Can you help me out with this?
Asked by
Fyrius (
14560
)
November 21st, 2009
If you have an English copy of The Never Ending Story, you might just be about to make me very happy.
I’d like you to look up a quote for me, please. It’s on the first page of the opening chapter. There’s a sentence that describes how Bastian throws open the door to the bookstore so forcefully it makes a bunch of copper bells ring for a while. I’d like to know the precise words used.
I only have the Dutch translation here.
I’d like to use this sentence as an allusion in the short story I’m working on. :)
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15 Answers
Here you go. :-)
“Suddenly the door was opened so violently that a little cluster of brass bells tinkled wildly, taking quite some time to calm down.”
Wait, I never knew they made a book out of that. I hope its as good as the movie.
I love that part in The Simpsons where Homer goes to the lawyer who sued the makers of The Never Ending Story.
@Fyrius Sorry, I grew up watching the movie, recently got it on DVD, but never knew it was a book. I feel bad about it too.
@arpinum: T’was a book before it was a movie—as many things are. “They” did nothing—a German man, Michael Ende, wrote it. It has 26 short little chapters that are a delight to read. Well worth picking up at the library or bookstore and—as it often happens—far superior to the movie. I say that having grown up with the movie as well, I believe I was mid-teens before I stumbled across the book somewhere.
Okay, so a few people translated it to various languages as well—my point was more that the movie came from the book, the book was not some creation of marketing specialists to tie in with the movie.
@arpinum
Haha, no worries.
I grew up with the book and the film, just like @EmpressPixie. And while the film is great, I agree that the book is superior. It has more nuances and the like, as usual.
And what’s more, the book goes on for another 214 pages (the number may vary with translations) after the point where the film ends. I highly recommend getting a copy and reading how the story goes on.
The whole book is a study of how daydreaming and fiction in general works, what are its advantages and risks and how best to deal with it.
They also made a sequel film, but it absolutely sucks. It distorted the story beyond recognition and sacrificed the thought-provoking symbolism for easy-to-understand narrative. Not worth watching if you’re over ten.
@Fyrius It was the first book I ever read that used the Alphabetical chapter device and I was incredibly taken with it. I have always assumed it was present in the original German as well and wonder what kind of madness it took to translate that to get correspondence across languages.
@EmpressPixie
The alphabetic chapter thing is in the Dutch version too. I think that means it’s safe to assume it’s also there in the original.
What is this “alphabetical chapter thing”? Do they use the first letter of each chapter instead of a number?
@anthelios77
Yep. Plus every chapter starts with a word that starts with the letter the chapter corresponds to.
He used a character named Querquobad for chapter Q, Xayiede for X and Yor for Y.
That’s pretty neat.
I should check out the book, didn’t know it had a longer storyline.
And just to get more attention, I’m going to link to the finished story here too. XD
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