{"id":5007,"date":"2025-11-03T08:26:44","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T13:26:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5007"},"modified":"2025-11-03T08:26:44","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T13:26:44","slug":"famous-first-words-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/03\/famous-first-words-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Famous First Words"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

\u201cIt was a dark and stormy night\u2026\u201d

That\u2019s the opening line from the 1830 novel Paul Clifford <\/em>by English writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton.\u00a0

It is widely regarded as the worst opening line in the history of English literature, and has been endlessly parodied.\u00a0Charlie Brown\u2019s dog Snoopy, who was committed to writing the great American novel, began every one of his drafts with those seven words.

To be fair, here\u2019s the entirety of Bulwer-Lytton\u2019s first sentence: \u201cIt was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents \u2013 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.\u201d<\/em>

Just awful.

So awful that it inspired Professor Scott E. Rice of the English Department at San Jose University to establish the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest in 1982. Entrants were invited to submit \u201cthe opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.\u201d\u00a0

The first year attracted just three entries. Then the media got wind of Rice\u2019s project. The next year, some 10,000 writers attempted to compose the most dreadful opening to a non-existent novel.

Rice (aided by what he called his Panel of Undistinguished Judges) picked winners for 42 consecutive years. Three months ago, however, he announced that the contest was at last coming to an end \u2013 largely because, as he put it, he\u2019s older than Joe Biden. That means we\u2019ll have to let the 2024 winning entrant, submitted by Lawrence Person of Austin, Texas, provide our last good laugh:

\u201cShe had a body that reached out and slapped my face like a five-pound ham-hock tossed from a speeding truck.\u201d<\/em>

So bad it\u2019s good.

Let\u2019s go to the other end of the spectrum.\u00a0What is the best<\/em> of all opening lines?\u00a0

Here are some much-loved openers:

\u201cLife is difficult.\u201d (M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled<\/em>)
\u201cAll happy families are alike.\u00a0Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.\u201d\u00a0(Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina<\/em>)
\u201cThe past is a foreign country.\u00a0They do things differently there.\u201d (L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between<\/em>)
\u201cIt was the best of times, it was the worst of times.\u201c (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities<\/em>)
\u201cCall me Ishmael.\u201d (Herman Melville, Moby Dick<\/em>)
\u201cAll children, except one, grow up.\u201d (J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan<\/em>)
\u201cIt is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.\u201d (Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice<\/em>)

Those are the kinds of starters that have compelled millions of people to keep reading to see what comes next.\u00a0 \u00a0

What about the 66 books of the Bible?

Some aren\u2019t particularly promising. The first sentence of I Chronicles, for instance, is just three names: \u201cAdam, Seth, Enosh.\u201d Not too captivating for modern readers. \u00a0

But chapter one \/ verse one of dozens of other Old and New Testament books are like doorways to a set of fascinating stories, insights, and truths.

Each weekday during the month of November, we\u2019ll drill down deep into one of those 1:1 sentences.

Our hope, as we approach Thanksgiving, is that we\u2019ll encounter a few new reasons to be thankful to God for the riches of his Word \u2013 embodied even in some of the humblest turns of phrase that we might otherwise overlook.\u00a0

That\u2019s a worthy goal for a month that almost always features its share of dark and stormy nights.\u00a0

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here \u201cIt was a dark and stormy night\u2026\u201d That\u2019s the opening line from the 1830 novel Paul Clifford by English writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton.\u00a0 It is widely regarded as the worst opening line in the history of English literature, and has been endlessly parodied.\u00a0Charlie Brown\u2019s dog Snoopy, who was committed to writing the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5008,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1029,1030],"class_list":["post-5007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-11-series","tag-opening-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5007"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5009,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5007\/revisions\/5009"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}