NIGHTWOOD

A violent romance between two lesbians bohemians in 1920's Paris--primarily starring the endlessly drunk and soliloquizing Dr. Matthew Mighty-Grain-Of-Salt O'Connor, a crossdressing “doctor” of dubious credentials who never pays for his drinks and is easily the most golden-voiced literary character since Captain Ahab.

First Sentence:
“Early in 1880, in spite of a well-founded suspicion as to the advisability of perpetuating that race which has the sanction of the Lord and the disapproval of the people, Hedwig Volkbein—a Viennese woman of great strength and military beauty, lying upon a canopied bed of a rich spectacular crimson, the valance stamped with the bifurcated wings of the House of Hapsburg, the feather coverlet an envelope of satin on which, in massive and tarnished gold threads, stood the Volkbein arms—gave birth, at the age of fourty-five, to an only child, a son, seven days after the physician predicted that she would be taken.”