Famous First Words

AW7 A La Recherche du Temps Perdu–Marcel Proust
(Excuse the highschool French)

Absynthetic, correct on AW2.

MoosieGirl, the shortness of the sentence in AW7 can be seen as ironic, considering it’s the beginning of the first novel of a long (and famous) series, and the author was known for his page-spanning, complex sentences.

Some of you are fast! Congratulations cher3. AW7 is indeed the first sentence of Marcel Proust’s “Du cote de chez Swann”, the first novel in the series “A la recherche du temps perdu.”

Why I’m at it, is AW4 Chandler’s “The Big Sleep?”

Da Ace posted:

Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light.

Alfred Bester, Fondly Fahrenheit. One of the most magnificent uses of language I have ever read. :slight_smile:
– Sylence


If a bird doesn’t sing, I’ll wait until it sings.

  • Tokugawa Ieyasu

cher3, right again on “The Big Sleep.”

AW6 is drivin’ me nuts. Oh well, here are a couple more:

c31: 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.

c32: 3 May. Bistritz. - Left Munich at 8:35 P.M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but
the train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got from the train and the little I could
walk through the streets.

AW3 sounds like one of the gospels in the New Testament but I’m not sure which one. Logically it would be Matthew, I guess. Not the King James Version, though!

Since I’m sitting at my desk at work here are a couple of technical books:

P16: “C is a general-purpose programming language.” (Obviously this could be the start of many books, but there’s an obvious favorite.)

P17: “a \a\ n. pl a’s or as \az\ often cap often attrib 1 a: the 1st letter of the English alphabet” (The original has a lot of different typefaces but I’m all thumbs at UBB.)

After a little thought, AW3 is beginning to sound like the Gospel According to St. Luke instead. Am I in the ballpark?


“pluto … a seriously demented but oddly addictive presence here.” – TVeblen

cher3: Would it help if I told you that AW6 are the words of a certain Dr. Sheppard?

c32: 3 May. Bistritz. - Left Munich at 8:35 P.M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but the train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got from the train and the little I could walk through the streets.

Dracula, by Bram Stoker.

pluto: for AW3, close, but no cigar.

pluto: for AW3, correct on the second guess. Gospel according to St. Luke

Yay, somebody finally recognized Howards End!

Time for a clue on the Mason City one: Political novel. Very famous. I’m surprised this was the last one to be solved.

c31: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce.

And now for the next bunch:

FP6: An easterly is the most disagreeable wind in Lyme Bay – Lyme Bay being that largest bite from the underside of England’s outstretched south-western leg – and a person of curiosity could at once have deduced several strong probabilities about the pair who began to walk down the quay at Lyme Regis, the small but ancient eponym of the inbite, one incisively sharp and blustery morning in the late March of 1867.

FP7: You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.

FP8: In the hospital of the orphanage – the boys’ division at St. Cloud’s, Maine – two nurses were in charge of naming the new babies and checking that their little penises were healing from the obligatory circumcision.

FP9: Here beginneth auspiciously the first part of this work. Question the first. Whether the belief that there are such beings as witches is so essential a part of the Catholic faith that obstinately to maintain the opposite opinion manifestly savours of heresy.

FP10 (For you, pluto): There were crimson roses on the bench; they looked like splashes of blood.


I think apathy, depression, irony, and confusion are damned fine ways to view a world going to hell.
– Cynthia Heimel

FP8: In the hospital of the orphanage – the boys’ division at St. Cloud’s, Maine – two nurses were in charge of naming the new babies and checking that their little penises were healing from the obligatory circumcision.

The Cider House Rules, John Irving.

How 'bout these?

t1: “They’re out there.”
t2: “The beet is the most intense of vegetables.”
t3: “One spring day, in the hour of an uncommonly warm sunset in Moscow at Patriarch Ponds two citizens appeared.”

Arnold and Fretful: Right and right.

Okay, is AW6 “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” by Agatha Christie?

Fretful Porpentine:

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

…but when you get blue, and you’ve lost all your dreams, there’s nothing like a campfire and a can of beans!

Dang, beaten to Frankenstein, both as a use, and as a guess…

Oh, well. More for you to chew on:

T6: ‘At three-thirty A.M. on the night of June 5, 1992, the top telepath in the Sol System fell off the map in the offices of Runciter Associates in New York City.’

T7: ‘The telephone rang as I was chewing the final bite of the last American cheese Sandwich I ever ate.’


Eschew Obfuscation

Tengu:

I know that’s Phil Dick, and I’m pretty sure that it’s Ubik (I could check, but that’s just cheating…

…but when you get blue, and you’ve lost all your dreams, there’s nothing like a campfire and a can of beans!