Lord of the reads: +5401
It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.
Joseph Heller – Catch 22
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It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.
Joseph Heller – Catch 22
A classic first line is Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca:
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderlay again”
And that childhood classic…
“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump bump bump, on the back of his head, behind christopher robin”
Ah the nostalgia.
That line from Rebecca’s bothered me ever since I read it. It IS good, and memorable. But some editor part of me is saying it would’ve been better – more economical – as ‘Last night I dreamt I returned to Manderlay.’
Seems slightly less awkward to me. Anyway. Who am I to criticise.
Long-delayed editorial intervention is an interesting game to play actually – famous line are so, well, famous, that we forget their awkwardness. Perhaps, like people, their charm is in their faults?
I quite like ‘went…again’ in this case. ‘Returned’ implies a single decisive, perhaps permanent action, where as ‘went…again’ is vaguer, suggests perhaps that the dream itself might be a repetition (not I went again, but I dreamt again). I think the ambiguity draws the reader in.
Didn’t consider reading it as the dream happening again, rather than going to Manderlay again.
If Daphne Du Maurier intended to mean, well, dreaming of returning to Manderlay, I still prefer the more economical version. But if she wanted the ambiguity you mention or was talking about a recurring dream, as it stands is best. In my opinion. So – yeah, good point :)
I guess as long as it was considered it’s OK. Sometimes I just feel authors are being way too wordy – repeatedly using two or more words when there’s one word that would do the job and improve the sentence quality in the process (dunno if you’ve read any of his books, but I think this economy is part of Cormac McCarthy’s charm). Though I reckon being deliberately wordy has its uses too – I suppose this is back to whether you’re aware of what you’re doing or not.
On topic again, and being awkward about it, I can’t think offhand of any first line that’s stood out, which is OK by me. Anyway…
Heh. After an English degree in which most of an essay could be taken up with things like went again/returned, I think I choose to believe in deliberate, thoughtful choice by authors because otherwise I would have been driven mad eyars ago.
I do agree about simplicity.
Hemmingway, of course, is another great example, but also a warning that you can go too far – I gave up on For Whom The Bell Tolls after about 30 pages because it read like a police statement.
“What am I doing here?” Katie adjusted her stance from one foot to the other while standing next to her mother, Valerie Kirchin.
.
The first line of my book “Children from the Sea”. Nightingale Books (2008).
I like the opening of Children from the Sea, Lookman Author. Katie’s apparent anxiety about her surroundings is underscored by her restless feet. And she could be either thinking the question or saying it aloud to her mother.
The opening sentence from Anita Shreve’s Fortune’s Rocks caught my eye, even though some might say it’s verging (just verging!) on being overwritten:
‘In the time it takes for her to walk from the bathhouse at the seawall of Fortune’s Rocks, where she has left her boots and has discreetly pulled off her stockings, to the waterline along which the sea continually licks the pink and silver sand, she learns about desire.’
I like that Anita Shreve one. I’ve never read her – maybe I should.
I still can’t think of a memorable first line. I can’t shake the impression that sometimes an author thinks he’s written a great first line and throws it into its own paragraph; the equivalent of saying, ‘Take a look at THAT!’ Maybe some of the best first lines are the ones that are unassuming because they reflect the writing quality throughout?
For an aspiring professional author the first forty pages or so are as important, if not more so, than the first line, because as I understand it that’s partly on what your book judged (the others being the synopsis and perhaps whether or not the moon is full). Hm. A new thread beckons?
Scarlett O’Hara was not pretty. (Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind)
Ha ha! Further proof that you do not need looks to bring men to their knees, survive a war or claw your way to the heights of society…
:)
I agree with you that authors sometimes seem to have an oddly ego-centric complex about the first lines – if you think about it, anyone can write one great line, it’s the thousands and thousands of lines that follow which determine whether or not you can actually write, let alone find an audience…
When searching for a new book to embark upon, I usually open to a random page and read a paragraph or so – I feel if I’m still interested on paragraph 2, page 146 then it’s a good bet the author has been able to keep up the momentum throughout the work.
Unless of course, that section just happens to contain the best writing…in which case my whole theory goes right out the window, lol…
I know its not the full opening line but, for me, it has to be “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” Don’t know why, exactly, but I just love it.
The first one that springs to mind is “Snowman wakes at dawn” from Margaret Atwood’s excellent Oryx and Crake.
“The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald : "In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticising anyone” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had”.
Or how about Anais Nin, “A Spy in the House of Love”: “The lie detector was asleep when he heard the telephone ringing”?
I suppose opening paragraphs linger in my mind more than opening lines…
“Tom?” No answer. – Simple but highly effective, and has always stuck in my mind. It is of course, from Watership Down when Tom the Rabbit has hopped off when he should be fetching carrots for dinner. No, being silly, it is of course, from Tom Sawyer.
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