When I was in high school English we were subjected to a film starring, IIRC, Clifton Fadiman, telling us what a wonderful novel we were going to study. He emphasized this by comparing its first sentence with the first sentences of other famous works. To this day these first sentences are locked in my memory. So I thought I’d play a little game. I’ll list the first words, you identify the work.
First, Mr. Fadiman’s examples. (No. P3 is the one we were going to study.)
P1. “Call me Ishmael.”
P2. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be in want of a wife.”
P3. “You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.”
That was easy, wasn’t it?
If you know an answer, post it. (Quick! Before someone else does!) If you’d like to play just post the first sentence of a favorite book, poem, story, etc., and let us guess. There are no rules. You can be obscure as you like, but give us a sporting chance.
Due to the likelihood of simulposts I suggest you don’t use simple numbers to identify your submittals. I used P1, P2, P3, etc., because P is the first letter of my username.
Some of my favorite novels (after P2, which is my all-time favorite):
P4. “A throng of bearded men, in sad-coloured garments and grey steeple-crowned hats, inter-mixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.” (Actually this is the first sentence following a loooong introductory chapter. This seemed fairer.)
P5. “A Chancery judge once had the kindness to inform me, as one of a company of some hundred and fifty men and women not labouring under any suspicions of lunacy, that the Court of Chancery, though the shining subject of much popular prejudice (at which point I thought the judge’s eye had a cast in my direction), was almost immaculate.” (This is from the preface. The actual first sentence is simply, “London.”)
P6. “A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment.”
Two more – one is a gimme, the other is, I think, pretty tough:
P7. “Marley was dead: to begin with.”
P8. “As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a Den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and, as I slept, I dreamed a dream.”
Have fun!
“pluto … a seriously demented but oddly addictive presence here.” – TVeblen
- Austen is my favorite and this is one of my all time favorite books