/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15715480]

>book starts with a long description of nature

[Anonymous No.15715490]

>>15715480
Why did western philosophers insist on concluding thought about the world?

[Anonymous No.15716558]

>the entire book is a long description of nature

[Anonymous No.15716564]

>>15715480
Book starts with a long description of the main character

[Anonymous No.15716578]

>>15715480
>book starts with a long description of sex

[Anonymous No.15716590]

>>15716578
name 10

[Anonymous No.15716652]

>book starts with a long description of nature

[Anonymous No.15716653]

>>15716590
A London Cabana, Herbert Tanner
William of Eire, Jeremy Caldwell
Barefoot through the Woods ] Series by Francis Goldie
Molten Iron ] In the barefoot series
Urethra, Toby Stone
No more knights for the King, Emily Jenkins
Death of Nations, Emile Schornbrucker
The Rape of the Swabians, Manolo Vestra
My Love in Lagos, Charlotte Debrie
Jamal, Eric Thompson*

*This last one has the opening chapter describe the titular main character's conception, and then jumps to his birth the very next chapter.

[Anonymous No.15716677]

>half of the book is all about the history of Paris and french architecture

[Anonymous No.15716701]

>>15716653
Epic

[Anonymous No.15716737]

>>15716677
Bonjour Hugo

[Anonymous No.15716838]

>>15716653
based

[Anonymous No.15716843]

>book spends 2 pages describing everything that's on a character's desk

[Anonymous No.15716894]

>>15715480

>The book is Finnegans Wake

[Anonymous No.15717032]

>>15715480
>book has a reference to pop culture

[Anonymous No.15717069]

>>15716843
Gravitys Rainbowww

[Anonymous No.15717081]

>>15715480
>book spends more than a sentence on description

[Anonymous No.15717120]

>>15715480
>>15716558
Well guess I can toss what I've been working on.

[Anonymous No.15717126]

>book starts

[Anonymous No.15717165]

>>15715480
The felt a fascination of nature, huh?

[Anonymous No.15717244]

>>15715480
>book starts with an invocation of the muses

[Irish No.15717314]

>>15716677

[Irish No.15717326]

>book doesn't have any pictures

[Anonymous No.15717455]

>the book isn't by the great Irish patriot, Patrick Pearse

[Irish No.15717700]

>>15717455
Did somebody say Irish?!?

[Anonymous No.15717715]

>>15715480
>book starts with a long description of a murder

[Anonymous No.15717781]

>>15715480
>book starts with the author directly speaking about how much he hates USA
lmao

[Anonymous No.15718125]

>>15715480
>book does not start

[Anonymous No.15718130]

>>15715480
The Grapes of Wrath does this and its kino

[Anonymous No.15718138]

>>15716894
I miss Finnegans Wake poster guys

[Anonymous No.15718158]

>Book begins

[Anonymous No.15718160]

>>15715480
>ugh reading

[Anonymous No.15718688]

>>15715480
A book that did this well and which is wonderful is Sometimes a Great Notion

[Anonymous No.15720247]

>>15716653
damn way to deliver

[Anonymous No.15720272]

>book starts insulting me
>proceeds to narrate my whole life in detail

[Anonymous No.15721931]

>>15715480

I can't think of that many examples off the top of my head.

>Canterbury Tales
does it in an ironic, chatty kinda way, and it's fine.

>East of Eden
does it IIRC and it's OK.

>Nostromo
does it and you might find it a drag but that's only coz it's Conrad and that's the way he rolls

What books did you have in mind?

[Anonymous No.15721946]

Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the A.M. heat: shattercane, lamb's-quarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint, dandelion, foxtain, muscadine, spine-cabbage, goldenrod, creeping charlie, butter-print, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads gently nodding in a morning breeze like a mother's soft hand on your cheek. An arrow of starlings fired from the windbreak's thatch. The glitter of dew that stays where it is and steams all day. A sunflower, four more, one bowed, and horses in the distance standing rigid and still as toys. All nodding. Electric sounds of insects at their business. Ale-colored sunshine and pale sky and whorls of cirrus so high they cast no shadow. Insects all business all the time. Quartz and chert and schist and chondrite iron scabs in granite. Very old land. Look around you. The horizon trembling, shapeless. We are all of us brothers.

Some crows come overhead then, three or four, not a murder, on the wing, silent with intent, corn-bound for the pasture's wire beyond which one horse smells at the other's behind, the lead horse's tail obligingly lifted. Your shoes' brand incised in the dew. An alfalfa breeze. Socks' burrs. Dry scratching inside a culvert. Rusted wire and tilted posts more a symbol of restraint than a fence per se. NO HUNTING. The shush of the interstate off past the windbreak. The pasture's crows standing at angles, turning up patties to get at the worms underneath, the shapes of the worms incised in the overturned dung and baked by the sun all day until hardened, there to stay, tiny vacant lines in rows and inset curls that do not close because head never quite touches tail. Read these.

[Anonymous No.15721961]

>>15715480
>book starts with two pages of extremely dense atmospheric prose that takes you an hour to parse

[Anonymous No.15722001]

>>15717455
Hello? Based department?

[Anonymous No.15722025]

>>15721946

Sounds as though he read the opening of Suttree and thought hey that's good.

Of course CM had probably read the opening of Under Milk Wood and thought hey that's good.

So it goes.

[Anonymous No.15722076]

>>15716653
If you're going to cite novels that kick off with the MC's conception, you ought to give a shout-out to the ur-example, Tristram Shandy.

On a more homely plane, Bukowski starts off in the middle of things, as you might say, in more than one short story.

---

>Barney got her in the ass while she sucked me off; Barney finished first, put his toe in her ass, wiggled it, asked "how ya like that" she couldn't answer right then. she finished me off. then we drank an hour or so. then I switched to the bunghole. Barney took the mouth. after that, he went to his place. I went to mine. I drank myself to sleep.

― "No Stockings" (From "Tales of Ordinary Madness")

[Irish No.15722136]

>the