Sunday, February 19, 2006

Here and There

—There has appeared an interesting list of "100 best first lines from novels" here, and, in response, a list of "best last lines." I'll give it some thought, but I'm not sure I could better the first list (the second is still growing). I think I might add the opening sentence of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye: "The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of the Dancers." And I would certainly add, from Tom Sawyer:
"Tom!"
No answer.

"Tom!"

No answer.
It's not a novel, but "Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres" from Caesar's Gallic War is a pretty famous opening.

—I finished my review of Ursula Schattner Rieser's L'araméen des manuscrits de la mer Morte. I am told that it will appear in the August 2006 issue of Journal for the Study of Judaism.

—I wanted to give a shout-out to Danny Zacharias for producing a nifty Unicode keyboard for Hebrew transliteration, available here. I used it in producing the review mentioned above; worked like a charm. Thanks, Danny.
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2 comments:

  1. Jim Davila2/20/2006 02:39:00 PM

    Here's one of my favorite opening lines:

    "All right. He's dead. Go ahead and talk to him."

    Greg Egan, Distress

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  2. Andrew Criddle2/20/2006 02:42:00 PM

    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 or endings to the turning of the wheel of time. But it was a beginning.

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