A Tale of Ten Books

Ten Opening Sentences in Ten Different Books: An Exercise in ... Possibilities

These do not include prefaces or acknowledgements--those speak for themselves...


None of the books in my father’s dusty old bookcase were forbidden. In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters. The continuity of the classical tradition has been, until the 20 th century, one of the most striking aspects of Western art. Darius and Parysatis had two sons. Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, with happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place. Law is one of the learned professions. On October 5, 1941, I received a message from General Headquarters: “Stalin wants to speak with Front Commander over direct line.” The Carolina coast was below me; white and gleaming in the afternoon sun. The Catholic Church has always claimed Jesus of Nazareth as its founder, and nearly everyone is familiar with the basic facts about this dynamic Jewish preacher and healer who was born around the turn of the first century A.D. (probably between 6 B.C. and A.D. 6) and was crucified by the Romans between A.D. 28 and 30. The discussion of the subject at hand would gain in clarity if I could ask the members of my invisible audience whether they can remember themselves far enough back in their childhood, when they were not able to count, that is when they could not recite the series of words one, two, three, four, and so on.

By: Homeless with a Laptop, that is my Name