Peanuts by Charles Schulz for April 26, 2022

By today’s standards that’s a pretty dang boring way to begin.

that’s a whale of a start Snoopy!

I just finished Moby Dick for the first time this week. Good book (great, even), but also one of the most difficult reads I’ve done in years

“You can call me Ray! Or you can call me Jay! But ya doesn’t has to call me Ishmael!”

For once, it didn’t begin with “It was a dark and stormy night.”

‘Call me Ishmael’? It’s been done.

My favorite strong beginning line, although technically it isn’t a novel, is the Bible’s first three words. “In the beginning.” Can you think of anything better to start off with? Then it gets even stronger; “In the beginning there was darkness and gloom everywhere. And God said, LET THERE BE LIGGHHTTT! and KABOOOM! there was light!”

They had a story on Reddit where the OP was reading “Moby Dick” in a restaurant and some crazy lady yelled at her for reading porn in public. One commentator wondered what she thought of the movie “Free Willy.”

One literary critic once wondered how would the opening lines of “Moby Dick” be interpreted it they were: “Call me, Ishmael”.

My all-time favorite is Kafka’s Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung): “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”The original German is even more powerful: “Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt.” Well, he got the reader’s attention now.

Hi, Ishmael. ’Sup?

I have a feeling it’s going to be a whale of a tale… Actually, I think his book will suck.

Richard Basehart?

He said “powerful”, Snoopy, not “stolen”!

Try opening your story with a question like, “Who am I?”

Linus won’t approve of “borrowing”

Snoopy should enter the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/

How about powerful and original?

oh Ismael! Snoopy wants you

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

To grab your interest how about “…in the dim light I could tell that she was nude…”.

Joe Ishmael?

That might already be taken. He should check.

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago – never mind how long precisely- ……………………

-Fone Bone (from Rock Jaw: Master of the Eastern Border)

What could be more dramatic than “It was a dark and stormy night”?

I love reading, but it’s overwhelmingly hard to keep me hooked. Only one book made me cry, and only one made me close it in shock at the twist.

“The decapitated head went rolling down the hill, onto the freeway heading south toward Hollywood”

Old Marley was dead.Dead as a doornail.This must be fully understood,or you will be able to make nothing of the following story"—-or something like that.

“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”

I’m already getting tired.

“We were somewhere around Needles on the edge of the desert when the root beer began to take hold.”

Fear and Loathing in Petaluma

(Petaluma?)

“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.” — Raymond Chandler

It’s a book. There’s no reason to call him anything. Talk about a weak opening.

Whatever works; right, Snoopy?

Taken…

Ignoring all the other comments ~ Since April 29th, 1975 when it first ran, this has been my ALL TIME FAVORITE PEANUTS strip. I waved it all over the College Commons that day, got about a 50% hit rate. None of the business majors got it, to no surprise….

“Someone must have slandered Charlie B., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was called a blockhead.”