like—how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odors is very rich.

I remember that the Gabilan Mountains to the east of the valley were light gay mountains full of sun and loveliness and a kind of invitation, so that you wanted to climb into their warm foothills almost as you want to climb into the lap of a beloved mother. They were beckoning mountains with a brown grass love. The Santa Lucias stood up against the sky to the west and kept the valley from the open sea, and they were dark and brooding—unfriendly and dangerous. I always found in myself a dread of west and a love of east. Where I ever got such an idea I cannot say, unless it could be that the morning came over the peaks of the Gabilans and the night drifted back from the ridges of the Santa Lucias. It may be that the birth and death of the day had some part in my feeling about the two ranges of mountains.

From both sides of the valley little streams slipped out of the hill canyons and fell into the bed of the Salinas River. In the winter of wet years the streams ran full-freshet, and they swelled the river until sometimes it raged and boiled, bank full, and then it was a destroyer. The river tore the edges of the farm lands and washed whole acres down; it toppled barns and houses into itself, to go floating and bobbing away. It trapped cows and pigs and sheep and drowned them in its muddy brown water and carried them to the sea. Then when the late spring came, the river drew in from its edges and the sand banks appeared. And in the summer the river didn’t run at all above ground. Some pools would be left in the deep swirl places under a high bank. The tules and grasses grew back, and willows straightened up with the flood debris in their upper branches. The Salinas was only a part-time river. The summer sun drove it underground. It was not a fine river at all, but it was the only one we had and so we boasted about it—how dangerous it was in a wet winter and how dry it was in a dry summer. You can boast about anything if it’s all you have. Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.

>>19512414
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo

A barometric low hung over the Atlantic. It moved eastward toward a high-pressure area over Russia without as yet showing any inclination to bypass this high in a northerly direction. The isotherms and isotheres were functioning as they should. The air temperature was appropriate relative to the annual mean temperature and to the aperiodic monthly fluctuations of the temperature. The rising and setting of the sun, the moon, the phases of the moon, of Venus, of the rings of Saturn, and many other significant phenomena were all in accordance with the forecasts in the astronomical yearbooks. The water vapor in the air was at its maximal state of tension, while the humidity was minimal. In a word that characterizes the facts fairly accurately, even if it is a bit old-fashioned: It was a fine day in August 1913.

>>19518834
Pentameron.

see the child
he is pale and thin

Mine has been a life of much shame.

no man is an island intire of itself

I always get the shakes before a drop.

>>19512414
The Smile of the Unknown Mariner by Vincenzo Consolo

I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased.

>>19512812
Sex with Alices

>>19514494
Got a telegram from the home: "Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours." That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.

I will never forget this opening.

>>19519434
I love how this first sentence just pulls you into the book. It leads perfectly into the first few pages, and before you know it you have read the first few chapters.

Not everybody knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw in with my spade; but first it is better to speak of my friendship withJohn Divney because it was he who first knocked old Mathers down by giving him a great blow in the neck with a special bicycle-pump which he manufactured himself out of a hollow iron bar. Divney was a strong civil man but he was lazy and idle-minded. He was personally responsible for the whole idea in the first place. It was he who told me to bring my spade. He was the one who gave the orders on the occasion and also the explanations when they were called for. I was born a long time ago. My father was a strong farmer and my mother owned a public house.

>>19512423
lolita's opening sucks

"The truth came to him and the shock of it caused him to forget it in an instance, but not the memory of the forgetting. That stayed with him forever."

>>19519720
No it doesn’t

>>19519867
what from?

>>19512451
This reminds me, Bernard Cornwell's The Winter King began with "Once upon a time, in a land that was called Britain, these things happened." I thought the juxtaposition between the classic fairy tale opening and the assertion that "these things happened" was a pretty neat way to start a "realistic" Arthurian retelling.

>>19519911
Borges, one of his minor prose poems, "El olvido": "La verdad le vino y la conmoción le hizo olvidarla en un instante, pero no el recuerdo del olvido. Eso se quedó con él para siempre."

>>19512414
They found me in the gutter.

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

>>19519720
Isn't the entire book about how her openings are kino?

>>19520228
Dude, H.H. must have been the luckiest man alive for the short amount of time he had Lolita.

>>19520241
What's that supposed to mean?

>>19516538
Idiot, we're talking about opening sentences not final lines

>>19512765
That's the opposite of what it says

>>19520050
Dante in traslation feels so clunky and mechanical
Nel bel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita,
Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
Che la diritta via era smarrita

>>19520339
I mean, the man is basically the basis for the Italian language. Anything with any weight or nuance to itself gets obliterated in translation.

>>19520252
It means he was lucky to drill teenage pussy every night

>>19514457
And then the rest of the book goes downhill from there

>>19520339
Well in the middle of the passage of my life
I found myself in dark and savage woods
For of the right path I'd long lost sight

>>19520339
Well in the middle of the passage of my life
I found myself in dark and savage woods
Of the right path I had long lost sight

>>19520339
Well in the middle of the passage of my life
I found myself in dark and savage woods
Of the right path I had lost sight

>>19512414
>When I was little, I would pretend that the Earth was round. Round as a ball, an orb, a massive sphere hovering heavily through space wreathed in the omnipresent mirages which had watched over my childhood on the world's edge, and how in defiance of all reason I would run through strange landscapes on the underside of this orb. I would be able to travel in any direction at all without ever reaching an edge and the monstrous mirages would not congeal out of the void in front of me, but somewhere in the misty heavens above me. Space would be distant and ungraspable and every escape would inevitably bring me back to where I started. When I was a little older I would imagine how I explored this earth-ball all the way to the distant regions where the incline became too steep; how I picked my way carefullydown the ever steeper slopes which finally gave way to infinite cliffs where sooner or later I must lose my footing and tumble into the abyss with ever-increasing speed. My stomach burned at the thought of the eternal fall and I felt with my whole body the intense insecurity before this treacherous curving of the world which, infinitely gradually, passed from safety to danger.

>>19512765
That's literally the opposite of what the line says.
Are you serious? What an atrocious translation.

>>19521075
That quote is from a Nabokov novel where the world is not quite as it is in reality. It being inaccurate is literally the entire point.

>>19513266
Wow. I realize now how Pynchon's style is starting to wear on me. It's so pretentious.

>>19512749
Reminds me of Attack On Titan

>>19521075
>James Bond will return in: POINTMISSER

>>19521087
Ohhh so that's the whole line? I see

>>19520317
>>19521075
the state of /lit/ in 2021 ladies and gents

>>19521090
yeah after i read some of the illuminatus trilogy, pynchon doesn't seem as special. illuminatus is the same crack hijinks, obscure references, and other assorted pomo shiz, but without the literary pretension

>>19521109
That's not the whole line.

>>19521107
>>19521110
Explain yourselves, faggots.

>>19512414
>I WISH either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly consider’d how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost;—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that in which the reader is likely to see me.

>>19521321

>>19521321

I think it's about time I talked about KisshotAcerolaorionHeartunderblade.

>>19514516
Source?

>>19512414
>It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times

>>19522008
Source?

It was a dark and stormy night

>>19512435
Just finished it, way less plot and way more "holy shit dude whaling knowledge" than I expected

>>19518722
I think it has a bit more to do with specifics. Happy families are happy because they are stable and well to do and everyone is alive, that's about as complicated as it gets, there's not that much room for uniqueness. Unhappy families, while their unhappiness can be summed up into things like misfortune, etc., are more specific and have more room for uniqueness. Dad is abusive, mom finds a new lover, dad goes to war and dies, tiny Tim is sick and dying, dad's a drunk and can't get a job, dad's sick and can't get a job, dad went to jail, sister had to start being a prostitute to support us, dad finds out he is not the father, etc. Misfortunes, when it comes to families, come in all different shapes and sizes. For a family to be happy what needs to happen (at least in Tolstoy's time)? Dad has a good, stable, fulfilling, well-paying job; mom is faithful an lovingly raises her children, everyone is alive and healthy and not dying in their bed; mom and dad love each other; etc. My point is that there are only a few things that need to go right for a family to be happy and there are a lot more things that can go wrong for a family to be unhappy.

tl;dr happiness is quite simple and can be achieved as long as a short list of things are met and suffering is a very personal thing that greatly varies from person to person.

>>19514494 / >>19513293
>>19513229
Personal picks

>>19514922
Its not his name, thats the whole point. Not only is he never addressed by name, he is almost never even addressed at all. Hes pretty much just some dude along for Ahabs fucked up revenge boat ride

>>19522248
Did you like it?

>>19521329
>>19521344
Unreliable narrator, or poorly researched book?

>>19520785
what novel it is?

"I am born."

>>19513163
Hello Ogden

>>19512414
tst

>>19512414
Not the greatest of all time but..
''In a hole in the ground, there lived a Hobbit."

>>19513412
>Dickens knows how to start a novel
If only he knew how to end one

>>19522684
Neither. The narrator lives in anti-terra which is the distorted version of terra (earth). Nabokov was always a glorified fantasy writer (new wye? Zembla? Wtf!). He was prolly jealous of Tolkien but too pompous to admit it.

Once upon a time...

Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt.

>>19514662
>why The Stranger is more well-regarded than The Plague fucking astounds me
true but both are overrated, similarly as the guy who wrote them

>>19524037
Which book?

>>19512414
"Your mother wasn't something more fuckable than a hoe at a shady ghetto. But something about her enticed me more than any woman else. Or probably it was just an urge to kill her, which I eventually did."

>>19521326
I have never related so hard to a sentence in my life

>>19524074
Hadrian the Seventh by Frederick Baron Corvo

To the worm who first gnawed on the cold flesh of my corpse, I dedicate with fond remembrance these Posthumous Memoirs.

>>19517564
Anon you are in for a literary experience comparable to no other. I appreciate your interest and am thrilled that the passage convinced you.

>>19521105
? How so

I fucking hate [REDACTED]

>>19513299
Bakker is always a nice read to see how he's nothing more than tryhard and pretentious trying desperately to appear "deep" because higher academia rejected him due to his stupidity.

>>19525559
So the thing about Kellhus being his self-insert we’re true after all?

>>19517885
This, but
>"THERE COULD BE NIGGERS HERE..."
is a close second.

>>19517595
All these imaginary nouns and proper names could be used to create a sense of wonder, uncanniness, or alterity, but instead it just ends up being some autis'ts gay "world building" fantasy rpg.
Just stick to Minecraft or Linux ricing.

>>19513299
100000 billion years ago, the Kam Adarn broke the walls of Kimal-Ti-Hok. P'edion the XV, led the last of his Isalia Etox against the Hordes.

>>19521090
It isn't pretentious at all. I don't think you know what that word means. Also embarrassing that the first sentence of a novel wears on you

>>19512414
was sucking a baby's dick some kind of ameritard tradition

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

>>19513206
>they was on sum politicks

>>19512600
Absolute kino

>>19521326
What book

>>19526338
Why didn't you just google it?

>>19526347
I cant find it?

>>19518722
They're alike in that they're happy. They might have some variety of backstory, some trauma that they worked through together in order to get to their happiness but at the end of the day if the audience comes to them when they are happy and content then they are all happy and content in the same way. They have won, they have achieved. The mother loves the father who loves her back and together they love their children, who have strong and unbreakable friendships with their cousins, and each Christmas they go to Grandma's and Grandpa's and have one big happy feast to bring tears to your eyes.

Unhappy families are broken in unique ways and there's room to tell any kind of story you want, in that. The mother might hate the father but love her infant son, so she stays in the marriage for him. She might hate the son but love the father. She might hate both but be having an affair with the father's brother. She might be dead, and the father struggles to raise the son on his own. She might have died tragically from cancer or else violently in a car crash. She might have left in the middle of the night to run away with someone else. She might have been left on her own as the father did the same. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

>>19512414
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land

>>19526353
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=%22I+WISH+either+my+father+or+my+mother%2C+or+indeed+both+of+them%22

>>19512414
>O INDIGENCE! thou care-bringer! protectress divine of the German musician (unless he have reached the haven of director at some court-theatre)! O, carking Indigence! as I ever do, so let me now in this reminiscence from my life first bring dutiful obeisance to thy praise and honor! Let me sing of thee, thou steadfast companion of my life! Always loyal, never hast thou forsaken me! With a strong palm, thou hast warded from me all sudden shocks of propitious luck; and ever against the onerous glances of sunny Fortuna hast thou protected me! With an impenetrable veil hast thou always benignantly hidden from my sight the vain riches of this world! Receive thou all my gratitude for thine indefatigable constancy. But if it may be, pray do thou at length find some other foster-child than me. For indeed I should — if it were only for the sake of curiosity — like to learn from personal experience, what manner of existence I might manage to lead without thee. At the least — so I beseech thee — go thou and plague with most especial cunning our political dreamers, those madmen, who are determined in spite of everything to unite our dear Germany under a single sceptre: For then there would be but one single court-theatre, and hence a place for but one single Kapellmeister! What then would become of all my hopes, my dear ambitions, which even now are dim before my eyes, and, I dread, are slowly fading — even now, when I can count so many German court-theatres. But ah! I see that I grow impious. Forgive, O thou divine protectress, the blasphemous wish which just escaped me. 'Twas but momentary; for thou seest within my heart, and well thou knowest how wholly thine I am, and ever shall be, though it came to pass that there were a thousand court-theatres in German ! Amen!
>I never undertake a thing, without first offering up this daily prayer, and so I breathe it here before I begin the story of my pilgrimage to Beethoven.

>>19512414
Can't believe nobody's mentioned this avant-garde gem yet.

>>19512414
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

>>19526087
Nobody can beat Tolkien.

>>19526319
this is a japanese book

>>19513299
this seems like a parody of fantasy writing

>>19526788
fuck this reminds me of that broken earth series by the black lady, it was so poorly written

>>19526363
>novel

>>19513299
if you ever wonder why asoiaf got so big, just remember that this is its competition

>>19519434
>>19512749
>>19512423
How do the Russians do it lads?

>>19518848
Greetings fellow steinbeck enjoyer

>>19512749
Kino, looking forward to reading it.

>>19512419
fpbp

>>19514517
Stoner truly is a masterpiece.

>>19528213
I'm 5'9" and I'd beat Tolkien to death with my bare hands

>>19512419
lol

>"Snow-Balls have flown their Arcs, starr'd the Sides of Outbuildings, as of Cousins, carried Hats away into the brisk Wind off Delaware,-- the Sleds are brought in and their Runners carefully dried and greased, shoes deposited in the back Hall, a stocking'd-foot Descent made upon the great Kitchen, in a purposeful Dither since Morning, punctuated by the ringing Lids of Boilers and Stewing-Pots, fragrant with Pie-Spices, peel'd Fruits, Suet, heated Sugar,-- the Children, having all upon the Fly, among rhythmic slaps of Batter and Spoon, coax'd and stolen what they might, proceed, as upon each afternoon all this snowy December, to a comfortable Room at the rear of the House, years since given over to their carefree Assaults."

>>19528908
glad to see there's at least one other steinbeck fan here
he doesn't get much attention here

>>19512414
“Dawn crept slowly over the sparkling emerald expanse of the country club golf course, trying in vain to remember where she had dropped her car keys.”

>>19526087
>All these imaginary nouns and proper names could be used to create
Not in and of themselves they couldn't. The word hobbit doesn’t evoke shit, the writing about hobbits does etc. Complaining about a word being made up, therefore nonsense is stupid when what the word is explained within the sentence it is mentioned.

>>19520241
What the fuck does Hulk Hogan have to do with Lolita

>>19529694
kek

>>19512414
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita.

>>19529516
That's great, what is it?

I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies.

if you include short stories:

Nadie lo vio desembarcar en la anónima noche, nadie vio la canoa de bambú sumiéndose en el fango sagrado, pero a los pocos días nadie ignoraba que el hombre taciturno venía del Sur y que su patria era una de las infinitas aldeas que están aguas arriba, en el flanco violento de la montaña, donde el idioma zend no está contaminado de griego y donde es infrecuente la lepra. Lo cierto es que el hombre gris besó el fango, repechó la ribera sin apartar (probablemente, sin sentir) las cortaderas que le dilaceraban las carnes y se arrastró, mareado y ensangrentado, hasta el recinto circular que corona un tigre o caballo de piedra, que tuvo alguna vez el color del fuego y ahora el de la ceniza. Ese redondel es un templo que devoraron los incendios antiguos, que la selva palúdica ha profanado y
cuyo dios no recibe honor de los hombres. El forastero se tendió bajo el pedestal. Lo despertó el sol alto. Comprobó sin asombro que las heridas habían cicatrizado; cerró los ojos pálidos y durmió, no por flaqueza de la carne sino por determinación de la voluntad. Sabía que ese templo era el lugar que requería su invencible propósito; sabía que los árboles incesantes no habían logrado estrangular, río abajo, las ruinas de otro templo propicio, también de dioses incendiados y muertos; sabía que su inmediata obligación era el sueño. Hacia la medianoche lo despertó el grito inconsolable de un pájaro. Rastros de pies descalzos, unos higos y un cántaro le advirtieron que los hombres de la región habían espiado con
respeto su sueño y solicitaban su amparo o temían su magia. Sintió el frío del miedo y buscó en la muralla dilapidada un nicho sepulcral y se tapó con hojas desconocidas.

>>19526338
It's Tristram Shandy, fren

>>19529757
Damn, it's fake. Still very clever, though.

>>19514910
It's great in what it implies, though. Melville didn't say "My name is Ishmael" or "I am Ishmael," which would have conveyed the same explicit meaning. Saying "Call me Ishmael" though implies that Ishmael may not be the narrator's name at all, and that everything else in the novel should be read with a at least somewhat skeptical eye, or that the narrator has a kind of disdain for points that he feels are unimportant ('why do you care about my name? Just call me 'XYZ'' and let me get on with the story). It's a great lead-in sentence to the rest of the book.

For my money, though, Faulkner has the best opening sentence in American literature:

>From a little after two oclock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that — a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty-three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them.

YMMV of course.

>>19516575
>>19515179
based and Marquez-pilled

>>19529516
>>19529757
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/psgvmu/til_of_the_bulwerlytton_fiction_contest_a/

I know it's >reddit, but this website holds some stunners.
https://www.bulwer-lytton.com

>"A lecherous sunrise flaunted itself over a flatulent sea, ripping the obsidian bodice of night asunder with its rapacious fingers of gold, thus exposing her dusky bosom to the dawn’s ogling stare."

>In the one-horse town, she gave the two-timing man to the count of three to get down on all fours and give her five reasons she shouldn't use her 6-shooter on him for violating the 7th Commandment.

>Our story begins in the cozy cottage of Bynnoldh-Dyr, son of Asgwitch-Torgwyr, in the idyllic elven village of Myrthffolwrd, but our book actually begins some two hundred pages earlier, in which you are pummeled by irrelevant history and unpronounceable names, because my publisher is paying me by the word.

Chapter 1.

>>19531502
Hahaha holy shit those are good.

>Waking up to a loud crash rarely means something good is happening. It's never "CRASH! mom made pancakes!" or "CRASH! We decided to adopt a Golden Retriever!"

>>19531502
Bulwer lytton was a chad and I dont approve of this mockery aimed at him. There is literally nothing wrong with his dark and stormy night sentence.

>>19531502
>Through the verdant plains of North Umbria walked Waylon Ogglethorpe and, as he walked, the clouds
>whispered his name, the birds of the air sang his praises, and the beasts of the fields from smallest to
>greatest said, “There goes the most noble among men” – in other words, a typical stroll for a schizophrenic
>ventriloquist with delusions of grandeur

>>19531502
>https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/psgvmu/til_of_the_bulwerlytton_fiction_contest_a/
I stood up clapping when i read this one. Now THIS, sirs, is epic.

EDIT: Hey, now I'm not one to turn down a reddit gold - but save that for the people who deserve it, like Mx. Hynes here.

>>19513299
Do Bakkertards really?

>>19531779
You win this time, baiter. But I won't be giving you another.

His hooked nose resembled a dog's penis: angry red and moist. He licked his purple, rubbery lips, smiling as he spoke "Ah, yes, the goyim will listen to whatever music we promote." Hunching his shoulders, he cocked his head to one side, placed his hand upon one ear as though he was clasping the cup of a DJ's headset, he proceeded to use his other outstretchrd hand to rhythmically jerk back and forth in front of him, as though he was scratching vinyl. In a faux negro accent he rapped:
"Ev'ry time I take a shit,
I produce
a numba one hit!
Uh uh, yeah
Clap yo' hands!"
The old kike cackled with amusement, pleased with himself that he could imitate so well the African American performers 60 years his junior that he promoted.
"You want the contract? Then listen carefully...."

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were
proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank
you very much. ey were the last people you’d expect to be in-
volved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t
hold with such nonsense.

>>19524040

I second this.

>>19513299
"Soul fluid was the battle hour, the time before The Time. Grand Vizier Karshmesh took his stead among the Defiled, his poise matced his sullen loins. Feeling for his breath, he pushed up a great heave and then turned to face the crowd.
'Singing the song of the dead Altmeyer?' The Grand Vizier poured a small tankard of thick ale and washed it down with cream. He brushed his brow, twirling the fair ends of his gaze with knotted tongues and licked his lips.
'I only fell the first time' Altmeyer replied, drawing his blade. They circled the room before Chosen Jakarath descended from his Howled Nook and jargoned the blow. He took the blow. The blow bounced off, he took it with the whipping breath of heaves on his land.
'Aleka'tor, mytre'listin saleui'vue!' He called out.
But there was only a slight panic before he knew what had happened, the dream phase has ended.
He shifted planes.
And then melded with the Destiny.

--
(bakker is a fucking god)

She brushed up her cunt to the moonlit tiger who kept a big paw on his own backside. For a spell, she dropped her hat, and made a dash for the doorbell. But when it rang there was only a coffin box that shat up her ass in a fucking Jew kike nigger shit fuccking JEw kike nigger fucking kike Jew nigger faggot Jew

I'm staring... AT ALAAH!!! ALAN!! Alan is his name he calls himself aLlah but I know its alan Alan was the one who wrote the book that is Alans name
DID CUNT
IT FUCKED?
Alan tried to soften the blow but his lettuce wrapped mayo flesh was already curdling in a small river that had formed in the base of the shower when i entered taking a gag and dragging his wife inside. she satared at me with reds, and i took her nipples and bit them i sucked her nipples for milk warm milk and Alan (allah) floundered the fish. the fish stick. the fish. I took his fish head and bashed tis bloodied head on the sink and blood came out of his eyes and nose and mouth he bled there i bashed his fucking head in over and over and over ando ver i didnt kill him i want to kill him i need to kill i kill

Alan is a old tigermate from the cub scouts i never met or was apart of i dress in grays mostly, only solid gray tones. I'm a gray pelted flabber and a flabberghast the Disciples who took a little sip of Paradise. Alan said hes Allah did he well i know better than that. ALAN the FLAT FLOOTEDFATASS. hes fat and a Chef in his spare time, he cooks because hes FAT and only FAT people cook their meals like him, he is a fat Cook not Allah or the Son of Messiahnic Religious experiecn that he says he was Reborn into, I fathom the fall and drop myself into her sheets then ejaculate hot semen into my palm and run it through my hair. thats it, the comb, i run it through my hand and hair and mslleiit deeply Allah says i cant go out like that but hes got scars all over his skull from when it fractured and i think about bashing his brains and cutting his brains and using his brains to fuck my balls into

i follow women and i want to see where they go. i follow women and take pocts of them for Allah commands me and i follow Alan the Allah. I follow him. I am the wisdom to his shepard, the flock master to his crew. i am a Alans Little Scapegoat for when it al goes south for the winter. i am ALAN. Son of Allah. I am Allah or is it Alan? How can you be so sure when you go to any supermarket and everyones an igger

>>19513299
So many sentences starting with they/the in succession.

Poorly paced. The first 4 sentences are intentionally shortened for impact.

Even populist entry level fantasy like Feist doesn't do this.

>>19532047
this seems like a parody of fantasy writing

>>19532047
Its from The Warrior Prophet?
>Jakarath's wythenlyk that seeks the Viziers August
one of his better scenes desu

>>19532047
People read this shit?

>>19532084
Ho, fellow writer. I do believe you've made a typo at the end of your final sentence!

>Call me Fishmael

>>19532542
yo what up it's ya boi big ish

>>19512749
normie detected

>>19512600
Maravillosamente basado

>Lazarus lying upon the slate could never dream of such sinister sights upon which the crucible of Jarrack-Don-Gedden might one day return and he, with eyes cast in brilliant nonsense, might scoop up the whole of humanity within his two infinite arms and grant them a godly throne of their own.

>The corpse shuddered, and came.

>>19513266
>as of Cousins
I never understood what this means, can someone explain?

Crude thoughts and fierce forces are my state.

Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure.

>>19513229
>>19533181
I think it loses something in english.

>>19532945
based. added.

>>19518722
I always thought of it in a more literal sense. Every (seemingly) happy family I've ever encountered has the same dynamic, the same attitudes, the same behaviour, etc. Everyone's there, they all enjoys each other's company, there's no big conflicts, and they spend a good amount of time together. You can practically play bingo with all the shit they have in common. Every unhappy family, on the other hand, is so uniquely fucked up you can never really draw comparisons. The way my family is fucked up and the way my girlfriend's family are fucked up are leagues apart. Meanwhile, similarity between the home lives of all my friends with happy families was almost cartoonish.

>>19517581
Based

>>19518722
There is only one way to arrange stones into an arch and have it stay up, but countless ways to arrange a pile of bricks

>>19533208
Explain what is lost. Otherwise, you might just be a psued who thinks it's somehow better in French just because it is in French.

May I offer some honest thoughts.

>>19512414
Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open yë,
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages):
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
(And palmers for to seken straunge strondes)
To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,
The holy blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke.

>>19533352
Neat

>>19533368
Die Sonne tönt, nach alter Weise,
In Brudersphären Wettgesang,
Und ihre vorgeschriebne Reise
Vollendet sie mit Donnergang.
Ihr Anblick giebt den Engeln Stärke,
Wenn keiner sie ergründen mag.
Die unbegreiflich hohen Werke
Sind herrlich wie am ersten Tag.

>>19531805
Yes

>best opening sentence
>its all paragraphs

>>19532712
They were throwing snowballs at their cousins too

>>19512414
>The man in back sled across the dessert, and the gunflinger bellowed.

>>19512414
Praise be to God, the Beneficient King, the creator of the world and man, who raised the heavens without pillars and spread out the earth as a place of rest and erected the mountains as props and made the water flow from the hard rock and destroyed the race of Thamud, 'Ad and Pharaoh of the vast domain.

This sentence sets up the main themes of the Arabian Nights by using Biblical and Islamic examples. The idea is that power and wealth are transitory and fate is very fickle. Spiritual fulfillment outranks material fulfillment.

>>19512600
Revisado y basado

>>19533554
Are you surprised that /lit/ doesn't and can't read?

>>19533554
it's only paragraphs because we can't post the entire books

>>19532542
kek based

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:
—Introibo ad altare Dei.

>>19512465
Agreed.

>>19535464
I don't really know if this is a great opening though

>>19512414
I am a cat.

The Necessity for Explicitfy Restating the Qu estion of Being
THIS question has today been forgotten. Even though in our time we
deem it progressive to give our approval to 'metaphysics' again, it is held
that we have been exempted from the exertions of a newly rekindled
'Y''YaVTop.axla 1Tfp/. Tij� ooala�.

>>19519338
based and suttreepilled

>>19513299
>>19532047
Yikes

>>19532047
How awful.

Once a guy stood all day shaking bugs from his hair.

>>19533288
In french, the first and last words of in search of lost time are derivatives of "temps," and the translation of "longtemps" as "for a long time" loses that. And "de bonne heure" means "early" but also has the connotation of "at the right time" or "in time." Don't get me started on "je me suis couché," I found three translations that conjugated the passé composé three different ways into English. Montcrieff and Davis are both great translations of Swann's Way (a title that Proust hated), but translation is never perfect.

Anyway it's not pseud to think a classic is better in the original, that's the default option. I don't need to know spanish to know I'm not getting 100% of Borges in translation.

The dark and stormy night hook was a tool introduced into schools to monitor students' home lives, an attempt to catch signs of child abuse

>>19533582
Reddit's favorite

>>19513299
This is established by ALL writing styles as a shit introduction.

Vomiting of useless information and contextless background. Fuck this shit.

>>19512414
"On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming on."

>>19512600
Basadísimo

>>19512414
Time in its irresistible and ceaseless flow carries along on its flood all created
things, and drowns them in the depths of obscurity, no matter if they be quite
unworthy of mention, or most noteworthy and important, and thus, as the tragedian
says, “he brings from the darkness all things to the birth, and all things born envelops
in the night.”
But the tale of history forms a very strong bulwark against the stream of time, and
to some extent checks its irresistible flow, and, of all things done in it, as many as
history has taken over, it secures and binds together, and does not allow them to slip
away into the abyss of oblivion.

>>19539899
nice

>>19537684
Elaborate.

>>19514517
That was one great book

>There were so many hairdressing establishments and funeral homes in the
regional centre of N. that the inhabitants seemed to be born merely in order
to have a shave, get their hair cut, freshen up their heads with toilet
water and then die.

There were prodigies and portents enough, One-Eye says. We must blame ourselves for misinterpreting them. One-
Eye’s handicap in no way impairs his marvelous hindsight.

>>19529516
>“Dawn crept slowly over the sparkling emerald expanse of the country club golf course, trying in vain to remember where she had dropped her car keys.”
hilarious

>>19540933
cant stand this voice pervasive to all YA fiction which pretends that the narrator is my best friend

>>19513299
>>19532047
How does this type of shit get published when its beaten over our heads that this type of opening is unacceptable? This shit is like Ready Player One.

>>19540933
>I liked hurting girls
ok I'm listening

>Mentally, not physically
Mega cringe, I'd put the book down right there

>>19516575
It's cliche nowadays maybe but I fucking love that line so much

>>19540933
Diary of an oxygen thief? I read that years ago when it came out and completely forgot about it. If that is the same book, I should give myself a pat on the back

Vine a Comala porque me dijeron que acá vivía mi padre, un tal Pedro Páramo. Mi madre me lo dijo. Y yo le prometí que vendría a verlo en cuanto ella muriera. Le apreté sus manos en señal de que lo haría, pues ella estaba por morirse y yo en un plan de prometerlo todo. "No dejes de ir a visitarlo -me recomendó. Se llama de este modo y de este otro. Estoy segura de que le dar gusto conocerte." Entonces no pude hacer otra cosa sino decirle que así lo haría, y de tanto decírselo se lo seguí diciendo aun después de que a mis manos les costó trabajo zafarse de sus manos muertas.

>>19518848
That was pretty good

"They came like a caravan of carnival folk up through the swales of broomstraw and across the hill in the morning sun, the truck rocking and pitching in the ruts and the musicians on chairs in the truckbed teetering and tuning their instruments, the fat man with guitar grinning and gesturing to others in a car behind and bending to give a note to the fiddler who turned a fiddlepeg and listened with a wrinkled face. They passed under flowering appletrees and passed a log crib chinked with orange mud and forded a branch and came in sight of an aged clapboard house that stood in blue shade under the wall of the mountain. Beyond it stood a barn. One of the men in the truck bonged on the cab roof with his fist and the truck came to a halt. Cars and trucks came on through the weeds in the yard, people afoot."

>>19528908
Steinbeck has the most friendly fanbase of any author on here I have noticed. Probably because his novels are extremely unpretentious and dare I say wholesome though not in a cloying way.

>>19520339
I got myself a spanish-italian edition for when ten years from now I decide to learn Italian
For now the Spanish will have to do, even if the price for having the original verses is having no notes

>>19514455
Awesome
This thread is fucking great

>>19515460
God this is bad, filtered in the worst way.

>>19512414
Call me Ishmael.

>>19513299
>>19532047
These are terrible. I don't know how you fags can tout this as the best example of an introduction.

>>19514517
Jesus. The first sentence is completely unremarkable. The book is only marginally better. Why does lit circle jerk it so much

>>19532542
>Call me female.

>>19529779
I fucking love Borges so much

>>19512414
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.

>>19532047
>>19532147
>>19532170
>>19532195
>>19536849
It’s fake you mongrels

In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and the Word was God.
This is indisputable.

It was so hot everything was blue.