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/lit/ - Literature

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5935148 No.5935148 [Reply] [Original]

Post first sentences of books for others to name. I'll start.

>Maman(Mother) died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know.

>> No.5935150

>>5935148
>Maman(Mother) died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know.
Da Stranger

>> No.5935153

国境の長いトンネルを抜けると雪国であった

>> No.5935159
File: 25 KB, 560x374, lol.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5935159

>Call me Ishmael.

>> No.5935160

>>5935148
See the Child.

>> No.5935163

>>5935153
>国境の長いトンネルを抜けると雪国であった
“Snow Country” by Yasunari Kawabata

>> No.5935167

>>5935150
Good job, you are correct, that was from The Stranger.

>> No.5935172

>>5935148
>Do not wish, Nathanael, to find God other than everywhere

>> No.5935173

The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended.

>> No.5935176

>>5935159
Edward Klein, "The Amateur".

>> No.5935184

>>5935160
>>5935160
now, fuck.

>> No.5935187

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

>> No.5935190

>>5935187
War and Peace in the Middle East.

>> No.5935197

>>5935187
Anna Karenina?

>> No.5935204

ITT google

>> No.5935219

>>5935204
speak for yourself

>> No.5935221

>>5935148
>post first sentences
>posts two sentences

>> No.5935226

>>5935176
Sorry, no.

>> No.5935228

>>5935173
East of Eden?

>> No.5935255

>>5935228
nope

>> No.5935258

Grey, bloated and pocked, the bodies lined the silt-laden shoreline for as far as the eye could see.

>> No.5935262

>>5935173
That movie that /tv/ circlejerks harder than we do Joyce, DFW, and Pynchon combined.

>> No.5935278

>>5935262
i've no idea what /tv/ likes to circlejerk but it sounds like you could be right.

>> No.5935285

>>5935226
It was a joke about conservatives views on Obama's background. Nevermind. We all know it's Moby Benis.

>> No.5935299

>>5935187
"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. Stonelover, Mount Tabor Ltd., 1880).

>> No.5935303

Let's see if you know your meme books:
In all history, nothing is so surprising or so difficult to account for as the sudden rise of civilization in Greece.

>> No.5935313

>>5935303

Probably some clueless book written by some retarded progressive

>> No.5935314

>>5935278
2001

>> No.5935348

>>5935303
History of Western Philosophy?

>> No.5935380

>>5935148
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.

>> No.5935386

>>5935303
guns, germs & steel?

>> No.5935394

>>5935380
Finnegans Wake. I've got the entire first two paragraphs memorized. I'm not quite sure why I did that

>> No.5935413

>>5935160
Blood Meridian.

>> No.5935451

>>5935348
yep

>> No.5935469

>>5935380
>>5935394

Yeah that one was way too easy...

>> No.5935480

Another meme book, although not as often discussed on /lit/ as it used to be:
"I was 37 then, strapped in my seat as the huge 747 plunged through dense cloud cover on approach to Hamburg airport."

>> No.5935496

The sound of the Gion Shōja bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sāla flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline.

>> No.5935635

>>5935380
There is no first sentence is Finnegans Wake

>> No.5935756

>>5935480
Survivor?

>> No.5935774

>>5935756
no

>> No.5936783

>>5935451
Thanks, I only glanced through it once but I guess that was enough of a great opener to vaguely remember

>> No.5936795

>Now these ashes have grown cold, we open the old book.

>> No.5936820

>>5935148
that fucking shit translator needs to make their mind up, why even bother putting 'maman' and then translating it after in brackets? just fucking translate it, this isn't a goddamn anime with TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: KAWAII MEETS CUTE or what the fuck ever
god i'm mad

>> No.5936824

>>5936820
Sorry, I added that in myself. It was for people who don't know what maman means and there weren't any context clues to help.

>> No.5936837

>>5936824
who the fuck can't figure out what maman means? and it's a goddamn guessing game anyway

>> No.5936851

>>5936837
It's capitalized so someone who didn't know what it means without context would probably assume it's a name and not think they need to figure out what it means.

>> No.5936853

>>5935148
A more correct translation is "Today, Maman died." It may seem minute, but it's rather important because it sets the tone for the whole novella since the death of his mother is interrupting his day and not the focus of the day. Matthew Ward fucking up dat Camus.

>> No.5936874

>>5935480
norwegian wood?

>> No.5936886

There was a high, shrill commotion along the troposphere.

>> No.5936892

>>5936795
Malazan

>> No.5936930

>>5935148
>In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

>> No.5936936

>>5935258
House of Chains

Nice to see a Steven's fan on here

>> No.5936941

>>5936874
too old

>> No.5937123

¿Encontraría a la Maga?

>> No.5937167

>>5936886
a shriek billows amongst the clouds

>> No.5937623

>>5937123
riyueala puto cortazar

>> No.5937645

OY FUCKING CUMSWAPPER

>> No.5937795

>>5936853
I never thought about that. Thanks anon, that makes that first passage even better. How did you know? Do you speak French?

>> No.5938170

>>5936874
>nope
yes!

>> No.5938178

Third meme book: "At the sunset hour of one warm spring day two men were to be seen at
Patriarch's Ponds. "

>> No.5938233

>>5938178
Looks like The Master and Margarita.

>> No.5938323

>>5937795
Haha, nah, I don't speak French. In fact, the only way I even learned about that difference is because I used the first line of The Stranger (the one translated by Matthew Ward) for this exact same type of thread about a year ago and someone called me out on it and then linked me to a short paper on the importance of the wording. So yea, identical situation and it just kind of stuck with me.

>tfw taking French this semester tho
Woop woop, only 2 weeks away

>> No.5938330

>>5938323
Well thanks and good luck anon, hope you have fun, maybe try duolingo at the same time, I always hear good things about it.

>> No.5938352

Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery.

>> No.5939217

bump

>> No.5939228

>I AM very sensible what a weakness and presumption it is to reason against the general humour and disposition of the world.

>> No.5939866

"In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together."

Just finished this one.

>> No.5939890

>>5938352
DaVinci Code?

>> No.5939964

I'm in a building surrounded by heads and bodies when a screaming cuts across the sky.

>> No.5939976

Tuesday morning I awoke at that pale and lifeless hour when night is almost gone but dawn has not yet come into its own.

>> No.5939987

>>5939866
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter?

>> No.5939997

>>5939987
Yup! Really enjoyed it, especially how it starts with the short segment dedicated to Singer and Antonapoulous.

>> No.5940006

>>5939890
Fuck, I actually read DV code but can't remember the first sentence for shit...

>>5939976
Thirdydurke

>> No.5940180

>Everything around it moves, as if just this one time and one time only, as if the message of Heraclitus has arrived here through some deep current, from the distance of an entire universe, in spite of all the senseless obstacles, because the water moves, it flows, it arrives, and cascades; now and then the silken breeze sways, the mountains quiver in the scourging heat, but this heat itself also moves, trembles, and vibrates in the land, as do the tall scattered grass-islands, the grass, blade by blade, in the riverbed; each individual shallow wave, as it falls, tumbles over the low weirs, and then, every inconceivable fleeting element of this subsiding wave, and all the individual glitterings of light flashing on the surface of this fleeting element, this surface suddenly emerging and just as quickly collapsing, with its drops of light dying down, scintillating, and then reeling in all directions, inexpressible in words; clouds are gathering; the restless, jarring blue sky high above; the sun is concentrated with horrific strength, yet still indescribable, extending onto the entire momentary creation, maddeningly brilliant, blindingly radiant; the fish and the frogs and the beetles and the tiny reptiles are in the river; the cars and the buses, from the northbound number 3 to the number 32 up to the number 38, inexorably creep along on the steaming asphalt roads built parallel on both embankments, then the rapidly propelled bicycles below the breakwaters, the men and women strolling next to the river along paths that were built or inscribed into the dust, and the blocking stones, too, set down artificially and asymmetrically underneath the mass of gliding water: everything is at play or alive, so that things happen, move on, dash along, proceed forward, sink down, rise up, disappear, emerge again, run and flow and rush somewhere, only it, the Ooshirosagi, does not move at all, this enormous snow-white bird, open to attack by all, not concealing its defenselessness; this hunter, it leans forward, its neck folded in an S-form, and it now extends its head and long hard beak out from this S-form, and strains the whole, but at the same time it is strained downward, its wings pressed tightly against its body, its thin legs searching for a firm point beneath the water’s surface; it fixes its gaze on the flowing surface of the water, the surface, yes, while it sees, crystal-clear, what lies beneath this surface, down below in the refractions of light, however rapidly it may arrive, if it does arrive, if it ends up there, if a fish, a frog, a beetle, a tiny reptile arrives with the water that gurgles as the flow is broken and foams up again, with one single precise and quick movement, the bird shall strike with its beak, and lift something up, it’s not even possible to see what it is, everything happens with such lightning speed, it’s not possible to see, only to know that it is a fish —

>> No.5940184

>>5940180
>an amago, an ayu, a huna, a kamotsuka, a mugitsuku or an unagi or something else — and that is why it stood there, almost in the middle of the Kamo River, in the shallow water; and there it stands, in one time, immeasurable in its passing, and yet beyond all doubt extant, one time proceeding neither forward nor backward, but just swirling and moving nowhere, like an inconceivably complex net, cast out into time; and this motionlessness, despite all its strength, must be born and sustained, and it would only be fitting to grasp this simultaneously, but it is precisely that, this simultaneous grasping, that cannot be realized, so it remains unsaid, and even the entirety of the words that want to describe it do not appear, not even the separate words; yet still the bird must lean upon one single moment all at once, and in doing so, must obstruct all movement: all alone, within its own self, in the frenzy of events, in the exact center of an absolute, swarming, teeming world, it must remain there in this cast-out moment, so that this moment as it were closes down upon it, and then the moment is closed, so that the bird may bring its snow-white body to a dead halt in the exact center of this furious movement, so that it may impress its own motionlessness against the dreadful forces breaking over it from all directions, because what comes only much later is that once again it will take part in this furious motion, in the total frenzy of everything, and it too will move, in a lightning-quick strike, together with everything else; for now, however, it remains within this enclosing moment, at the beginning of the hunt.

>> No.5940329

The year of grace 1866 was made memorable by a marvelous event which doubtless still lingers in men's minds.

>> No.5940342

>>5940329

Somethign by Verne. Can't remember which. Maybe First men in the moon.

What's the point of these threads when everyone can just google?

>> No.5940398

'After the terrible events and nightmare adventures we endured on Altdorf, my companion and I fled southwards, following no path more certain than that chosen for us by blind chance'.

I'm going to laugh if someone gets this.

>> No.5940404

>>5940342
What's the point of googling if it only robs you of satisfaction?

>> No.5940408

>>5940404

What's the point of anything?

>> No.5940415

>>5940408
The point is found on the end of a blunt

>> No.5940422

>>5940342
i don't care much for the guessing aspect, but i like evaluating first sentences on their own merits
it's fun to see all these beginnings

>> No.5940426

>>5940422

Fair enough. Here's the first line of the book my missus got me for xmas.

>Good and evil have always existed.

>> No.5940427

> 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.

This is too damn easy.

>> No.5940430

to wound the autumnal city.

>> No.5940433

>>5940427

I fucking hate that book, and that is a shitty first line.

And yes, it's ridiculously easy

>> No.5940437

>>5940427

The Ratchet in the Cry

>> No.5940438

>>5940430

Dhalgren

Also pretty easy. And a shitty book

>> No.5940502

It was a dark and stormy night

>> No.5940507

It was a dank and swaggy night

>> No.5940523

>>5935299
lol this is like my favorite opening

especially considering the endnote

>> No.5940545

>>5940427

>Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

>> No.5940567

> You better not never tell nobody but God.

>> No.5940594

>>5938178
>meme book
Is it? Why?

>> No.5940673 [DELETED] 

>>5935303
CORN
O
R
N

>> No.5940800

>>5940342

On the right track, but not quite right

>> No.5940869
File: 22 KB, 640x480, 4900854280.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5940869

"When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home."

>> No.5940872
File: 2 KB, 125x100, carlos.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5940872

“The terror, which would not end for another 28 years-if it ever did end-began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.”

>> No.5940876

>>5935148
heh read this just yesterday. or the day before yesterday maybe, i dont know.