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54 great opening lines: 23

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
‘Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

*****

In my younger and more vulnerable years I went alone to see Robert Redford in The Great Gatsby.  It was slow and misty but dramatic enough.  I’ve never heard the song ‘What’ll I do?’ without returning in my mind to that movie theatre.

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54 great opening lines: 22

There was once a sly old fox with nine tails, who was very curious to know whether his wife was true to him:  so he stretched himself out under a bench, and pretended to be dead as a mouse.

Mrs Fox, Brothers Grimm (Trans. unknown)

*****

I’m presently translating a few fairy tales and for inspiration have been going through a book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.  When I read this opening line I laughed and read it again.

I’ve found another version of the story entitled How Mrs Fox Married Again, which gives more of a clue about the plot than the simpler Mrs Fox.

MrsFox

Illustration by Walter Crane, found in Project Gutenberg.

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54 great opening lines: 21

When Gregor Samsa awoke from troubled dreams one morning, he found that he had been transformed in his bed into an enormous bug.

Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka (Trans. by Stanley Appelbaum)

*****

Sometimes I have to read a piece of literature in order to teach it.  This one for example.  I’d avoided Metamorphosis all my life until the day a student emailed to ask for help writing an essay on it.  We agreed to meet a week later, to give me time to read it.  Which I did, feeling again the long flying cockroaches of my childhood scratching their way across my bare feet or arms.  At the end of the week I received another email from her, from the other side of the world.  She had left the country, written her essay without my help, then emailed me to say ‘Forget it’.  Too late, I’d read it, I’d squirmed my way to the end.

But one good thing came out of the exercise:  I discovered its great opening line.

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Ailsa’s photo challenge: green

Ailsa has posted the most awesome green photos, and I’m guessing that since she’s Irish she must have St Patrick’s Day in mind, coming up on 17th March.  And so I have a King Parrot in mind:  the orange and the green.

He used to visit us on our back deck.  Unlike Edgar Allan Poe’s Raven which I blogged about yesterday, the King Parrot never came rapping or tapping at my chamber door, nor at my window lattice.  But he would fly in under the pergola and sit on the clothes horse as though wanting to join us for morning tea.

King Parrot, Canberra
King Parrot, Canberra

 

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54 great opening lines: 20

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore –
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping – rapping at my chamber door.

The Raven, Edgar Allan Poe

*****

Today I’m working on a translation of a story in which a raven stands guard in a widow’s window, terrifying passers-by.  As I search for the right words to interpret the story, the lines of Poe’s The Raven go round and round in my head.

Gustave Doré created the image in my header.  It’s his interpretation of Poe’s lines.
This and more of Doré’s illustrations for The Raven are available here.

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54 great opening lines: 19

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez

*****

Some books have a title that tempts me to turn to the blurb;  this is one of them.  And then, even better, it has this great opening line.  So I began reading.  About half-way through I put the book down.  It lost me.

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54 great opening lines: 18

Define the colour red without using the words ‘colour’ or ‘red’ in your answer, and without making reference to any other colours.

The Life of Brian (Or Lack Thereof), Maree Spratt

*****

The first line stopped me momentarily from reading the second line.  My mind filled with words in easy obedience to the command;  red is my favourite.

I found it at the beginning of a short story in Award Winning Australian Writing 2009, a story I’ve used several times to provoke teenagers needing to write something creative.  Brian, the protagonist, competes with contributors on Yahoo Answers, waking one morning to read this challenge.

The author, Maree Spratt, won a Young Writers Award for it;  when I get my students to read this story out loud, they don’t have to act to get the tone right.

Header courtesy of http://nice-cool-pics.com/img-glamourous-red-apple-slices-4627.htm

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54 great opening lines: 17

There was once an art critic, I have been told, who had a sure way of identifying ancient Maltese art objects:  he found himself crying before them.

Lest Innocent Blood be Shed, Philip Hallie

*****

The story of a village in the south of France, Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, where every household and farm sheltered or hid refugees between 1941 and 1944, under penalty of death.  In four years, thousands of Jewish refugees were saved;  only nineteen were lost.

Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France, looking over the railway line on which refugees arrived from 1941-1944
Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France, looking over the railway line on which refugees arrived from 1941-1944
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Ailsa's travel photo challenge: International Women's Day

Women, East Africa, 1941.

Some looked away from the camera, like the Sudanese women in the header photo. (They’re bare-breasted;  to be family-friendly I give you only their heads.)

Some happily faced it.

Bint (Arabic for daughter or girl), 1941

Others hid and peaked from behind a door curtain.

Village, Kantara, Egypt, 1941

The photos are from my father’s album, brought back after serving in the Middle East in 1941/42.

It was Ailsa’s idea to find photos reflecting women’s interests for International Women’s Day.  Please look at her post, too.

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54 great opening lines: 16

The woman carried the bag with the axe and maul and wedges;  the man had the billy and clean tucker-bags;  the cross-cut saw linked them.

Squeaker’s Mate, Barbara Baynton

*****

A late 19th-century Australian story about a tough pipe-smoking timber-getting woman whose back is broken when she is cutting down a tree.  The man in her life, Squeaker, is good for nothing but she, his mate, has a dog who’s more useful…