Living Through Literature

Earthly Powers has a famous opening. It has many other notable aspects, too. The narrator (unreliable of course) has his first sexual experience during Bloomsday (16th June 1904), begins his career as a writer during the First World War, hangs out with expats in Paris in the 1920's, saves Himmler's life, hangs out in Hollywood, sees his grand-niece getting involved with a religious doomsday cult in the 1960's etc. The book is almost like a fictional counterpart to an intellectual history of the 20th century (but there is no psychoanalysis).

But about the opening: it was mentioned in Terry Eagleton's How to Read Literature, alongside with several others. Oddly, the opening of One Hundred Years of Solitude was not mentioned.