[drblast]

It's funny that most of these that I read start off with a very annoying, cliched "writer" tone.

I've always had the impression that authors just can't help buy try to prove how clever they are in the first paragraph at the expense of making the story compelling. It's like everyone has delusions that the book they're writing is going to be the next Moby Dick, so that beginning must be literary dammit.

[amp108]

I don't know which specific novels you're referring to, but the first sentence/paragraph/chapter of a novel often need to have a different tone from the rest. The opening of a novel sets the scene and sets the tone and raises expectations for the rest of the story in a way that a strictly narrative opening wouldn't. In other words, these "literary"-style openings are no more and no less clichéd than any other.

[ycombinete]

Very often it's more that people struggle to find a way to start a story. In much the same way that students use cliche'd academic speak in the introductions to their essays. It's not a pose, it's a crutch.