Monday, August 28, 2006

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night

YYYYYYYYYYYCan you identify these opening lines of books?
88888888888888888(If you must google, google sparingly)

1. In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.

2. Francis Marion Tarwater's uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up.

3. If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me...

4. It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.

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

6. I have never begun a novel with more misgiving.

7. There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.

8. All this happened, more or less.

9. It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.

10. 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...

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

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

13. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

14. I'm dead. (non-fiction)

15. Life changes fast. (non-fiction)

16 Comments:

Blogger Jack Steiner said...

Some of these sound familiar, but they aren't popping up. I am going to have to think about this for a bit.

August 28, 2006 at 2:18 PM  
Blogger rabbi neil fleischmann said...

Thanks for responding. As the email alert came that you were commenting, I was reading your comment of enough said on McAryeh's blog.

August 28, 2006 at 2:21 PM  
Blogger SS said...

4. The Bell Jar
10. Catcher in the Rye?
12. Pride and Prejudice (which I've never read, but there is just so much talk about this line that I know)
13. Tolstoy - is it Anna Karenina or War and Peace? (I've only read Anna Karenina, but again it's one of those talked about lines)

That's what I've got for now.

August 28, 2006 at 2:21 PM  
Blogger rabbi neil fleischmann said...

4,10, 12, 13 - all correct ss. well done.

August 28, 2006 at 2:30 PM  
Blogger Shoshana said...

I can't win with your quizzes - ss got the ones I knew :(

August 28, 2006 at 3:23 PM  
Blogger Steg (dos iz nit der šteg) said...

7 i think is one of the Narnia books... Voyage of the Dawn Treader, maybe?

August 28, 2006 at 4:27 PM  
Blogger rabbi neil fleischmann said...

Shoshana, a hint - I'm relatively sure you read #5. I don't remember the exact quote but at the end of this book one guy says to the other something like - you're better than the whole lot of them.

Steg - correct! Is that a great line or what?

August 28, 2006 at 4:48 PM  
Blogger Shoshana said...

Thanks for the hint, but I still had to Google it, so I won't give it away yet. I did read it, but wasn't incredibly impressed. Especially since I missed it in high school and went back on my own time to read it (which isn't bad in general, because that's the way I also read Catcher in the Rye, which I loved).

August 28, 2006 at 8:54 PM  
Blogger rabbi neil fleischmann said...

Hints

A certain reader must be away because I was expectng him/her to get #s 2 &3 by F.O. and S.B. respectively.

#9 is an early book by the author of the Brooklyn Follies.

#15 is from the non-fiction book of this past year that got probably got the most hype. A fellow blogger - that I hold in high esteem - recently had a post about books and mentioned having read and liked this one.

August 29, 2006 at 4:36 AM  
Blogger Uri Cohen said...

#11 is 1984.

The others that I knew were already guessed. And without googling, I'm clueless on the rest.

It's the extension effect, which I just read about (http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/node/1713). Here's an excerpt:

>
For centuries we have relied on books and other external memories, but the Internet, through the ease of searching, has invaded our actual thought processes. There are things I think I know, but I don't. What I know is how to instantly retrieve them when my global external memory is attached. As I become reliant on this kind of extended identity, losing my Internet connection is like a lobotomy—I feel an almost physical sense of loss as a portion of my intelligence is removed. I've become dependent on a new brain center that isn't located inside of my body.
>

August 29, 2006 at 7:13 AM  
Blogger rabbi neil fleischmann said...

Yes Uri, you got it - 1984. A great opening line, I think.

I thought that quote was amazing. An extended brain - powerful thought. Maybe scary too.

August 29, 2006 at 11:21 AM  
Blogger rabbi neil fleischmann said...

#6 was written by S.M. in 1944 and was made into a movie more than once - including a version starring Bill Murray. That version, in 1984, billed itself as "the story of one man's search for himself."

#8 is a surreal tale of becoming "unstuck in time" written by author K.V. in 1969. It was loyally adapted into a film by George Roy Hill in 1972.

August 29, 2006 at 11:34 PM  
Blogger Uri Cohen said...

Okay. With those last hints, I can identify them.

#6 is The Razor's Edge, by Somerset Maugham.

#8 is Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut.

Here's my favorite passage from The Razor's Edge (copied from http://www.junkfoodforthought.com/quotations/T.htm) --

D'you remember how Jesus was led into the wilderness and fasted forty days? Then, when he was a-hungered, the devil came to him and said: If thou be the son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But Jesus resisted the temptation. Then the devil set him on a pinnacle of the temple and said to him: If thou be the son of God, cast thyself down. For angels had charge of him and would bear him up. But again Jesus resisted. Then the devil took him into a high mountain and showed him the kingdoms of the world and said that he would give them to him if he would fall down and worship him. But Jesus said: Get thee hence, Satan. That's the end of the story according to the good simple Matthew. But it wasn't. The devil was sly and he came to Jesus once more and said: If thou will accept shame and disgrace, scourging, a crown of thorns and death on the cross thou shalt save the human race, for greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Jesus fell. The devil laughed till his sides ached, for he knew the evil men would commit in the name of their redeemer.

-- W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
The Razor's Edge, 1944
Chapter 5, iv.

August 30, 2006 at 1:50 PM  
Blogger rabbi neil fleischmann said...

Thanks Uri. That's apowerful piece.

Perhaps you know 14 - the story of a black man's Jewish mother.

August 30, 2006 at 4:53 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

the color of water? not sure if that is the title, but i did read that book for sure, and loved it.
b

August 30, 2006 at 7:47 PM  
Blogger rabbi neil fleischmann said...

correct bobette!

August 31, 2006 at 1:01 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home