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100 best opening lines

post #1 of 16
9/25/10 at 5:13pm
Thread Starter 
http://americanbookreview.org/100BestLines.asp

Good to see my favorite made it onto this, at 30. I have heard complaint that The Gunslinger (the man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed) is snubbed. Any other observations?

I would have thought they could fit Orhan Pamuk in there somewhere. "The silence of snow..." and all that.
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post #2 of 16
9/25/10 at 5:20pm
Was hoping to see Tristram Shandy on the list and was not disappointed (it's #19). In fact, might be time for another reread.

Other than that, not a bad list. Quite a few obvious choices sprinkled in there, but then again they're obvious for a reason.
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post #3 of 16
9/25/10 at 5:27pm
I've seen the first line of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on these lists before. I think it's usually a good choice.
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post #4 of 16
9/25/10 at 5:31pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chavez View Post
I've seen the first line of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on these lists before. I think it's usually a good choice.
Good call.
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post #5 of 16
9/25/10 at 9:58pm
I share Zhukov's affinity for NEUROMANCER, and I'm disappointed to see it's only ranked at 30#, considering that TIME MAGAZINE said it was one of the 100 best novels of the 20th century. 7th place or lower feels more appropriate an honor to bestow on a line like the famous 'dead-channel' sky-description. Something safely in the top 10. NEUROMANCER is an astounding work of unmatched genius, IMHO, and it remains probably the best book I've ever read (and I didn't particularly care for it the first time I read it either).

All in all though some good selections, and it reminds me of some reading I need to catch up on!

PS Fear and Loathing, good choice, though the section about the wave of the american dream cresting and rolling back is IMHO the truly immortal passage from that work
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post #6 of 16
9/25/10 at 11:24pm
A list precisely as arbitrary and meaningless as one might expect; less great opening lines than the opening lines of great books, if any rule could be said to be at work at all.
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post #7 of 16
9/25/10 at 11:40pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bushipunk View Post
A list precisely as arbitrary and meaningless as one might expect; less great opening lines than the opening lines of great books, if any rule could be said to be at work at all.
Yeah, I was going to mention that after looking through; IMO a "great opening line" should hook you, and foreshadow what's to come (which is why F&L's works so well). Which is a lot to ask for a mere sentence, but I think that it doesn't necessarily follow that the great opening lines ALL come from great books. Or that ALL great books have great opening lines.

I just looked at Cat in the Hat and it fails the "first line" test, though the first page is great:

Quote:
The sun did not shine.
It was too wet to play.
So we sat in the house all that cold, cold, wet day.
Now, if Suess had used commas instead of periods, we'd be onto something.
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post #8 of 16
9/26/10 at 3:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chavez View Post
Now, if Suess had used commas instead of periods, we'd be onto something.
Of course, they actually weren't consistent about that in the list, either. Some entries are actually several complete sentences (even though the first alone was good), whereas in other cases they quoted a single line that is great in context, but terribly ordinary on its own.

It's certainly not a list that makes you want to trust book reviews by its compilers.
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post #9 of 16
9/26/10 at 4:00pm
How about:
"You bitch! You killed me! You suck!"
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post #10 of 16
9/26/10 at 4:05pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bushipunk View Post
A list precisely as arbitrary and meaningless as one might expect; less great opening lines than the opening lines of great books, if any rule could be said to be at work at all.
I agree. For example, I LOVE Catch-22, but how exactly is "It was love at first sight" one of the 100 best opening lines of all time?
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post #11 of 16
10/7/10 at 8:43pm
Left off one of my favorites, from Roth's Sabbath's Theater:

"Foreswear fucking others or the affair is over."

Also, not that I expected to see it, but I've always been fond of Jame's Ellroy's Cold Six Thousand opener:

"They sent him to Dallas to kill a nigger pimp named Wendell Durfee. He wasn't sure if he could do it."

Eh, at least they recognized Adventures of Augie March.
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post #12 of 16
10/7/10 at 9:03pm
Number 50 is one of my favorites.

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974." —Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex (2002)
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post #13 of 16
10/14/10 at 11:50am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Evi View Post
I agree. For example, I LOVE Catch-22, but how exactly is "It was love at first sight" one of the 100 best opening lines of all time?
I thought of Catch-22 immediately when I clicked on the link but that opening is incomplete.

"It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him. Yossarian was in the hospital with a pain in his liver that fell just short of being jaundice. The doctors were puzzled by the fact that it wasn't quite jaundice. If it became jaundice they could treat it. If it didn't become jaundice and went away they could discharge him. But this being just short of jaundice all the time confused them. "
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post #14 of 16
10/14/10 at 11:58am
Yeah, you see that's awesome.

"It was love at first sight" on its own sounds like the opening to a Mills and Boon novel.
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post #15 of 16
10/14/10 at 5:38pm
Dickens' Christmas Carol handily beats out The Great Gatsby in terms of great opening lines:

"Marley was dead: to begin with."
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post #16 of 16
10/14/10 at 5:41pm
Definitely, Custer. And, while not necessarily my all-time favorite opening lines, I love this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Lovely Bones
My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.
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