Greatest first chapter and line of all time?

dr gonzo

This is a two parter question about what your favourite first chapter and first line from a book are. The line and chapter can be completely separate, the only reason i put them together is because they are so similar that two separate threads would be unnecessary.

Even though the idea of a great opening is identified more with film then with books ive read a few in my time that have had spectacular openings and i just wanted to see how diverse the answers would be because everyone requires different things from an opening chapter.

As a sort of addendum i threw on the question about the greatest first line because i'd actually love to see all the different ones people come up with.


Anyways ill get the ball rolling of course...

Chapter: For me it has to be Dracula, the entire first chapter is a rollercoaster ride and needless to say sets up the entire story. It has all the intensity, dread, mystery that you expect from Dracula and more. No matter how good some of the films were they cannot compare to this opening.

Line: My favourite opening line is probably Catch 22 "It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him"(Ok this is actually two lines) For anyone whos read the book im sure you'll agree that this perfectly sets up the humour of the story. For any who havent read it, its quite hard to explain so you should just go read it

sxt

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed" - The gunslinger

"Without the threat of punishment there is no joy in flight" - The woman in the dunes.

indough

the gunslinger wins it for me too

steerforth80

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.

one hundred years of soltitude

lordgoat

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.

Mardy Bum

John Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath' opening chapter is one of the greatest ever.

Bleak House's first chapter by Dickens is amazing too

Evan93

My favourite opening paragraph is from "A Tale Of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens: "[SIZE=+1]
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Such an amazing opening paragraph, which is accompanied with an amazing story. Probably Dickens' most critically acclamied novel, but it's opening lines bear testimony to the genius that was Charles Dickens
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Valmont

For me it is a tie between ^ Lordgoat's nomination and the first line from Lolita.

edit: A Tale of Two Cities definitely deserves an honourable mention!

Jay Pentatonic

"Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know."
-The Outsider by Albert Camus

Pretty much sums up the main character for the entire book!

Flash86

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. - George Orwell, 1984

Corkfeen

Strangely enough its Doctor Gonzo's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive...” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?”

dr gonzo

Corkfeen wrote: »

Strangely enough its Doctor Gonzo's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Im sure you can tell im not a big fan :P

Flash86, im cant believe i forgot that one, great choice.

skelliser

"The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new."

Murphy - Samuel Beckett


IMO the greatest line in english literature. Its just perfection.

Bog

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.

Adnerb666

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again", "Rebecca", by Daphne Du Maurier.

One of my all time favourite books, one of the most underrated classics. From the outset you are drawn into the secrets and shadows of Manderley and her mistress; Rebecca.

nomdeboardie

In before "It was a dark and stormy night" (Edward Bulwer-Lytton's "Paul Clifford")
Oops, this isn't After Hours? Sorry

I'll get my coat

Sergeant

"Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression."

Flann O'Brien - At Swim-Two-Birds.

Probably the best way to read the book itself.

Shelga

"When he was nearly thirteen my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow."

-To Kill A Mockingbird

Don't see how anyone couldn't like that book.

Sl!mCharles

'The sweat wis lashing oafay Sick Boy, he wis trembling.'
:cool:

sponsoredwalk

"Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

- Anna Karenina

- Leo Tolstoy

Dudley Smith

Aldous Huxley - The Doors of Perception (1954)

It was in 1886 that the German pharmacologist, Louis Lewin, published the first systematic study of the cactus, to which his own name was subsequently given. Anhalonium lewinii was new to science. To primitive religion and the Indians of the American Southwest it was a friend of immemorially long standing. Indeed it was much more than a friend. In the words of one of the early Spanish visitors to the New World, "they eat a root which they call peyote, and which they venerate as though it were a diety".

Mikhail Bulgakov - The Heart of a Dog (Собачье сердце) (1925)

Ooow-ow-ooow-owow! Oh, look at me, I'm dying. There's a snowstorm moaning a requiem for me in this doorway and I'm howling with it. I'm finished. Some bastard in a dirty white cap - the cook in the office canteen at the National Economic Council - spilled some boiling water and scalded my left side. Filthy swine - and a proletarian, too. Christ, it hurts! That boiling water scalded me right through to the bone. I can howl and howl, but what's the use?

What harm was I doing him, anyway? I'm not robbing the National Economic Council's food supply if I go foraging in their dustbins, am I? Greedy pig! Just take a look at his ugly mug - it's almost fatter than he is. Hard-faced crook. Oh people, people. It was midday when that fool doused me with boiling water, now it's getting dark, must be about four o'clock in the afternoon judging by the smell of onion coming from the Prechistenka fire station. Firemen have soup for supper, you know. Not that I care for it myself. I can manage without soup - don't like mushrooms either. The dogs I know in Prechistenka Street, by the way, tell me there's a restaurant in Neglinny Street where they get the chef's special every day - mushroom stew with relish at 3 roubles and 75 kopecks the portion. All right for connoisseurs, I suppose. I think eating mushrooms is about as tasty as licking a pair of galoshes . . . Oow-owowow . . .

Be||e

"People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles."

- Less Than Zero

- Bret Easton Ellis

Sl!mCharles

Be||e wrote: »

"People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles."

- Less Than Zero

- Bret Easton Ellis

+1, Great opening paragraph that is!

not bakunin

The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.

The Go-Between, L.P Hartley

Polynomial

Independence Day, by Richard Ford:

In Haddam, summer floats over tree-softened streets like a sweet lotion balm from a careless, languorous god, and the world falls in tune with its own mysterious anthems.

A great book.

blue_steel

Herman Melville: Moby Dick
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can....

George Orwell: Animal Farm
Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes. With the ring of light from his lantern dancing from side to side, he lurched across the yard, kicked off his boots at the back door, drew himself a last glass of beer from the barrel in the scullery, and made his way up to bed, where Mrs. Jones was already snoring....

Polynomial

Just for the poetry of the line:

IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

- Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

fillefatale

not bakunin wrote: »

The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.

The Go-Between, L.P Hartley

Lovely choice!

For me its from I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith:

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.

Perfectly in tune with the mood that the book is to follow, full of the eccentric wit of the heroine Cassandra.

pwd

Be||e wrote: »

"People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles."

- Less Than Zero

- Bret Easton Ellis

BEE talks about how much he likes that laconic opening line in Lunar Park, and that the openings of his following books tended to get more and more verbose.

Eliot Rosewater

Sergeant wrote: »

...Flann O'Brien - At Swim-Two-Birds...

To be honest, I think the whole first page is worthy of putting here!



HAVING placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. I reflected on the subject of my spare-time literary activities. One Beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely dissimiliar and inter-related only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter one hundred times as many endings.

Examples of three separate openings - the first: The Pooka MacPhellimey, a member of the devil class, sat in his hut in the middle of a firwood meditating on the nature of numerals and segregating in his mind the odd ones from the even. He was seated at his diptych or ancient two-leaved writing-table with inner sides waxed. His rough long-nailed fingers toyed with a snuff-box of perfect rotundity and through a gap in his teeth he whistled a civil cavatina. He was a courtly man and received honour by reason of the generous treatment he gave his wife, one of the Corrigans of Carlow.

The second opening: There was nothing unusual in the appearance of Mr John Furriskey but actually he has one distinction that is rarely encountered - he was born at the age of twenty-five and entered the world with a memory but without personal experience to account for it. His teeth were well formed but stained by tabacco, with two molars filled and a cavity threatened in the left canine. His knowledge of physics was moderate and extended to Boyle's Law and the Parallelogram of Forces.

The third opening: Finn Mac Cool was a legendary hero of old Ireland. Though not mentally robust, he was a man of superb physique and development. Each of his thighs was as thick as a horses belly, narrowing to a calf as thick as the belly of a foal. Three fifties of fosterlings could engage with handball against the wideness of his backside, which was large enough to halt the march of men through a mountain-pass

Pittens

IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

That would've been mine. An alien could read that line ( with his bable fish translator since you asked), knowing nothing about human affairs, and understand it as irony.

My favourite introduction in literature, though not a first line, is the introduction to Scrooge.

girvtheswerve

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.

-Robert Jordan, The Wheel of Time.

Polynomial

The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen:

The madness of an autumn praire cold front coming through. You could feel it: something terrible was going to happen. The sun low in the sky, a minor light, a cooling star. Gust after gust of disorder. Trees restless, temperatures falling, the whole northern religion of things coming to an end. No children in the yards here. Shadows lengthened on yellowing zoysia. Red oaks and pin oaks and swamp white oaks rained acorns on houses with no mortgage. Storm windows shuddered in the empty bedrooms. And the drone and hiccup of a clothes dryer, the nasal contention of a leaf blower, the ripening of local apples in a paper bag, the smell of the gasoline with which Alfred Lambert had cleaned the paintbrush from his morning painting of the wicker love seat.

Livvie

It was the day my grandmother exploded.

Iain Banks, The Crow Road.

jhayden

Pittens wrote: »

That would've been mine. An alien could read that line ( with his bable fish translator since you asked), knowing nothing about human affairs, and understand it as irony.

My favourite introduction in literature, though not a first line, is the introduction to Scrooge.

Taking about aliens

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

HG Wells War of the World.

padraig_f

"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."

- Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger

fenris

"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea."

Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy