Date: Mon, 3 Nov 1997 08:38:37 EDT From: "Randy B. Money" Subject: TECH: First sentences in novels A quick survey of first sentences (and, for some, a bit more) from a few fairly well-known novels I picked, mostly at random, off my shelves. Let's start with three British writers. _The Horse's Mouth_ by Joyce Cary I was walking by the Thames. Not too promising. A simple sentence, which isn't necessarily bad, but this one's rather prosaic. Its main strength is shortness, moving the reader's eye on to the next sentence quickly enough s/he may not stop before reading it: I was walking by the Thames. Half-past morning on an autumn day. Sun in a mist. Like an orange in a fried fish shop. All bright below. Low tide, dusty water and a crooked bar of straw, chicken boxes, dirt and oil from mud to mud. Like a viper swimming in skim milk. The old serpent, symbol of nature and love. Now that's a better hook: short, choppy sentences, like thoughts flitting through the mind, leading the unsuspecting reader into Biblical symbolism. I thought, on first reading, that I detected a ho-hum tone. I'm not so sure, now. Anyway, I expect some readers would be intrigued by the sentence, and others put off. Let's try another: _The Hobbit_ by J. R. R. Tolkein In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. For Tolkein, simplicity works immediately. While the statement, "In a hole in the ground there lived a..." is every bit as prosaic as Cary's first sentence, the last word, "hobbit" offers something exotic enough (and different enough from the "rabbit" a reader might conjure as the expected ending) to capture your attention and deliver you to the next sentence. Note the simplicity also confers a flavor of fairy tale to the sentence. _The Heat of the Day_ by Elizabeth Bowen That Sunday, from six o'clock in the evening, it was a Viennese orchestra that played. Another fairly simple sentence, one that immediately lends the setting a European elegance through mentioning the Viennese orchestra. There's the implication of, if not wealth, then a comfortable amount of money, I think, and some cultural sophistication. Probably it's unfair to say this since I haven't read the novel, but I immediately suspect the book has a certain snob appeal. Let's switch to a few American authors. _Moby Dick_ by Herman Melville Call me, Ishmael. When this topic first came up someone mentioned this opening and thought it wasn't all that dramatic. I think that can only be said because its so familiar now. Think of what this is doing: First, it's saying the narrator isn't giving you his real name ("Call me..."), a tactic which should arouse your curiosity, and maybe your suspicion, and induce you to ask why. Second, and probably more obvious to earlier generations of readers, it refers to a character in the Bible -- according to the Bible dictionary, the name means, "whom God hears". There's a theatrical, grandiose ring to the sentence. On the one hand, the narrator seems to cart a fair amount of hubris to take on such a name, though maybe some playfulness, too; on the other hand, Melville's making a sweeping statement with it. _As I Lay Dying_ by William Faulkner Jewel and I come up from the field, following the path in single file. Another sentence that doesn't do much at first glance. Still, three conclusions might be drawn from it: 1) "come" implies a country person; 2) "following the path in single file" feels a touch obsessive (though I come to this with the advantage of having read the novel before, most recently in September); 3) and walking one behind the other implies personal distance in addition to physical distance. _Absalom, Absalom!_ by William Faulkner From a little after two oclock until almost sundown of the long still hot weary dead September afternoon they sat in what Miss Coldfield still called the office because her father had called it that--a dim hot airless room with the blinds all closed and fastened for forty- three summers because when she was a girl someone had believed that light and moving air carried heat and that dark was always cooler, and which (as the sun shone fuller and fuller on that side of the house) became latticed with yellow slashes full of dust motes which Quentin thought of as being flecks of the dead old dried paint itself blown inward from the scaling blinds as wind might have blown them. Whoa. At 123 words, this sentence is a risk most commercial writers would avoid, knowing a lot of readers would toss the book aside and run screaming from the room. Those strings of adjectives are pretty risky, too: this is not Hemingway country, there will be no journalistic paring and disdain for adjectives and adverbs. But the sentence also has a certain headlong momentum, a rush of words, even a desperation of words, a feeling of imprisonment behind that lattice of light. What we get from the sentence, I think, is a sense of the past impinging on the narrator, of an old woman to whom the narrator is somehow tied, who is herself tied to the past, whose views and behavior are more intimately derived from her younger self than would be true for most people. _The Haunting of Hill House_ by Shirley Jackson No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. One of my favorite opening sentences. It sets a tone, even somewhat indirectly states a theme of the novel. Here's the whole first paragraph: No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand so for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone. How about a couple of opening sentences from other countries? _One Hundred Years of Solitude_ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. This may be the canniest, and is certainly the most playful opening sentence I've included. Start out by mentioning something dramatic -- maybe even melodramatic -- like a firing squad, which builds a narrative expectation about what is to come, then deflect the expectation with something homey and even mundane, but couched in terms ("discover") that makes it sound miraculous. Maybe deflect is inaccurate. Let's replace it with, defer. Garcia Marquez defers the reader's expectation, as much as saying, "well, let's consider some other, more important things first, and get back to the firing squad later. We have time." Very effective story-telling, if your audience is willing to take a stroll rather than a roller-coaster ride. It's also a tactic that infuriates a lot of American readers, I think, because they're used to getting right to the action. _The Tin Drum_ by Gunter Grass Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me. For those who don't recognize Grass's name, he's a writer who came into his own in Germany after WWII. Right off, the first sentence implies the story will deal with racism: the narrator implies his superiority in having blue eyes. That the one who feels superior is an inmate of a mental hospital adds a layer of irony many readers would find intriguing. How about a few commercial novels? In hopes of deflecting contention about what I mean by "commercial" novel/writing as opposed to "literary" novel/writing, here's what I mean, as forged in the fire of WRITERS discussions over the past few years: "literary" to "commercial" defines a spectrum of writerly endeavor. At one end lies a "literary" extreme like Joyce's _Finnegan's Wake_, at the other lies a novle like Edgar Rice Burroughs' _Tarzan, the Ape Man_. "Literary" fiction tends to downplay plot in favor of metaphor, word- play, characterization, theme, and other tropes. "Commercial" fiction is less sophisticated, sentence by sentence, relying on creating interest through the logical unfolding of plot. Most novels cluster around the middle of that spectrum. _The World According to Garp_, for instance, might be dead center, though leaning toward the literary. _The Shining_ is probably close to the center from the "commercial" side; _The Haunting of Hill House_ would probably be even closer to the center. _"D" is for Deadbeat_ by Sue Grafton Later, I found out his name was John Daggett, but that's not how he introduced himself the day he walked into my office. Probably, with this author, we enter the book knowing it will be a mystery, either from name recognition (though maybe not when this book was written), or from a guess about the title. In either case, from the first sentence we know the narrator's been lied to. We can also guess that this will be a conversational narrative. I would also assume that something has happened to John Daggett, though what that is remains to be learned. _The Wrong Case_ by James Crumley There's no accounting for laws. Appeals to a feeling we've all had. It's conversational approach will grab a lot of readers and deliver them to the next sentence. The above two are mysteries in the tradition of the so-called "hard-boiled" writers, like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. Here's one of my favorite second sentences/first paragraphs from a mystery: _The Big Sleep_ by Raymond Chandler It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black blogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars. On to a couple of other commercial novels. _Bones of the Moon_ by Jonathan Carroll The Axe Boy lived downstairs. I dare you to write something more intriguing while, in its way, prosaic. _Brittle Innings_ by Michael Bishop After pursuing him a week (half my annual vacation from the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer), I caught up with Danny Boles on a blustery day in early April at a high school in eastern Alabama. The implication of the narrator being a reporter "from the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer" is mostly followed through on with the who, what, when and where of the first sentence, though most journalists would avoid the "I". As for its effectiveness in leading the reader along, I'm not sure. The only hook I see is, why would a reporter use vacation time to track someone down? Probably not as effective as some of the others. Well, just some thoughts on some opening sentences, though I don't really know what it proves. Some relatively lame first sentences have worked pretty well over the years. I wonder if concentrating on first paragraphs might be more pertinent. I think most readers will at least give a book a paragraph or two to capture their interest. Randy <<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>> Randy Money rbmoney@library.syr.edu