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/lit/ - Literature

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3526209 No.3526209 [Reply] [Original]

Best Title of All Time:

Best Opening Line of All Time:

I'll start!

>Best Title: Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
>Best Opening: 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.

>> No.3526220

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

>> No.3526227

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

>> No.3526231

"The Trial"
Somebody must have slandered Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.

>> No.3526234

armo virumque cano

>> No.3526242

>Breakfast of Champions or The Sound and the Fury
>It was a pleasure to burn.

>> No.3526243

Best Title:
>Infinite Jest

Best Opening Line:
>I am...


not even kidding

>> No.3526261

>Best Title: Gravity's Rainbow
>Best Opening: "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."

>> No.3526275

>>3526243

>Best Opening Line:
>>I am..

you are so easily impressed it's embarrassing

>> No.3526280

>>3526261
Interestingly, the opening line of Gravity's Rainbow is much better.

>> No.3526281

The Sound and the Fury

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

>> No.3526284

>Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism & Schizophrenia
>It is at work everywhere, functioning smoothly at times, at other times it fits and starts. It breathes, it heats, it eats. It shits and fucks. What a mistake to have ever said the id.

^same

>> No.3526288

>>3526280
for you

>> No.3526290

>>3526280
>Interestingly, the opening line of Gravity's Rainbow is much better.
No it isn't. It's a shitty tryhard babby's first opening line.

(Not that 'GR' doesn't have good lines; but the first one definitely isn't one of them.)

>> No.3526330

>>3526284
nice

>> No.3526340

>>3526290

>shitty tryhard
>babby's first

Become the very thing you're criticizing in the same fucking sentence? Classic.

>> No.3526353

confederacy of dunces

It began as a mistake.

>> No.3526359

>>3526340
>Become the very thing you're criticizing in the same fucking sentence? Classic.
When in doubt, call into question the qualifications of an anonymous shitposter on an imageboard. Way to win the argument with logic, chump.

>> No.3526360

I'll cheat and post the first paragraph, it's The Mother by Gorky

Every day the factory whistle bellowed forth its shrill, roaring, trembling noises into the smoke-begrimed and
greasy atmosphere of the workingmen's suburb; and obedient to the summons of the power of steam, people
poured out of little gray houses into the street. With somber faces they hastened forward like frightened
roaches, their muscles stiff from insufficient sleep. In the chill morning twilight they walked through the
narrow, unpaved street to the tall stone cage that waited for them with cold assurance, illumining their muddy
road with scores of greasy, yellow, square eyes. The mud plashed under their feet as if in mocking commiseration. Hoarse exclamations of sleepy voices were heard; irritated, peevish, abusive language rent the air with malice; and, to welcome the people, deafening sounds floated about--the heavy whir of machinery, the dissatisfied snort of steam. Stern and somber, the black chimneys stretched their huge, thick sticks high
above the village.

Best title is The Diary of a Superfluous Man

>> No.3526368

You niggers arguing look like fucking babies. It's a simple goddamn thread that you have shit all over cuz you each got huge dicks up your asses. You're not fucking intelligent so shut up and stop spamming this thread with your faggot lovemaking.

>> No.3526370

The Weaver of Crowns.

On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait fot the boat the bishop was coming on.

>> No.3526374

>>3526360
I hope that's better in the Russian.

>> No.3526385

the best title for me is hard to translate. it's Paa Gjengrodde Stier by Knut Hamsun. (means something like "on overgrown paths")
it just sounds so extremely nostalgic in Norwegian.

>The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

and then cyberpunk was born.

>> No.3526392

>>3526359

>win the argument
>implying there was any

You are tripping over youself with angst.

>> No.3526395

>>3526209

Best Title: The Sun Also Rises

Best Opening: I am a sick man...I am a wicked man.

>> No.3526398

>>3526395
dostoevsky, innit?

>> No.3526401

>>3526398

Yessir, Notes From Underground.

>> No.3526557

'I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream' is a title that often enters my mind at any time.

I don't have a good opening to share.

>> No.3526582

>Stranger in A strange Land

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

>> No.3526656

>>3526209
The Dead Lady of Clown Town


"It walked in the woods."

>> No.3526663

>>3526209
Nice PKD selection OP. He had a knack for good titles.

>Title
Utopia
>Opening
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

>> No.3526666

I'm a big fan of

"Sweating and nauseated, Father Emilio Sandoz sat on the edge of his bed with his head in what was left of his hands."

>> No.3526673

Best title: A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man

Best opening line:
Snowballs have flown their arcs, and starred the sides of outbuildings...

>> No.3526776

Always loved " His Dark Materials.

First line of Les Racines Du Mal by Dantec, here is my bad translation.

> Andreas Schaltzmann started to kill because his stomach was rotting.

>> No.3526880

>best title
a farewell to arms
>best opening
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way

>> No.3526904

>"Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman.

>> No.3526996

>>3526368
What book is this from?

>> No.3527001

Lolita

They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did.

>> No.3527074

Not everybody knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw in with my spade; but first it is better to speak of my friendship with John Divney because it was he who first knocked old Mathers down by giving him a great blow in the neck with a special bicycle-pump which he manufactured himself out of a hollow iron bar.

>> No.3527136
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3527136

>>3527074

Yes!

>> No.3527231

'Atlus shrugged' is a great title, to say absolutely nothing of the text itself. It's simply a very fine title.

'I have no mouth & I must scream' also works well.

The best titles in my opinion, are the ones that conjure powerful images, like these two. For another example see: 'My dungeon shook' by James Baldwin.

>> No.3527255

>>3527231
>My dungeon shook
Euphemism for butt-fucking?

>> No.3527280

>>3527255
Nope.avi

It's to do with the black civil rights movement and black nationalism, but that's a massive over-simplification.

A further simplification would be to say it's simply a letter from one man to his nephew.

It also has a great opening line:

"Dear James: I have begun this letter five times and I have torn it up five times."

>> No.3527333

>>3526209
>Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said
my nigga

>> No.3527439

That's an interesting title. What exactly does Dowland have to do with the book, though?

>> No.3527479

Always thought Paradise Lost was an awesome title.
Although it might be a huge cliché, "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.", is a great opening.

>> No.3527581

Burroughs is good for titles generally. The Ticket That Exploded, Naked Lunch, The Last Words Of Dutch Schultz

>It was a pleasure to burn.

>> No.3527608

Title:
>A Clokwork Orange

Opening Line:
>In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

Opening Paragraph:
>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.

>> No.3527617

>>3527608
good call, those closing lines are classic as well.

>And as I sat there, brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.
>Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning —
>So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

>> No.3527623

>>3526281

Murphy.
My nigga.

>> No.3527636

>>3527617
A tale of 2 cities closing line is also one of my favorites. Fuck, AToTC is just a damn good book all around.

>> No.3527659

Best title -
>Blind Man with a Pistol

Best opening line -
>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.

>> No.3527674

Best title:

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

>> No.3527800

Best Opening Paragraph: Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, 'whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of bitches,' by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, 'Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,' and he would have meant the same thing."

Best Title: The Sun Also Rises

>> No.3527821

>>3526395
>Best Title: The Sun Also Rises

Great title indeed.

>> No.3527827

>>3526281
Probably my favorite opening line, too.

>> No.3527829

>>3526996
Infinite Jest.