date: monday, feb 24 – 1969 venue: san quentin state prison adres: main street, san quentin price: best behavior time: mess hall Wannahave a poster? setlist big river…
32. Where now? Who now? When now? —Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable (1953; trans. Patrick Bowles) Part of my 100 Best First Lines from Novels project. First lines are…
30. The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. —William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984) Part of my 100 Best First Lines from…
29. Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu. —Ha Jin, Waiting (1999) Part of my 100 Best First Lines from Novels project….
28. Mother died today. —Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942; trans. Stuart Gilbert) Part of my 100 Best First Lines from Novels project. First lines are powerful. It’s the…
26. 124 was spiteful. —Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987) Part of my 100 Best First Lines from Novels project. First lines are powerful. It’s the author’s best chance to…
25. Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. —William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929) Part of my 100 Best First…
23. One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she,…
21. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. —James Joyce, Ulysses (1922) Part…
14. You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. —Italo Calvino, If on a winter’s night a traveler (1979;…
15. The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. —Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938) Part of my 100 Best First Lines from Novels project. First lines are…
13. Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested. —Franz Kafka, The Trial (1925; trans. Breon Mitchell) Part…
11. The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (Are you in trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard. —Nathanael West, Miss…
10. I am an invisible man. —Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952) Part of my 100 Best First Lines from Novels project. First lines are powerful. It’s the author’s…
7. riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs….
6. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. —Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877; trans. Constance Garnett) Part of my 100 Best…
5. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. —Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955) Part of my 100 Best First Lines from Novels project. First lines are powerful….