The Greatest Opening Passages in Literature

Gentle Reader,

The present writer’s first and true love is the literary form. What better way to celebrate the novel than by looking at some of the greatest opening passages in literature? After all, just as the overture of an opera contains themes which must be enlarged upon in the main body the work, so must the first chapter of a novel foreshadow the greatness which the reader hopes the writer will bring to us. Let’s take a look this week at some of my personal favourites.

---

I consider Virginia Woolf to be the queen of the semicolon. Yet, in her opening to The Waves, there is nary a semicolon to be seen.

Instead, we are presented with short and impactful sentences which bring us through time and allow us to visualise, over several sentences, the full arc of a sunrise, a figuratively appropriate opening for a novel.

The sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it. Gradually as the sky whitened a dark line lay on the horizon dividing the sea from the sky and the grey cloth became barred with thick strokes moving, one after another, beneath the surface, following each other, pursuing each other, perpetually.

Even the commas which we see in this passage are given out only reluctantly. The overall impression is to deliver a feeling of the progression of time, the emergence of daylight, which is aided by clever metaphor and simple language. Not a single highfalutin’ word is to be seen, yet the effect is complex, layered, and of course beautiful.

---

No literary analysis is complete without reference to an Irishman whose name features frequently in these hallowed (web)pages. Let us look at two of his works, Ulysses, his magnum opus, and Finnegans Wake, whatever that is.

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:

I need not tell my educated readers what Buck Mulligan did in fact intone. This is a masterful passage. From the beginning we are aware of the musical ear of James Joyce, who trained as a singer. There is musical ear, with plenty of assonance (‘plump Buck Mulligan’) and a pleasing rhythm. Mulligan comes from the stairhead, not the stairs, the bowl is borne, not carried and his yellow dressinggown of course is not open, but ungirdled. Immediately, we are aware of Mulligan as a character who is comic, described faux-seriously as ‘stately’, an impression furthered by the following dialogue and text during which he pretends to say mass. Lovely work James, and now let us look at Finnegans Wake.

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

What can we say about any part of Finnegans Wake? It is a work which is possible to enjoy whilst still appreciating its perhaps ‘overvaulting ambition.’ The opening passage brings to us the usual Joycean musicality, alliteration and assonance, but with a hint at greater complexity, self-awareness and perhaps good old fashioned madness.

It opens with the lower-case lettering which was to become popular eighty years later on social media but which, at the time of writing, hints at a continuation (spoiler: read the last paragraph) and a sense of the circular nature of time, which is a key theme throughout. My favourite part, however, is the seemingly unnecessary elaborate use of language through ‘commodious’ 'vicus’ and ‘recirculation’ a style which ramifies through Irish literature (particularly seen in the work of Beckett and O’Brien also), characterised by self-parodoy and a desire to make the ornate ridiculous, to elevate non-idiomatic and borderline absurdist language.

And of course, like many good opening paragraphs, it sets the scene and grounds us geographically, in Dublin.

---

Continuing on the Irish theme, Flann O’Brien’s novel At Swim-Two-Birds remains a classic in the genre of Menippean satire, and arguably one of the earliest works of postmodernism. It is an extremely funny book which contains a sort of faux-officious distance throughout, a technique which I like to imagine O’Brien learned from his days working in the civil service, where diplomatic language abounded.

Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes’ chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. I reflected on the subject of my spare-time literary activities. One beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely dissimilar and inter-related only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter one hundred times as many endings.

O’Brien’s opening scene brings us straight into the world of the narrator who, chewing bread, closes his eyes and reflecting, thinks deeply in the opening chapter of a novel about what the opening chapter of a novel should contain. This work of meta-fiction concludes that a book having only one beginning and one ending is not advisable, and he proceeds to offer three different openings. During his reflection, the narrator assumes “a vacant and preoccupied expression” which tells us of the seriousness of the matter. In an act of foreshadowing, we are also told that different openings may be only understood by the prescient author, relegating us, the readers, as less-competent assessors of the fine art display which the writer plans to show us.

---

Deviating at last from Ireland, we go across the pond to England. Evelyn Waugh, whom I wrote about last week, can claim to have written one of the most beautiful opening passages in his novel Brideshead Revisited.

"I have been here before," I said; I had been there before; first with Sebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were white with fool's-parsley and meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer; it was a day of peculiar splendour, such as our climate affords once or twice a year, when leaf and flower and bird and sun-lit stone and shadow seem all to proclaim the glory of God; and though I had been there so often, in so many moods, it was to that first visit that my heart returned on this, my latest.

That day, too, I had come not knowing my destination. It was Eights Week. Oxford--submerged now and obliterated, irrecoverable as Lyonnesse, so quickly have the waters come flooding in--Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman's day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days--such as that day--when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft vapours of a thousand years of learning. It was this cloistral hush which gave our laughter its resonance, and carried it still, joyously, over the intervening clamour. Here, discordantly, in Eights Week, came a rabble of womankind, some hundreds strong, twittering and fluttering over the cobbles and up the steps, sight-seeing and pleasure-seeking…”

This opening is a real feast. As a writer, my tendency is to be long-winded, to be more additive than subtractive. But I also truly believe, deep-down, that if you can pull it off, if there is splendour in you which enriches through detail, that you must let it loose, even if it is the rare writer who can manage to decorate without distracting. Waugh has let it loose here, unafraid of the long sentence, the hyphen, the semi colon, the clause and so on. High risk and high reward, no single sentence will probably stand out as inconic, but the piece itself is of a cohesiveness and aura which makes it a standout.

We are treated to sensory delights such as “this cloistral hush which gave our laughter its resonance” ; “a rabble of womankind, some hundreds strong, twittering and fluttering over the cobbles and up the steps, sight-seeing and pleasure-seeking'“ ; “In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman's day.”

Waugh also uses the first-person perspective, a very sharp instrument which cuts both ways. Employing it judiciously, he veers into the territory of Proustian mastery.

---

Returning at last, via a commodius vicus of recirculation, to Ireland, we come to Beckett in my favourite novel of his, Murphy.

“The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.”

There we have it reader. Spare, devoid of style, and totally empty. The ultimate exercise in Beckettian subtraction, and a fine and simple note on which to end our journey.

---

Thanks for reading. Subscribe to get my work fired straight into your inbox.

Affiliates:

My friend Paul Millerd runs the Pathless Path Community, a cozy online space where we support each other to find ways to live and work in the most authentic way possible.

I also recommend the Supernote e-ink device, which I use for reading, writing, and annotating documents. This affiliate link is only valid for EU customers.

NB – future editions may come out fortnightly, rather than weekly, depending on how busy I am. We will see what happens.