Great but obscure opening sentences

it was the best of times, it was the blurst of times...

no wait...

I have gone to the forest.

Not because I am offended about anything, or very unhappy about men’s evil ways; but since the forest will not come to me, I must go to it. That is all. I have not gone this time as a slave and a vagabond. I have money enough and am overfed, stupefied with success and good fortune, if you understand that. I have left the world as a sultan leaves rich food and harems and flowers, and clothes himself in a hair shirt.

-Knut Hamsun, 'The Last Joy'

stupid monkey

Past the orange roof and turquoise tower, past the immense sunburst of the green and yellow sign, past the golden arches, beyond the low buff building, beside the discrete hut, the dark top hat on the studio window shade, beneath the red and white longitudes of the enormous bucket, coming up to the thick shaft of the yellow arrow piercing the royal-blue filed, he feels he is home. Is it Nashville? Elmira, New York? St. Louis County? A Florida key? The Illinois arrowhead? Indiana like a holster, Ohio like a badge? Is he North? St. Paul, Minn.? Northeast? Boston, Mass.? The other side of America? Salt Lake? Los Angeles? At the bottom of the country? The Texas udder? Where? In Colorado's frame? Wyoming like a postage stamp? Michigan like a mitten? The chipped, eroded bays of the Northwest? Seattle? Bellingham, Washington?

Somewhere in the packed masonry of states.

--Stanley Elkin, "The Franchiser"

One learns very little here, there is a shortage of teachers, and none of the boys of the Benjamenta Institute will come to anything, that is to say, we shall all be something very small and subordinate later in life.

--Robert Walser, "Jakob von Gunten" (tr., Christpher Middleton)

"do you come here often"?

They laid Jesse James in his grave and Dante Gabriel Rossetti died immediately. Then Charles Darwin was deplored and then, on April 27, 1882, Louisa May Alcott hurried to write in her journal: "Mr. Emerson died at 9 PM suddenly. Our best and greatest American gone. The nearest and dearest friend Father has ever had and the man who helped me most by his life, his books and his society. Illustrious and beloved friend, good-bye!" So she made a lyre of yellow jonquils for Ralph Waldo Emerson's preposterous funeral and somehow steered Bronson Alcott through the dreary business until he stood beside the coffin in the damp cemetery and mechanically drawled out the lines of a dire poem. Under the shock the tall old idler was a mere automaton with a bloodless face that startled watchers as he stepped back from the grave into which his one importance sank. Emerson was going from him! He was losing his apologist, his topic. His fingers fell on the shoulder of a little boy who had pressed forward to see and the grip became so cruel that Louisa saw and her hoarse voice rose in the hush, commanding: "Pa! Let go! You're hurting Georgie's arm!" But her father could hear nothing. She stooped and wrenched the child's arm free.

--Thomas Beer, "The Mauve Decade"

I spent the Summer months near a little village called, no wait a minute, if I give the name the place will be flooded with tourists. The severest warnings are never adequate. People still go to goggle through high-powered binoculars and end up being ambushed, Eaten there and then.

Alfresco, as it were.

- Max Handley, "Meanwhile"

GENTLE READER,

What, you may ask, was the origin of this book?

Though the answer to this question may at first seem to border on the absurd, reflection will show that there is a good deal more in it than meets the eye.

Long ago, when the goddess Nu-wa was repairing the sky, she melted down a great quantity of rock and, on the Incredible Crags of the Great Fable Mountains, moulded the amalgam into thirty-six thousand, five hundred and one large building blocks, each measuring seventy-two feet by a hundred and forty-four feet square. She used thirty-six thousand five hundred of these blocks in the course of her building operations, leaving a single odd block unused, which lay, all on its own, at the foot of Greensickness Peak in the aforementioned mountains.

Now this block of stone, having undergone the melting and moulding of a goddess, possessed magic powers. It could move about at will and could grow or shrink to any size it wanted. Observing that all the other blocks had been used for celestial repairs and that it was the only one to have been rejected as unworthy, it became filled with shame and resentment and passed its days in sorrow and lamentation.

- Cao Xueqin, "The Story of the Stone"

The sea is high again today, with a thrilling flush of wind. In the midst of winter you can feel the inventions of Spring. A sky of hot nude pearl until midday, crickets in sheltered places, and now the wind unpacking the great planes, ransacking the great planes....

- Lawrence Durrell, "Justine"

You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, "No. I don't want to watch TV!" Raise your voice - they won't hear you otherwise - "I'm reading! I don't want to be disturbed!" Maybe they haven't heard you with all that racket; speak louder, yell: "I'm beginning to read Italo Calvino's new novel!"

Italo Calvino, If on a winters night a traveler

I am loving all these. :-) And of course now I want to read them all! More please!

At night, Mr Phillips lies beside his wife and dreams about other women.

- John Lanchester, 'Mr Phillips'

'Jeeves," I said, 'may I speak frankly?'
'Certainly, sir'
'What I have to say may would you'
'Not at all, sir'
'Well, then - '
No - wait, Hold the line a minute. I've gone off the rails.

P G Wodehouse (of course), Right Ho, Jeeves.

Not exactly obscure I realise and really it was a job choosing one as I love the way they all start, generally with Wooster at breakfast being attended to and taking stock.
Ahh, sweet escapism...

I fckd that up...it should say...

'What I have to say may wound you'

Sigh...it's really late here - i should be in bed.