Famous First Words

[rabbit1]

Famous First Words
Have you ever been so moved, amused, or provoked by the first line of a novel that it stayed in your memory long after you finished the book and put it back on the shelf? Here’s your chance to see just how many first lines you remember (or how many you can guess). Try to match each of the following opening lines with the correct novel.

1
“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”
a) Faust, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
b) Angels and Insects, A. S. Byatt
c) The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
d) Kiss of the Spider Woman, Manuel Puig


2
“All children, except one, grow up.”
a) Winnie the Pooh, A. A. Milne
b) Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Caroll
c) Madeline, Ludwig Bemelmans
d) Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie


3
“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.”
a) The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allan Poe
b) Dead Souls, Nikolay Gogol
c) Paul Clifford, by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton.
d) Bleak House, Charles Dickens


4
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
a) Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
b) Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
c) The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
d) The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton


5
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
a) Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
b) Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
c) Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
d) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tennessee Williams


6
“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, it was 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…”
a) Double Indemnity, James M. Cain
b) The Two Towers, J. R. R. Tolkien
c) All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
d) A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens


7
“Call me Ishmael.”
a) Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
b) Mumbo Jumbo, Ishmael Reed
c) Moby Dick, Herman Melville
d) The Letter of Marque, Patrick O’Brian


8
“Call me Jonah.”
a) Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
b) Moby Dick, Herman Melville
c) Catch-22, Joseph Heller
d) The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon


9
“I am a sick man ... I am a spiteful man.”
a) Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
b) Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak
c) The Misanthrope, Molière
d) Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky


10
“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
a) The Garden of Forking Paths, Jorge Luis Borges
b) Hopscotch, Julio Cortázar
c) One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
d) The Old Gringo, Carlos Fuentes


11
“The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended.”
a) Dune, Frank Herbert
b) 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke
c) Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
d) The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury


12
“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”
a) The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
b) To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
c) The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
d) The Outsiders, S. E. Hinton


13
“'To be born again,' sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, ‘first you have to die.’”
a) The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
b) The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
c) A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
d) The Serpent and the Rope, Raja Rao

[rabbit1]

:rabbit

1
Correct!
The correct answer: C The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
Your answer: C The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka

The opening lines of Franz Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis (1915) are among the most unsettling and the most famous in 20th-century literature. The detached tone with which Kafka describes Gregor Samsa’s metamorphosis into a gigantic insect helps to underscore the novel’s themes of helplessness and alienation.
2
Correct!
The correct answer: D Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie
Your answer: D Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie

A classic of children’s literature, Peter Pan (1904), by J. M. Barrie, tells the story of the little boy (Peter) who refuses to grow up. After Peter teaches Wendy and her younger brothers how to fly, the children go to Never-Never Land, where high adventure ensues. Peter Pan was originally published in 1904 as a play, and it was later made into a novel, various stage musicals, and an animated film.
3
Correct!
The correct answer: C Paul Clifford, by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton.
Your answer: C Paul Clifford, by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton.

“It was a dark and stormy night ... ,“ from Edward George Bulwer-Lytton’s novel Paul Clifford (1830), is perhaps the most notorious of opening lines, ridiculed by modern critics for its overwrought Victorian prose. The rudderless opening sentence has even given rise to an annual contest that challenges contestants to write the first line to a hypothetical (and presumably atrocious) novel.
4
Correct!
The correct answer: B Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Your answer: B Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice (1813), by Jane Austen, is the story of a family and its search for suitable husbands (with good fortunes) for the daughters. A keenly satirical portrait of the early 19th-century English upper classes, Pride and Prejudice practically defined the genre known as the “comedy of manners.”
5
Correct!
The correct answer: A Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
Your answer: A Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

Each unhappy family depicted in Anna Karenina (1875-1877) may be unhappy in its own way, but Leo Tolstoy’s psychological exploration into his characters’ torment and passion is so universally moving that many consider it the greatest novel ever written.
6
Correct!
The correct answer: D A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
Your answer: D A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

The litany of high-flown dualisms (“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ... ”) in the opening lines of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is parodied nearly as often as Paul Clifford’s “It was a dark and stormy night ... ” Still, this story of a man who discovers his conscience amidst the chaos of the French Revolution has remained one of Dickens’s enduring classics.
7
Correct!
The correct answer: C Moby Dick, Herman Melville
Your answer: C Moby Dick, Herman Melville

Even if you’ve never read Moby Dick; or, The Whale (1851), you may have heard the narrator’s introduction in the opening line: “Call me Ishmael.” Herman Melville’s epic tale of Captain Ahab’s obsessive quest for revenge against a great white whale, Moby Dick was a critical failure upon its publication, but it is now regarded as a classic of American literature.
8
Correct!
The correct answer: A Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
Your answer: A Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut

Self-consciously parodying the opening line of Moby Dick, Kurt Vonnegut opens Cat’s Cradle (1963) with the introduction, “Call me Jonah.” Of course, the Jonah of the Old Testament is no Ishmael; instead, he’s swallowed by a whale, a reference that Vonnegut uses to set the tone for his novel about the end of the world.
9
Correct!
The correct answer: D Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Your answer: D Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The nameless narrator of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel Notes from Underground (1864) begins his tale by confessing, “I am a sick man ... I am a spiteful man.” Published five years after Dostoyevsky’s release from political imprisonment in Siberia, the novel is a penetrating exploration into themes of alienation, free will, and morality.
10
Correct!
The correct answer: C One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
Your answer: C One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez

In One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), Gabriel García Márquez popularized the genre known as magical realism, a style that blends fantasy with realism. Even the novel’s opening line seems to blend the inescapable realism of a man’s execution with the victim’s whimsical memory of the time he went with his father “to discover ice.”
11
Correct!
The correct answer: B 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke
Your answer: B 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke

Although it sounds like the science-fiction world of a different planet, the “drought (that) had lasted ten million years” and “the reign of terrible lizards” take place on Earth, at least on the Earth as imagined in Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Clarke wrote the story of 2001 while motion-picture director Stanley Kubrick directed the celebrated film of the same name, but the two collaborated on both projects.
12
Correct!
The correct answer: C The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
Your answer: C The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger

The brash, defiant opening line of The Catcher in the Rye (1951) introduces the book that changed the lives of generations of American adolescents. J. D. Salinger’s only novel follows the misadventures of Holden Caufield, a 16-year-old boy who flunks out of boarding school and temporarily runs away to New York City. The Catcher in the Rye immediately developed cult status as the ultimate teenage novel.
13
Correct!
The correct answer: A The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
Your answer: A The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses (1988) is a sprawling comic fable that mixes fantasy with reality as it explores religion, cultural identity, and a host of other subjects. Many Muslims considered the novel an attack on Islam, however, and in 1989 Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa (edict) declaring that Rushdie be put to death. Rushdie went into hiding for several years, but like his character Gibreel Farishta, he has since been “born again” and is once more appearing in public.