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yo
climber
NOT Fresno
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May 10, 2005 - 12:04am PT
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Good ones, Loom. My first lines are actually paragraphs.
"They were at work on the roof of the church. All day from above, from a sea of light where two white crosses crowned twin domes, voices came floating down as well as occasional pieces of wood, nails, and once in the dreamlike air a coin that seemed to flash, disappear, and then shine again for an endless moment before it met the ground. Beneath the eucalyptus branches a signboard covered with glass announced the Sunday sermon: Sexuality and God."
--Solo Faces, James Salter, best climbing novel ever.
"My legal name is Alexander Perchov. But all of my many friends dub me Alex, because that is a more flaccid-to-utter version of my legal name. Mother dubs me Alexi-stop-spleening-me!, because I am always spleening her. If you want to know why I am always spleening her, it is because I am always elsewhere with friends, and disseminating so much currency, and performing so many things that can spleen a mother. Father used to dub me Shapka, for the fur hat I would don even in the summer month. He ceased dubbing me that because I ordered him to cease dubbing me that."
--Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer, a whole novel narrated by a crazy Ukranian teenager.
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Loom
climber
the bathroom
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May 10, 2005 - 12:50am PT
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Good ones. I'm just trying to put together semi-cohesive "first paragraphs" from opening lines . . .
In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more.1 It was a pleasure to burn.2 As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.3 The day had gone by just as days go by. I had killed it in accordance with my primitive and retiring way of life.4 “What’s it going to be then, eh?” There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and DIm, DIm being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter basard though dry.5
1 Ernest Hemingway, In Another Country
2 Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
3 George Orwell , England Your England
4 Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf
5 Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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May 10, 2005 - 12:54am PT
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"The naked parrot looked like a human fetus spliced onto a kosher chicken."
?
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Loom
climber
the bathroom
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May 10, 2005 - 01:01am PT
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You can always count on Robbins for bizarre imagery.
Here's another semi-incoherent paragraph . . . but it's mainly O'Connor's fault.
Once upon a time in Westphalia, in the castle of Baron Thunder-ten-tronckh, there lived a young boy whom nature had endowed with the gentlest of dispositions. His soul was written upon his countenance. He was quite sound in his judgement, and he had the most straightforward of minds.1 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 Savior at the head of the grave and enough dirt to keep the dogs from digging it up.2
1 Voltaire, Candide
2 Flannery O’Connor, The Violent Bear It Away
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tokyo bill
Trad climber
tokyo
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May 10, 2005 - 01:04am PT
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"The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory. He's got esprit up to here." Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
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capndick4
Boulder climber
The upsidedown house in Lee Vining
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May 10, 2005 - 01:16am PT
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"wanna hear my two new favorite songs?"
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Claude
climber
where I'll end up
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May 10, 2005 - 04:31pm PT
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"In the beginning..."
"I couldnt; say where she's comin from, but i just met a lady named Dynamo-hum..."
Nah.
"In the beginning..." is better
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capndick4
Boulder climber
The upsidedown house in Lee Vining
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May 10, 2005 - 06:03pm PT
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"there she was, motor oil smeared all over her body"
guess who said it
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Wayne Riely
Big Wall climber
Bend, Oregon
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May 10, 2005 - 06:16pm PT
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After a few too many Gin and Tonic's
"Let me tell you what I really think of you" with a slur
Never turned out well from there!
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climberweenie
Trad climber
San Jose, CA
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May 10, 2005 - 06:17pm PT
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"This book is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only- DO NOT LET IT FALL INTO THE WRONG HANDS!
 The Spy's Guide: Office Espionage
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jfk
climber
Santa Barbara, CA
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May 10, 2005 - 06:52pm PT
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"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."
"Someone must have been spreading lies about Josef K, for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one morning."
Kafka, The Metamorphosis and The Trial
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davidji
Social climber
CA
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May 10, 2005 - 07:11pm PT
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Neil Gaiman's American Gods begins with this Caveat, and Warning for Travelers:
"This is a work of fiction, not a guidebook.
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It goes without saying that all of the people, living, dead, and otherwise in this story are fictional or used in a fictional context. Only the gods are real."
I'm sure that first line could apply to some of our guidebooks as well.
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Jaybro
Social climber
The West
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May 10, 2005 - 08:54pm PT
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I prefer this translation;
"After a night of unsettling dreams, Gregor Samsa awoke to find himself transformed into a large Vermin."
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climberweenie
Trad climber
San Jose, CA
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May 11, 2005 - 01:32am PT
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the full first sentence of Tale of Two Cities:
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going the other way- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insist on it being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."
I managed to get through my formal education without reading this, but finally read it last year. It does a much better job of conveying the zeitgest of the French revolution than any history textbook. Much more relevant than memorizing dates or who's head got chopped off.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 11, 2005 - 03:03am PT
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OK, back to climbing... where did these come from?
1) "The mountain had been there a long time."
2) "I first met Don Jensen at the begining of our sophmore year at Harvard."
3) "Straddling the top of the world, one foot in China, and the other in Nepal, I cleared the ice from my oxygen mask, hunched a shoulder against the wind, and stared absently down the vastness of Tibet."
4) "I was born in Innsbruck; the Hills looked down into my craddle and I must have inherited my love for them, for my father loved to wander among the mountains."
5) "Like every man, I remember my boyhood, and many of the plans I laid down for the future, and of what I would do when I was a grown-up man."
6) "On the 23d of July, 1860, I started for my first tour in the Alps."
7) "I have given my whole life to the mountains."
8) "This is the story of how, on May 29, 1953, two men, both endowed with outstanding stamina and skill, inspired by an unflinching resolve, reached the top of Everest and came back unscathed to rejoin their comrades."
9) " By the end of August, 1939, we had completed our reconaissance."
10) "The north face of the Grandes Jorasses is a difficult climb; but besides that it is a thing of beauty."
11) "The day fixed for our departure was close at hand."
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Leroy
climber
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May 11, 2005 - 07:21am PT
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Get in the van.We´re going to Yosemite. Studs 1977
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bhilden
Trad climber
Mountain View, CA
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May 11, 2005 - 04:15pm PT
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"Look, this climb is going to be hard enough without a lot of intrigue." Jonathan Hemlock (AKA Clint Eastwood), The Eiger Sanction.
Bruce
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Roger Breedlove
Trad climber
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
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May 11, 2005 - 04:19pm PT
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Well Ed, those may be opening lines, and may relate to climbing, but the modifier is "best." Those all suck:)
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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May 11, 2005 - 09:21pm PT
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Roger, I agree about the sucking, but the point is they start some seriously good climbing or climbing related adventures.... maybe first lines are over rated? I'll post the book citations later tonight.
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Dragon with Matches
climber
Bamboo Grove
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May 11, 2005 - 10:35pm PT
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Hey Ed - the Hermann Buhl reference is really cool.
I don't have the book with me, but I love the part where he falls asleep while riding his bicycle home from Switzerland (after pedalling from Innsbruck to the Piz Badille, helping a van driver deliver some milk to earn his lunch, soloing the North Face, and then trying to ride back home all night so he could work on Monday) and falls into the river.
Talk about "in a push." That ascent was about fifty years before its time. Buhl = badass.
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