Your Friday Afternoon Literature Challenge: Name the original opening line

[muriel_volestrangler]

For anyone who reads it, Fred Clark's excellent demolishing on the Slacktivist blog of the crappy Left Behind rapture-and-antichrist novels is back, with volume 3. And since Nicolae: The Rise of Antichrist starts with an appalling sub-parody of the start of A Tale of Two Cities ("It was the worst of times; it was the worst of times.&quot , Fred takes his mind off the rock-bottom standard of the coming writing with his own suggestions of rip-offs of opening sentences that would be better (certainly funnier, though Jenkins never aims consciously for humour). How many originals can you name? (a knowledge of the plot isn't that necessary; what the rest of the review says should be good enough, because it's about the bizarre recap at the start of the novel, which emphasises how awful all the plot at writing is).

The review: NRA: It was the worst of books

The list:

It was a dark and stormy apocalypse.

You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of Tribulation Force, but that ain’t no matter.

In a plane in the sky there lived a pilot.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single Antichrist in possession of global power, must be in want of two assistants.

This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly odd white men on a planet which was dying fast.

Call me Nicolae.

There was a man called Rayford Eustace Steele, and he almost deserved it.

Real, true Christians are all alike; and every sinner is sinful in the same way.

God is a sick god … god is a spiteful god. I believe there is something wrong with god’s liver.

Only the real, true Christians would have believed, in the last years of the 20th century, that this world was being watched by a divine intelligence greater than humanity’s; that as people busied themselves about their various concerns they were being scrutinized and studied, even more narrowly than a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

You better not never tell nobody ’bout God.

A screaming comes across the phone.

Hattie, light of my life, fire of my loins.


I can do five, with two more for which I think I can name the author, but not the work. And that last one is one I'll go 'doh!' over when I look it up (or read the comments). No web searches, of course.

[panader0]

1. "god is a sick god" Notes From the Underground- Fyodor Dostoevsky

I'll try for a few more in a minute.

[SCantiGOP]

5. name gives it away

Marley was dead: in the beginning.

Very odd construction to start.

[XemaSab]

2. Let's see:

The original Bulwer-Lytton book

Huck Finn

The Little Prince

Something by Jane Austin

Dunno

Moby Dick

Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Anna Karenina?

Notes from the Underground

Dunno the next couple

Lolita


What do I win?

[panader0]

3. My respect. Okay, it's not worth much.......

[XemaSab]

4. Hey, respect from one person is good

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Very good, but I don't think you're right on number 3

I've never read The Little Prince, but according to this online version, it starts "Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest."

I think number three is The Hobbit: ""In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit".

The 'Something' is Pride and Prejudice. I can't name the Bulwer-Lytton either. Yes, you're right on Anna Karenina (I thought Tolstoy, or certainly Russian, but couldn't say what). I won't reveal the others yet (#5 ("This is a tale of a meeting of &quot and #11 ("You better not never tell...&quot only differ by one letter from their originals, which is pretty impressive of Fred; that gives a clue to #5, really - a science-fiction writer with a sense of humour).

[dimbear]

8. A science fiction writer with a sense of humor? That narrows it down pretty fast.

Is his middle name Aloysius?

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. No; another clue - he was well known enough to be one of the standard DU avatars

[pinboy3niner]

12. Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

The one-letter difference is in the substitution of 'odd' for 'old.'

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. Yes, that's it

That, and the 'but'/'bout' one, fit very neatly into Fred's ongoing criticisms of the Left Behind books - that the 2 main characters (who are fairly obviously substitutes for the egos of the 2 joint authors) don't act as likeable humans, but as selfish ego-driven preeners, and that, having 'seen the light' and being 'born again', they do nothing to persuade others to do the same, or to save others from the coming apocalypse they 'know' will happen. They just sit back and think of themselves - and yet the readers are meant to see them as heroes.

[Iterate]

17. I met him once in 1970 or so.

He gave me some advice I should have taken, but I'll be damned if I can remember what it was.

Still slightly haunted by that, I now have a chance to live in a tiny 200 euro apartment in Dresden that's owned by a British woman whose mother was in Coventry on the 14th of November 1940, but who remembers nothing out of the ordinary for that day. Maybe I'll move, or maybe just say "So it goes".

Otherwise, I haven't forgotten my pledge to wander unannounced into your Memorial Day, but it can't be this year. Maybe next.

[cliffordu]

7. "A screaming comes across the phone"

Gravity's Rainbow.

"A screaming comes across the sky."

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. Well done! (nt)

[UTUSN]

9. There was an Army post in the South where a murder was committed.

Or something like that.

[pinboy3niner]

13. "There was a man called Rayford Eustace Steele, and he almost deserved it."

C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader...

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

[pinboy3niner]

14. "You better not never tell nobody ’bout God."

Alice Walker, The Color Purple...

"You better not never tell nobody but God. It'd kill your mammy."

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. Yep, that's it (nt)

[LeftishBrit]

18. OK (without looking at anyone else's answers)

(1) Bulwer Lytton: It was a dark and stormy night (not sure which book, but the line has achieved notoriety!)

(2) Mark Twain: Huckleberry Finn: You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of Tom Sawyer, but that ain’t no matter.

(3) In a plane in the sky there lived a pilot. (Don't know)

(4) Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice.It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

(5) This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly odd white men on a planet which was dying fast. (Don't know)

(6) Herman Melville: Moby Dick. Call me Ishmael

(7) C.S. Lewis. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.

(8) Leo Tolstoy:Happy families are all alike; and every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

(9) God is a sick god … god is a spiteful god. I believe there is something wrong with god’s liver. (Don't know)

(10) Only the real, true Christians would have believed, in the last years of the 20th century, that this world was being watched by a divine intelligence greater than humanity’s; that as people busied themselves about their various concerns they were being scrutinized and studied, even more narrowly than a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. (Don't know)

(11) Alice Walker: The Colour Purple. You better not never tell nobody but God.

(12) A screaming comes across the phone. (Don't know)

(13) Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. Weel done, all right, and, to collect together the others that other people have got:

1) is from Paul Clifford, which I'm sure would have disappeared without trace if the start hadn't been so melodramatic:

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents - except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/it-was-a-dark-and-stormy-night.html

3) is The Hobbit: "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit"

5) is Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions: "This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast.

9) (which no-one has got yet) is Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground: "I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I'm an unattractive man. I think there is something wrong with my liver."

10), one of the few I could get, is H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds:

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.

Bonus: Richard Burton, reading the intro to the musical version of WotW:

12) is Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow: "A screaming comes across the sky."