Most readers are familar with the openings to Lolita,Anna Karenina, Moby Dick, Gone With the Wind, The Stranger, A Tale of Two Cities, etc. All those books’ openers are classic, but old. What are some great openers from books published in the last 30 years or so? Some of my favorites:
“I read a book one day and my whole life was changed” from *The New Life *by Orhan Pamuk. Every reader can relate.
“A white Pomerian named Fluffy flew out of a fifth story window in Panna, which was a brand new building with the painter’s scaffolding still around it.” from Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra. Not life changing, but I admire the audacity of killing a dog in the first sentence.
Gravity’s Rainbow: A screaming comes across the sky…
The whole first chapter of Don DeLillo’s Underworld which describes the NY Giants-Brooklyn Dodgers playoff game that ended with the “Shot Heard Round the World”. It later got released as its own standalone novella Pafko at the Wall.
I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies - Infinite Jest by DFW. Always stayed with me for some reason.
The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallow subcategory - actually nothing special - but for first chapters as a whole Neal Stephenson is awesome - maybe the best author I’ve ever read for setting his stall out early doors.
It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future - Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe. Maybe only see its greatness in hindsight, once the book has been read.
Going back to the classics though, is there anything that can top
I once knew a girl who thought she was God. She didn’t give sight to the blind or raise the dead. She didn’t teach anything, not really, and she never told me anything I probably didn’t already know. On the other hand, she didn’t expect to be worshiped, nor did she ask for money. Given her high opinion of herself, some might call that a miracle. I don’t know, maybe she was God. Her name was Sati and she had blond hair and blue eyes.
I. to wound the autumnal city.
So howled out for the world to give him a name.
–From Samuel R. Delany’s novel “Dhalgren”, published in 1974. I remember reading those cryptic words and thinking that someone had forgotten to capitalize the first line. They hadn’t. But in order to make those words understandable, you must get through more than 800 pages of dense prose, about a post-apocalyptic world where the rules have all changed and symbols are upside down. And throughout the entire fascinating journey through this book, you realize that nothing has really changed at all.
II. "What’s it going to be then, eh?"
–From “A Clockwork Orange” by Anthony Burgess, a novel which changed my entire way of thinking twice: once when I read the American version, and once again, when I read the original version.
III. On a certain day in June 19__,a young man was making his way on foot northward from the great City to a town or place called Edgewood, that he had been told of but had never visited. His name was Smoky Barnable, and he was going to Edgewood to get married; the fact that he walked and didn’t ride was one of the conditions placed on his coming there at all.
–From “Little, Big” by John Crowley, one of the greatest writers alive today, and true to the nature of the events and places in this book, once you enter Edgewood it is doubtful that you will ever really be able to leave again, only find some new turning, some new corridor, some new door you hadn’t noticed before, but once entered, puts you right back where you began.
I like them complicated, dense and detailed–and well-written.
I want to be so famous that movie stars hang out with me and talk about what a bummer their lives are. I want to beat up photographers who catch me in hotel lobbies with Winona Ryder. I want to be implicated in vicious rumors about Drew Barrymore’s sex parties. And, finally, I want to be pronounced DOA in a small, tired LA hospital after doing speedballs with Matt Damon.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have given the guy who pumped my stomach my phone number, but who cares, my life is over anyway.” Carrie Fisher, The Best Awful (sequel to Postcards from the Edge; the line is actually based on something from Fisher’s life.)
“I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I was overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.” Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle
“The fortune teller and her grandfather went to New York City on an Amtrak train, racketing along with their identical, peaky white faces set due north.” Anne Tyler, Searching for Caleb
“Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano Buendía había de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo” Cien Años de Soledad by Gabriel García Marquez****
I don´t know how it sounds translated but that is one of the best lines ever… another one is the ending of the same book
