Last week, we were discussing openings in the blog and newsletter, and long-term BWW member Melanie Lee wrote this as a response. It was a thoughtful and important response that deserved its own spot in the blog-line. Post your own response in the comments below: Do first lines matter to you? What do you look for when you start a book?
This is such a timely topic for me. Yesterday I went through the dozens of books I’d piled on my dresser, to clear things out for winter. I now have three boxes of paperbacks with a huge teetering mountain of more paperbacks piled on top and four boxes of hardcovers, neatly packed. They’re all going out. Some books I didn’t enjoy enough even though their reputations were extravagant. Others were great but I was not going to refer to again. Others I just didn’t think I’d get to and I didn’t want them waiting around for me, taunting me with their promises I’d never be able to make them keep. I wanted to feel as if I might really get to most of the ones I’d decide to keep.
In dealing with this last category, I at first went on gut feeling about the topic or genre. But still having a pile more to go through, I thought I needed a better filter. I decided to look at first lines. If the line grabbed me, the book stayed. Soon I came to realize this wasn’t exactly fair. Some books needed time to warm me up. So I have kept a few, making a note to myself to be on the watch for what each of those books did to draw me in.
I have come to some conclusions about what I like in a first line. I love the language to pop out of reality, or is it to make the reality pop? I love it to set the scene, physical and emotional all at once in as little space as it needs. I love it to show right away what particular imbalance(s) of power the book is talking about. I love it to make promises I want it to keep.
I just went through the following books so I could share their first lines:
“Read these poems to yourself in the middle of the night.” How to Read a Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry by Edward Hirsch
“The dog was going to Florida.” Talking Dog, in The Peaceable Kingdom by Francine Prose
“Beware the thoughts that come in the night.” Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon
“The first thing I can remember clearly is writing the way into the secret room.” Voices by Ursula LeGuin
“I should explain straight-out that I consider myself to be as much a teacher as a writer.” To Show and to Tell by Phillip Lopate
“The evening his master died, he worked again well after he ended the day for the other adults, his own wife among them, and sent them back with hunger and tiredness to their cabins.” The Known World by Edward P. Jones
It was hard to stop here, but I have other work to do. The culling done, I’m looking forward to reading these books as soon as I can. I do feel a little panicky when I see how empty I’ve left the dresser surface. It’s hard to stop thinking about all those books in the boxes, and I might try to sneak a few back onto the dresser. But I probably won’t. The next step in my decluttering project is to clean out the dresser so that when I come back after next week’s out of town trip, I can start fall with only streamlined clutter. It will only remain streamlined, I know, until someone here in Brownstone Broolyn puts more books out on her stoop, doing some decluttering of her own.