On Your Mark, Get Set, Go…
Last week there was a piece in the Guardian: The Ten Best First Lines in Fiction, and boy, it got a rise out of readers, since it left out Dickens, Nabokov, and Woolf to name only a few—183 comments (protests) posted so far, and one, I happened to notice, is a link to another list, on the American Book Review site—100 best first lines from novels (now that’s more like it)—which happens to include three of my favorites: “Call me Ishmael” and “Happy families are all alike…” and “This is the saddest story I have ever heard,” none of which made the Guardian actually, but all of which, plus the opening of Lolita, turn up in the ABR top 20, whew.
Not that I took exception when I read the Guardian’s list, not at all. I was delighted, in fact; pleased to be provoked to think about first lines, and how good ones abound; why, you could make a hundred lists of the ten best lines and never run out of material, right? Which got me curious and looking around the room where I’ve been working lately—my daughter’s—my papers and books strewn among hers for the next few weeks, until she comes home for the summer; good fun, consequently, to take a random sampling. Herewith, ten openings for your consideration, fiction and non:
On the bed:
1. “One day, quite some time ago, I happened on a photograph of Napoleon’s youngest brother Jerome, taken in 1852.” Roland Barthes. Camera Lucida.
From the bottom shelf to my left:
2. “Kath. Kath steps from the landing cupboard, where she should not be.” The Photograph, by Penelope Lively.
3. “I am going to pack my two shirts with my other socks and my best suit in the little blue cloth my mother used to tie round her hair when she did the house, and I am going from the Valley.” Richard Llewellyn’s How Green Was My Valley.
4. “It was one of the mixed blocks over on Central Avenue, the blocks that are not yet all Negro.” Chandler. Farewell, My Lovely (a brittle little Vintage paperback that must have belonged to my father-in-law).
From the bench on the opposite wall:
5. “The taxi’s radio was tuned to a classical FM broadcast.” 1Q84. Haruki Murakami.
In the middle of the shelf over the desk, wedged between The Bell Jar and a French dictionary, #6: Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter, which begins: “A Nurse held the door open for them.”
And further down that same shelf, #7. “It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen,” Orwell. 1984.
From the shelf just above, # 8 (This one kills me): “Dear James: I have begun this letter five times and torn it up five times.” Baldwin. The Fire Next Time.
Back to the bed:
9. “The man was stubborn.” Calvin Trillin—Messages from My Father.
10. “Her first name was India—she was never able to get used to it.” From Mrs. Bridge, by Evan S. Connell, Jr.
And, in deference to Eliza (my daughter), let’s make it 11; because how to leave out J. K. Rowling, who, in this room, has almost a whole shelf all to herself. From her first, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”
Ta da. But what does this selection tell us? For one thing, apart from the Harry Potter parade, we need a better system around here: I’ve been looking for the Lively for weeks, and also Eudora; and the rest of our Baldwins, fiction and nonfiction, are downstairs, I believe, so what’s this one doing up here?
But about these opening sentences: Tell me they aren’t mysterious and enticing—and I’m thinking it’s because every one of these books appears to start in the middle, as if to assume that the reader is in the know, which, of course, she isn’t; but she’s flattered all the same, to be trusted and invited; to have the author’s confidence, as if he or she were telling the story for her and her alone.
And how is that achieved? How has each author managed to enlist us in this way? With the Barthes, it’s the phrase, “I happened on,” which implies, doesn’t it, that he was doing something else at the time. That “Kath steps from the landing cupboard,” without introduction—well, obviously we’ve got catching up to do. In How Green was My Valley, something has compelled the narrator to pack all his things; but he’s going ‘from’ not ‘to’ which ups the ante considerably. With the Murakami, we’re actually in transit, on the road, music blaring. And how about Chandler: “It was one of those blocks”: So cavalier, right? —“it” with no antecedent?—as if to imply that we should know why he’s going on about that particular block in the first place. Now, Welty’s nurse—wherever, whoever they are, when she opens the door to let them in, we can’t help but be worried for them, right? Whereas Baldwin is honestly and totally overwrought, and we have to know why. And if Trillin’s state of mind feels, in comparison, resigned (amused), it too was arrived at before the book begins. Same thing with poor India, so ill at ease in the world from the outset—which doesn’t bode well.
As for #11: What does “thank you very much” tell us about the Dursleys? Why, they’ve got something to prove—an axe to grind, a grievance to air—and we’ve only just met them, too.
And, as I say, this was a random sampling; if I started all over again, I’m betting the outcome would be much the same. So why do so many authors choose to start their stories mid-stream? What’s the reason and the effect?
To seduce, right? At the very least, to immediately engage the reader, who, as noted, is not just eager to get up to speed, but delighted to be on such intimate terms with the author from the start. Moreover, the strategy requires specificity from the get-go—the writer is obliged from the very first moment to come up with just the right details of place, person, and thing, to insure our investment, to give us our coordinates, so that we can find our way forward and back. And that specificity makes for good prose, establishes authorial voice and control right off the bat.
Easier said than done? Sometimes, and sometimes not. When we’re lucky, our first lines simply arrive: They’re delivered to us when we’re walking or driving or watering the plants or washing the dishes, or in the middle of the night, or on line at the ATM machine, or during somebody else’s book-signing even. Other times, often in fact, we have to write our way to them, which is why, even when we think we’ve nailed a good beginning, it’s best not to get too attached—we might wind up shuffling things around, even cutting whole first paragraphs which turn out to have been throat-clearing, at least in my case.
The point is, in order to actually get to the beginning, you have to begin. Somewhere, anywhere—anything that gets you started is good—but a prompt is one thing, and a strong first sentence is something else. Therefore it isn’t good enough to get started, no. You have to keep going…




