From Dickens to Melville, Tolstoy to Orwell, Nabokov to Bellow, what's your favorite opener?
One of my ALL TIME favorite first lines: ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ -
Of course, the next question is: Which translation?? (I like Fagles: "Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns")
A true epic! What if the Wilson translation, making our dear hero a “complicated” man?
I almost put that one...
“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”
Fear and Loathing? Classic! Who can read that sentence and NOT want to know what comes next?
"And what about you, Fellow Flâneur? Have you a favorite opener?"
"It can be deadly...the white light"
"It's the simple things in life that bind us together in our humanity."
Both from "the collection" by Ron Callison
One of my ALL TIME favorite first lines: ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ -
Of course, the next question is: Which translation?? (I like Fagles: "Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns")
A true epic! What if the Wilson translation, making our dear hero a “complicated” man?
I almost put that one...
“We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.”
Fear and Loathing? Classic! Who can read that sentence and NOT want to know what comes next?
"And what about you, Fellow Flâneur? Have you a favorite opener?"
"It can be deadly...the white light"
"It's the simple things in life that bind us together in our humanity."
Both from "the collection" by Ron Callison