comparing the opening sentences of modern novels

[Anonymous No.19986609]

>A notice was pinned to the front door of every house in the Palace Estates, calling for an emergency Homeowners Association Meeting.

>Reese was twenty-six the first time a man hit her—as a man will sometimes hit a woman: not to injure her, necessarily, but to show her something.

>My mother wanted to be with her boyfriend.

>Kate and I had been secretly sleeping together for almost a month when I noticed a bruise on her upper thigh.

>On the day Vivek was born, Chika had held the baby in his arms and stared at that scar.

>From above, the heart of the city is easy to see.

Who you got, /lit/?

[Anonymous No.19986612]

>>19986609
I've only read Detransition, Baby. It was good.

[Anonymous No.19986647]

>>19986612
Could you elaborate? What did you find good about it?

[Anonymous No.19986687]

>>19986647
No.

[Anonymous No.19986741]

>>19986609
REESE IS NOT A WOMAN'S NAME AAAAAA

[Anonymous No.19986764]

>Reese was twenty-six the first time a man hit her—as a man will sometimes hit a woman: not to injure her, necessarily, but to show her something
A man almost never hits a woman to injure her; of what use is an inured one? It's always to communicate to her that she's done something wrong.

[Anonymous No.19986775]

>>19986687
You should have said yes and then refused to. Saying no just makes it seem like you're too stupid.

[Anonymous No.19987063]

>>19986609
>21st century fiction

[Anonymous No.19988054]

>>19986609
Here are some more opening sentences: I tried not to pick the stereotypical OP's pic-related kind of books, because of course it's too easy to shit on contemporary literature (and I don't like that stuff either). Some of the following is better, at least rather different, others not much (judging opening sentences doesn't say much sometimes but still). What do you think?

>My name is Ruben Blum and I’m an, yes, an historian.
(Joshua Cohen, The Netanyahus)

>I started writing books about and for my friend George Miles because whenever I would speak about him honestly like I am doing now I felt a complicated agony beneath my words that talking openly can't handle.
(Dennis Cooper, I Wished)

>Though it's been years, I remember visiting this cemetery with my mom to lay costume jewelry on the family plot.
(Jon Lindsey, Body High)

>AHMIR: It was the way he just threw his body away.
(B.R. Yeager, Negative Space)

>You live vicariously through celebrities, I live vicariously through the guys who fuck my wive.
(Jackie Ess, Darryl)

>I think it is possible to track the onset of middle age exactly.
(Hari Kunzru, Red Pill)

>The day Li arrived in Taipei for a ten-week visit, he and his parents went to a surgeon to discuss his chest deformity.
(Tao Lin, Leave Society)

>WELCOME: Welcome to Doodyland! Faggotland's your land!
(Derek McCormack, Castle Faggot)

>They invited me into their home and within a week I was discussing its telegenic potential with a reality show producer responsible for nothing I'd heard of.
(Fiona Alison Duncan, Exquisite Mariposa)

>You never think about nerves and breathing.
(Atticus Lish, The War for Gloria)

>After death, bureaucracy takes the wheel.
(Elvia Wilk, Oval)

>The new boy's from *private school*--that, we're sure of.
(Lars Iyer, Nietzsche and the Burbs)

>Consensus was the world was ending, or would begin to end soon, if not by exponential environmental catastrophe then by some combination of nuclear war, the American two-party system, patriarchy, white supremacy, gentrification, globalization, data breaches, and social media.
(Lauren Oyler, Fake Accounts)

>The evening I met Seth at the restaurant, I took the Number One train downtown from Harlem to Canal Street and walked.
(Emily Segal, Mercury Retrograde)

>The elevator is crowded.
(Tamara Shopsin, LaserWriter II)

>Like my mother once had been, I was manic, hyperaware of the world, but without the same mooring.
(Stephanie LaCava, The Superrationals)

>Got into a thing with the Fresh Grocer lady over coffee filters.
(Sean Thor Conroe, Fuccboi)

>A pebble, lodged between the grooves underneath Arda's left sneaker, scratched like a metronome on the pavement as she made her way down another city block.
(Ogden Nesmer, Eggplant)

[Anonymous No.19988056]

>>19988054
I'm not saying the above is good, some of it (the hip female writers, who are made out to be so good, and I've heard it said, if men get published less and less, some women writers will step up and start writing the good and interesting stuff, but too often it's still on a continuum with more mainstream, bland chick stuff) still befits the current tiring "trends", even if overall the work is okay or good.

[Anonymous No.19988312]

>>19988054
Now post excerpts from the middle of all those books please

[Anonymous No.19988645]

Bump

[Anonymous No.19988650]

Opening paragraphs would be more interesting than sentences.

[Anonymous No.19988730]

>>19986609
None of these are any good and they all demonstrate how contemporary novels are more or less the same because their authors all go to the same MFA programs and have the same editors and publishers and market, so their writing gets ironed and flattened out into the most polished and predictable prose history has ever seen.
>>A notice was pinned to the front door of every house in the Palace Estates, calling for an emergency Homeowners Association Meeting.
Stupendously boring, probably by intent
>>Reese was twenty-six the first time a man hit her—as a man will sometimes hit a woman: not to injure her, necessarily, but to show her something.
Pandering shock-value that kind of works in that lane but the punctuation usage is dreadful and amateurish
>>My mother wanted to be with her boyfriend.
Kinda funny, though I guess it's not supposed to be.
>>Kate and I had been secretly sleeping together for almost a month when I noticed a bruise on her upper thigh.
Meh
>>On the day Vivek was born, Chika had held the baby in his arms and stared at that scar.
Meh
>>From above, the heart of the city is easy to see.
Bland and pretentious.

[Anonymous No.19988779]

>>19988650
this. dostoevsky opening lines aren’t that great either

[Anonymous No.19988821]

>>19988054
>>My name is Ruben Blum and I’m an, yes, an historian.
Actually genius

[Anonymous No.19988841]

>>19986764
>Despite hate-fucks that led to a hate-courtship that built into a hate-relationship, six months passed before Stanley finally hit Reese and split her lip. The question of motive gets dicey, however. Why that moment, and not so many others?
>Even a mediocre lawyer could establish certain basic facts: Stanley bought Reese a particular pair of expensive designer boots, and she, knowing it would anger him, exchanged them for a pair she preferred. Then, in an attempt to deceive him, she purchased a pair of cheap" knockoffs that resembled the original pair, which she endeavored to pass off as the authentic item. Whereupon Stanley immediately recognized the forgery and took her attempted deception as an insult. How dumb did she think he was that he wouldn't notice the difference between some ordered-online-and-sent-from-China ill-fitting glorified socks, and the eight-hundred-dollar Stuart Weitzman signature suede Iowland above-the-knee boots that he had personally picked out and bought for her? It wasn't bad enough that she exchanged his present? Then she went and faked like she hadn't, like she thought he was too stupid to know what he'd held in his hand? No. Fuck that. Slap the bitch.
>But in the way relationships get twisted, in how lovers—or rather, combatant—develop their own private language of aggression, the Boots Incident was even more complicated than it seemed. In truth, Stanley already knew that Reese would hate the boots when he picked them out. He bought them for that exact reason—to spend money on a luxury designer item that she could never afford on her own, but that she also couldn't enjoy, in order to see the conflict that such a purchase would raise in her.
>...

[Anonymous No.19988842]

>>19986764
>>19988841
>In her own passive-aggressive calculus, Reese meant for Stanley to be deceived when she bought the knockoffs. She meant for him to easily recognize the difference between the designer boots and the poor imitations. She meant to show him that he was just as disposable to her as she was to him, that she had him figured out, and if he fucked with her in any way that she didn't find, at minimum, sexy and fun, she'd take his money and lie to his face. This unexpected declaration of her power, which they both understood to be communicated as an insult according to the rules of their ritualized unfriendliness, is why he slapped her.
>But in ways that both of them felt but neither could fully admit, the entire saga of boots that led to the slap was a form of pageantry. Beneath it lay Reese's own sense of womanhood. The reason Stanley hit Reese reversed everything both of them wanted to be true: Stanley hit Reese because she wanted him to hit her.

[Anonymous No.19989121]

>>19988841
>>19988842
I actually like the prose in this one but these books are all the same: crass, histrionic, sex-obsessed, ugly, and projecting all of the above. There's no beauty and no soul.

[Anonymous No.19989131]

>>19986764
what if you want to kill her

[Anonymous No.19989134]

>>19986609
all bad
the first is okay

[Anonymous No.19989141]

>>19988054
>>My name is Ruben Blum and I’m an, yes, an historian.

[Anonymous No.19989147]

>>19988779
doestoevsky novels arent that great either

[Anonymous No.19989154]

>>19988054
>>You live vicariously through celebrities, I live vicariously through the guys who fuck my wive.

[Anonymous No.19989193]

>>19989147
tru dat

[Anonymous No.19990013]

bump

[Anonymous No.19990117]

>19988054
>I started writing books about and for my friend George Miles because whenever I would speak about him honestly like I am doing now I felt a complicated agony beneath my words that talking openly can't handle.
I like this one

[Anonymous No.19990144]

How does lit rate my opening sentence?
>niggers, there could be niggers anywhere he thought to himself

[Anonymous No.19991325]

What about closing sentences?

[Anonymous No.19991969]

>>19991325
>"There could be niggers anywhere," he thought, "but not here."

[Anonymous No.19991994]

>>19986609
Has anyone noticed the absolute disgusting abuse of pronouns in modern novels. Modern novels use pronouns without declaring the noun it is linked to, to withhold context and make the prose look sophisticated and difficult to read. For example, starting the book with:
>It was a rainy day
>It was that day when I saw him standing
instead of something like:
>The day was rainy.
>On coming my way home from college, I saw John Doe standing, or My watch showed February 27th, when I saw John Doe standing, etc.
It's not just pronouns, but modern novels have a habit of declaring some information without context, and then giving the context at maybe at the end of the chapter, or worse, the book.

I don't see this with classics, which arguably are harder to read. Classics from what I have seen, are very precise and efficient with their prose. The complicated prose serves not to confuse the reader, but to convey the exact meaning as well as feeling the author intends. This is where I see modern authors go wrong. They think conveying information while deliberately withholding context is very clever and sophisticated.

[Anonymous No.19992000]

>The Interim - Wolfgang Hilbig

In Nuremberg, in the ambivalent light of a so-called boutique, something had suddenly happened to him: he’d been going down the broad, shallow steps to the lower level, rounding a narrowing turn in what was a sort of spiral staircase, his tread inaudible on the carpet, its rhythm irregular because the steps with their differing widths threw him off, when abruptly he felt an attack from behind.

>Aliss at the Fire - Jon Fosse

I see Signe lying there on the bench in the room and she’s looking at all the usual things, the old table, the stove, the woodbox, the old paneling on the walls, the big window facing out onto the fjord, she looks at it all without seeing it and everything is as it was before, nothing has changed, but still, everything’s different, she thinks, because since he disappeared and stayed gone nothing is the same anymore, she is just there without being there, the days come, the days go, nights come, nights go, and she goes along with them, moving slowly, without letting anything leave much of a trace or make much of a difference, and does she know what day it is today?

[Anonymous No.19992046]

>>19992000
jon fosse fucking sucks and i'm tired of pretending otherwise

[Anonymous No.19992061]

>>19986609
Seeing this makes me hate literature and books in general, can anyone rekindle my love?

[Anonymous No.19992063]

this is pretty useless in any case, but specialy useless if you don't compare against non-modern novels

[Anonymous No.19992073]

>>19992061
no, go find another hobby

[Anonymous No.19992077]

>>19992061
Read this