As a writer I have significant interest invested in understanding the way that people think about good art, and why they have the opinions that they do of said work. How, I ask, does a readership physically hold a piece of writing in its collective mind, examine it, feel it, weigh its worth, and ultimately decide to keep it dearly in its consciousness, or to let it whither away into the ever-widening black hole of forgotten things?
This week, I have stumbled upon the importance of beginnings.
How many novels, poems, plays, or other written pieces do you know by their first line? Ask yourself. Do not ask yourself why--yet--but allow the idea to sink in. If you are like me, you derive some sort of comfort from the fact that you can seemingly bundle up so many beautiful works of art in so many first words. Let that feeling sweep over you--try to remember some of your favorites.
In the miniature library that I happen to have brought with me to Nashville, TN, taken as a satellite of sorts from the larger one in my home in North Carolina, I have compiled a list of first lines that many of you, Dear Readers, will probably recognize. It is missing some of the most famous and most dazzling, but my limited library will serve the point at hand:
"They're out there." --Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." --Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" --William Shakespeare, "Sonnet XVIII"
"Call me Ishmael." --Herman Melville, Moby Dick
"I am an invisible man." --Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
"The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one..." --Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
"Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed." --James Joyce, Ulysses
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." --George Orwell, 1984
"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins." --Vladimir Nabokov, (you guessed it) Lolita
Interestingly enough, that last one was probably written by Nabokov to poke fun at the idea of a great novel beginning with epic lines and abstract pontification. But, despite its efforts to spurn the idea, it too was captured in the general consciousness as "the first line of a great novel." What is the reason behind this obsession with beginnings, both from an authorial and readership standpoint? Obviously beginnings are important: they set a tone, a character, a scene. But no one is going to found a character on a handful of words--it takes hundreds and thousands to do that. No one can describe accurately a complex setting in a sentence. Instead, I believe that beginnings are important not because of what they say, but because of what they symbolize, what they promise, and what they reveal upon re-examination once a piece is complete. Human beings want to believe in a beginning; we want to be able to point to a place and say, "look! There it is! This, with this very word, began one of the most beautiful things created by man!" And so in that light, with the entirety of a beautiful piece of art in our minds as perspective, Ishmael's self-introduction takes on an entirely new sentimental value, Buck Mulligan becomes layered with a puzzle of Joycean complexities, and we answer definitively that yes, we would very much love to be compared to a summer's day.
There is a precedent in Western literature that I can point to that carries, perhaps, more weight than all the rest of the first lines in our collective canon. It does not matter if you do not adhere to the work's religious message at all. If you do believe in a Christian God, no matter--consider the Bible a very old novel and an expression, as it is, of a collective human consciousness. For the Bible, in two of its books, has first lines worth quoting here in the King's own English:
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." --Genesis 1:1. (King James)
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." --John 1:1. (King James)
What beginning carries more significance than the one that mankind has established for itself, and then put into words? All beginnings carry the weight of our self consciousness, and the undeniably human desire to understand our universe. For as the ends of our lives inevitably approach, as does a good novel's last page, we desire to establish some symbolic importance to the beginning of things--to put our finger on the moment of life, to hold it tight, and to remember it dearly.
Unfortunately my blog post is already too long. Until next time, dear reader,
E. C.
Journalism and beginnings
deans55 — June 10, 2011 - 13:41This Sunday, I'll receive my master's degree in journalism. Fittingly, this post makes me think back to my first quarter last fall, specifically to a class I took called Magazine Journalism.
I very distinctly remember the day we talked about ledes (the opening paragraph or so of an article). Our professor quoted a very famous line that some journalist (I can't remember who) once said about ledes: "The lede of a story should be like a flashlight shining down into the rest of the piece." Or something like that. In other words, your first few lines should both point forward and, in some way or another, encapsulate the piece. It's not enough to be clever or intriguing.
That quote makes me think about the very interesting intersections between creative and journalistic writing, often assumed to be completely different but in reality have more in common than most people realize. Some of the best articles in journalism are also admired for their great opening lines. Some great ones:
"In the picture, he departs from the earth like an arrow."
"The British graffiti artist Banksy likes pizza, though his preference in toppings cannot be ascertained."
"The Great Zucchini arrived early, as he is apt to do, and began to make demands, as is his custom."
It's true, these lines do lack some of the "literary" touch of the lines E.C. cited, but they're elegant in their own way and perform, I think a very similar function.
-Dean