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:

1. The character(s) are traveling, as they are unsure of their exact location.
2. Near Las Vegas, as Barstow is a town in the surrounding area.
3. Obviously some sort of miscreants or vagabond-esque characters.

Now, this is borne out by what follows, but immediately, you are hooked into the story.

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.

Buy the Ticket; Take the Ride

I've been in a bit of a Hunter S. Thompson mood lately. Re-reading a couple of his books, watching Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on dvd. I was given The Kitchen Diaries, a sort-of memoir/series of stories about Hunter told by two of his close friends, and that's most likely what kicked this off. He's one of my favorite writers, and was one of my few living heroes (until he offed himself, of course. Then he wasn't living. [for completion's sake, the others are Grant Morrison, Eddie Izzard, and David Foster Wallace.])

Anyway, I've been writing, though nothing's finished. As such, I have little to post, though I feel I should say SOMEthing. Thusly, here is an excerpt from HST's book Kingdom of Fear, published in 2003. It was his last completed book (other than a collection of his essays from espn.com called Hey Rube), and this brief selection from it encompasses a lot of what I love about his writing: his wonderful sense of rhythm, the beauty of his word usage, the elegance of his phrasing, his eye for a musical phrase. RIP HST.

"

Whoops! How about a break, people? How about some Music? Yes. Music is where it's at, so consider this:

I am a confused Musician who got sidetracked into this goddamn Word business for so long that I never got back into music --except maybe when I find myself oddly alone in a quiet room with only a typewriter to strum on and a yen to write a song. Who knows why? Maybe I just feel like singing --so I type.

These quick electric keys are my Instrument, my harp, my RCA glass-tube microphone, and my fine soprano saxophone all at once. That is my music, for good or ill, and on some night it will make me feel like a god. Veni, Vidi, Vici. . . . That is when the fun starts. . . . Yes, Kenneth, this is the frequency. This is where the snow leopards live; "Genius, all over the world, stands hand in hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round. . . ."

Herman Melville said that, and I have found it to be true, but I didn't really know what it felt like until I started feeling those shocks myself, which always gave me a rush. . . .

So perhaps we can look at some of my work (or all of it, on some days) as genetically governed by my frustrated musical failures, which led to an overweening sublimation of my essentially musical instincts that surely haunt me just as clearly as they dominate my lyrics.

-- November 19th, 2000

"

Quoting the Cube*

I am currently in the process of writing 2 blog entries of film review and analysis (on Cloverfield and The Fountain, respectively), and a short story about ghosts and writing, and 2 different songs, and still attempting to piece together a story in my head about dealing with the death of a loved one and robots (I AM AMBITIOUS AND FULL OF BEES!), thus you, my wonderful reader[s], are receiving the following list of quotes that I A) like quite a bit, and B) tend to apply to my own personal world-view. And you know very well that all that I say and do is right.**

So anyway, more substantial content coming in the near future, but for now... courage! And interesting epigraph-worthy material...


"What is Grand is necessarily obscure to Weak men. That which can be made Explicit to the Idiot is not worth my care."
:: William Blake

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
:: Philip K. Dick

"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via.
(There is no easy way from the earth to the stars.)"
:: Seneca

"The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish."
:: Terence McKenna

"See, now! Our sentence is up "
:: Grant Morrison

"When you start worrying about whether someone likes you, or whether you're going to get what you want, or whether you'll ever become the person you want to be, just remember: we're all doomed."
:: Warren Ellis

"I know I can write my way out of this."
:: Blake Schwarzenbach

"A tradition is a past that distorts the present."
:: Albert Camus

""In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people angry and has widely been considered as a bad move."
:: Douglas Adams

"Nought's had, all's spent,
Where our desire is got without content.
'Tis safer to be that which we destroy
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy."
:: William Shakespeare

"Knowing and being are mutually exclusive."
:: Nietzsche

"Appearance blinds, whereas words reveal."
:: Oscar Wilde

"To perpetuate one's name, one must carve it on a heavy stone and sink to the bottom of the sea; depths last longer than heights."
:: Herman Melville

"The world's a fucking brilliant place to live in."
:: Douglas Coupland

"It is not certain that our time has lacked gods; many have been proposed, usually stupid or cowardly ones."
:: Albert Camus

"To define is to limit."
:: Oscar Wilde

"Buy the ticket; Take the ride."
:: Hunter S. Thompson


Plan on seeing more like these at some point in the future. I like collecting interesting quotes.


* Kind of like Gleaming the Cube, but less skateboarding and more literature. Still involves lots of yelling of the word "RADICAL!"

** This statement might be insanely untrue.

tempus fugit.

It's been a year since he died, and I often wonder what he would've made of the past year's developments; political, cultural, and sports related. I don't know. But it would've made great reading.

Here's what I wrote about one year ago:

"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and to rare to die."

He was one of my literary idols, a great writer, and a man who lived his life fully and without equal.
This upsets me so much... I don't know what else to say...

RIP HST

edit @ 6pm: I'm having trouble reconciling my opinions of the man himself with the circumstances of his death. In any event, the backlash has begun, as is inevitable when any celebrity of any sort dies.

I spent today writing. It is as fitting a tribute as I can give to him, and the only one I will be giving. Eventually. But not now.

To paraphrase Tomas:
It makes me sick when I think of it, all my heroes could not live with this,
and I hope you rest in peace because because with us you never did.
HST, you were much too young and you changed my life,
but I draw the line at suicide, so here's to life!

All still true. I loved the man, hated the way he went out. Ah, well, such is life. Buy the ticket, take the ride. Mahalo.

Fear and loathing.

"We're your friends; we're not like the others."

Fear and Loathing in New Jersey part 1

Hunter S. Thompson was one of the few people in life who I would willingly call "my hero." He was a truly original writer, a sharp political satirist, a cynical humorist, and he had balls bigger than Canada. When I found out he died last year (February 20th, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound), it was one of the ONLY times since I was very little that someone's death who was not a personal relative actually affected me. I can't even attempt to describe why and how I felt connected to this man, but for some strange reason, I did.

As such, every week up to the anniversary of his death, I will be posting some of my favorite quotes from him, and a picture I think represents him as he was: American... free-spirited... wild... anarchic... Gonzo.

"If you're going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up."
-interview

"In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity"
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

"We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear— fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts, or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp on vague charges of being a Terrorist sympathizer."
- Kingdom of Fear

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."
- attributed.