{"id":9981,"date":"2017-12-01T17:55:34","date_gmt":"2017-12-01T06:55:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=9981"},"modified":"2017-12-08T18:18:20","modified_gmt":"2017-12-08T07:18:20","slug":"46-great-opening-lines-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=9981","title":{"rendered":"46 Great Opening Lines: 14"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Swish! It is the wind, let loose.<br \/>\nSwash! It is the rain, falling in torrents.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Opening lines, &#8216;Dr Trifulgas&#8217;, Jules Verne (1884), translator unknown<\/p>\n<p>This story in French is called &#8216;Frritt-Flacc&#8217;, the sound of the hurricane and the torrential rain it brings. Dr Trifulgas is a rich old doctor who demands exorbitant fees from his patients, or else they get no service. In the end, his greed brings him down when he least expects it. It&#8217;s a short horror story, but not scary enough to stop me reading it. (I scare easily.)<\/p>\n<p>The opening lines invited me to keep reading, contradicting the advice that a writer should never start with the weather.<\/p>\n<p>And by coincidence, as I write this, torrential rain that has threatened all afternoon has finally begun to fall. I&#8217;m not making this up. Fortunately I don&#8217;t have to go out with my dog, his lantern, and Dr Trifulgas.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_9989\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9989\" style=\"width: 339px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-9989\" src=\"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Frritt-Flacc-illustration-G.-Droux.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"339\" height=\"500\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-9989\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Illustration by G. Roux for Frritt Flacc, Jules Verne<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>*<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Swish! It is the wind, let loose. Swash! It is the rain, falling in torrents. Opening lines, &#8216;Dr Trifulgas&#8217;, Jules Verne (1884), translator unknown This story in French is called &#8216;Frritt-Flacc&#8217;, the sound of the hurricane and the torrential rain it brings. Dr Trifulgas is a rich old doctor who demands exorbitant fees from his &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=9981\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;46 Great Opening Lines: 14&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1088,157],"tags":[241,26,1149,156,1148,1150,1144,716,2,246,21,3,270],"class_list":["post-9981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-46-great-opening-lines","category-french-literature-and-translation","tag-19th-century-literature","tag-art","tag-dr-trifulgas","tag-french-literature","tag-frritt-flacc","tag-george-roux-illustrator","tag-jules-verne","tag-literary-translation","tag-literature","tag-opening-lines","tag-postaday","tag-translation","tag-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9981"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9993,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9981\/revisions\/9993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}