FIRST LINES
So this writer I know is teaching a class on "hooks" and asked for some examples of best first lines/openings from novels, etc., and a bunch of things immediately came to my mind, like the openings of One Hundred Years of Solitude--"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano BuendÃa was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice"--and Love in the Time of Cholera--"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love"--and that amazingly gorgeous, sad opening sequence of The Hours in which Virginia Woolf drowns herself, and the opening of The Lovely Bones, which I read in a day, completely riveted--"My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer"--and any opening by Patricia Highsmith or James M. Cain or.....
And then there is this first line from Daniel Woodrell's Tomato Red:
You're no angel, you know how this stuff comes to happen: Friday is payday and it's been a gray day sogged by a slow ugly rain and you seek company in your gloom, and since you're fresh to West Table, Mo., and a new hand at the dog-food factory, your choices for company are narrow but you find some finally in a trailer court on East Main, and the coed circle of bums gathered there spot you a beer, then a jug of tequila starts to rotate and the rain keeps comin' down with a miserable bluesy beat and there's two girls millin' about that probably can be had but they seem to like certain things and crank is one of those certain things, and a fistful of party straws tumble from a woven handbag somebody brung, the crank gets cut into lines, and the next time you notice the time it's three or four Sunday mornin' and you ain't slept since Thursday night and one of the girl voices, the one you want most and ain't had yet though her teeth are the size of shoe-peg corn and look like maybe they'd taste sort of sour, suggests something to do, cause with crank you want something, anything, to do, and this cajoling voice suggests we all rob this certain house on this certain street in that rich area where folks can afford to wallow in their vices and likely have a bunch of recreational dope stashed around the mansion and gain' to waste since an article in The Scroll said the rich people whisked off to France or some such on a noteworthy vacation.
So this writer I know is teaching a class on "hooks" and asked for some examples of best first lines/openings from novels, etc., and a bunch of things immediately came to my mind, like the openings of One Hundred Years of Solitude--"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano BuendÃa was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice"--and Love in the Time of Cholera--"It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love"--and that amazingly gorgeous, sad opening sequence of The Hours in which Virginia Woolf drowns herself, and the opening of The Lovely Bones, which I read in a day, completely riveted--"My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. My murderer was a man from our neighborhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer"--and any opening by Patricia Highsmith or James M. Cain or.....
And then there is this first line from Daniel Woodrell's Tomato Red:
You're no angel, you know how this stuff comes to happen: Friday is payday and it's been a gray day sogged by a slow ugly rain and you seek company in your gloom, and since you're fresh to West Table, Mo., and a new hand at the dog-food factory, your choices for company are narrow but you find some finally in a trailer court on East Main, and the coed circle of bums gathered there spot you a beer, then a jug of tequila starts to rotate and the rain keeps comin' down with a miserable bluesy beat and there's two girls millin' about that probably can be had but they seem to like certain things and crank is one of those certain things, and a fistful of party straws tumble from a woven handbag somebody brung, the crank gets cut into lines, and the next time you notice the time it's three or four Sunday mornin' and you ain't slept since Thursday night and one of the girl voices, the one you want most and ain't had yet though her teeth are the size of shoe-peg corn and look like maybe they'd taste sort of sour, suggests something to do, cause with crank you want something, anything, to do, and this cajoling voice suggests we all rob this certain house on this certain street in that rich area where folks can afford to wallow in their vices and likely have a bunch of recreational dope stashed around the mansion and gain' to waste since an article in The Scroll said the rich people whisked off to France or some such on a noteworthy vacation.
posted by Carolyn Turgeon at
6:27 PM
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