In Which The Beginnings Of Things Are Discussed
The first line in a novel is what grabs you. A good one will immediately say to you "HEY, pay attention, fucker!" Or something. Maybe without the expletive. As a writer myself, I find the first line is often the hardest part to come up with (right up there with the last line.) So I can naturally appreciate a good opening line as well as anyone.
I've been re-reading Hunter S. Thompson's books recently (as I am wont to do often), and the opening line of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas strikes me as one of the best and most concise opening lines in recent memory. Right up there with Moby Dick's "Call me 'Ishmael'" and A Christmas Carol's "Marley was dead to begin with." Here, I will show you:
"We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold."
That one line tells you everything you need to know about the story's set-up. It is, of course, elaborated upon in short order, but from that one sentence you get:
- The character(s) are traveling, as they are unsure of their exact location.
- Near Las Vegas, as Barstow is a town in the surrounding area.
- Obviously some sort of miscreants or vagabond-esque characters.
Hunter Thompson looked on writing as a form of music, often referring to his words as "lyrics" and making reference to the rhythm he needs to put his words to. He would often have visitors to his house read passages from his books, both published and unfinished, out loud, in order to hear the cadence and rhythm inherent in the sentences. It starts with the first line. Everything needs a beginning.
What are some of your favorite opening lines? I might add a couple more of mine later, but for now, leave yours in a comment.
Labels: hunter s. thompson, literature, writing
posted by nicholas reed at 1:15 AM
6 Comments:
My mother didn't try to stab my father until I was six, but she must have shown signs of oddness before that.
Alan Alda.
Never Have Your Dog Stuffed.
"christmas won't be christmas without presents"
what a nightmarish perspective for a kid!
i wish you could read me, but you will not jeje
joder
"the most merciful thing in the world, i think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. (We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.)"
opener to Lovecraft's "Call of Cthulhu"
practically the essence of weird fiction in those sentences.
The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.
Samuel Beckett, Murphy
and
Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.
Franz Kafka, The Trial
and a favorite first paragraph:
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
what fun!
"I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won't bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split up and my feeling that everything was dead." -Jack Kerouac's "On the Road"
and who could forget:
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."
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