First lines

Friends, I hacked into Big Dope’s computer again and found where he is trying to start a new novel. I suspect it is somewhat autobiographical. He has made notes of some of his favorite opening lines, to wit:

“Call me Ishmael”

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

way.”

“I am an invisible man.”

“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.”

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía

was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to
discover ice.”

“Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without

having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.”

“Mother died today.”

“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.”

“Elmer Gantry was drunk.”

You better not never tell nobody but God.

“‘To be born again,’ sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens,

‘first you have to die.’"

“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some

advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.”

“It was a pleasure to burn.”

“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he

had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.”

“Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board.”

“For a long time, I went to bed early.”

“All this happened, more or less.”

“I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man.”

“Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them

hitting.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

 Pretty nice, eh? Well get a load of some that Big Dope is considering:

 “There are some things, like a long, nasty Southern Comfort puke on a hot summer night, that can change a person’s life forever.”

“The first time she ever said ‘I love you,’ was one minute to the second after he went down on her and many years later he realized she might have been unduly influenced.”

“‘Heilige Scheiße,’ the Commandant yelled as he grasped the arms of his chair, adding in English, “maybe you are the master race.”

Personally, I think J.J. (I call him "J.J." and he calls me "The
thing we fear") would find it appalling, simply appalling. - C.W.

I don’t know, friends. What do you think?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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