Kalena: I do what you do if you can’t read clearly
Finally, I say with sharpness, finally.
We discuss famous introductions on novels.
The daughter has just read Gabriel Garcia Marquez « A hundred years of loneliness », which starts with one of the best.
« Many years later, before the execution platoon, Colonel Aureliano Bgendia would remind himself the remote afternoon when his father took him to show him the ice, » reads a Swedish translation.
Last fall, the daughter Kafka’s « Transformation » read, and it is not stupid either: « When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning out of his troubled dreams, he found himself lying in bed turned into a huge insect. »
During the discussion, I do what you will do in a minute – or less, if you can’t read my text clearly: I start googling first sentences in books.
You will notice that you end up on many chats where people are trying to get their favorites.
We are many who love the biting irony when Jane Austen notes that the whole world assumes that a wealthy bachelor needs a wife. And as many who are drawn into mysticism when the other Mrs de Winter dreams that she will return to Manderley.
(So that you do not go online, I immediately mention the books: « Pride and Prejudice » and « Rebecca ».)
When I tell you about « Gösta Berlings Saga », the teenager struggles at me. My daughter The emigrant reads no Swedish classics. She does not even know that it is now a worn out cliche to start texts like Selma Lagerlöf with this « Finally ».
None of the teachers at her school here in Washington would encourage students to open « away with the wind ». The depiction of the southern state’s hardships around the civil war is considered deeply problematic today. Still, I am pleased somewhere to know that Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful – this spoiled, manipulative, self -absorbed, greedy and cold -hammering protagonist who fascinated me as a teenager.
Scarlett did not join when the American Book Review compiled a top list of the best opening phrases nineteen years ago. Instead, « Moby Dick » won with the opening « Call me Ishmael ». I have not read that classic.
The truth is that I mostly sit and surf nowadays, I will no longer come, and it will be my final meaning today.
Read More boutssuch as kalena about finally coming home to the family she has loved the age of seven.
