Open Those Books!

[intothewood]

Since I have nothing of my own I care to share at this time (but I’m writing, woo! I’m writing like crazy and it feels great), I thought I’d share my favorite opening paragraph(s) from two very different books. The first is Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. This is one of my most beloved books, and I’d say these opening paragraphs are my all time high mark on how to open a book. It also very much speaks to my little black heart. You know those rare times when you read something or see something and you think, “Yes Yes Yes!” —? This is a big Yes moment for me. Yes.


"I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead.

Last night Boris discovered that he was lousy. I had to shave his armpits and even then the itching did not stop. How can one get lousy in a beautiful place like this? But no matter. We might never have known each other so intimately, Boris and I, had it not been for the lice.

Boris has just given me a summary of his views. He is a weather prophet. The weather will continue bad, he says. There will be more calamities, more death, more despair. Not the slightest indication of a change anywhere. The cancer of time is eating us away. Our heroes have killed themselves, or are killing themselves. The hero, then, is not Time, but Timelessness. We must get in step, a lock step, toward the prison of death. There is no escape. The weather will not change.

It is now the fall of my second year in Paris. I was sent here for a reason I have not yet been able to fathom.

I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. A year ago, six months ago, I thought that I was an artist. I no longer think about it, I am. Everything that was literature has fallen from me. There are no more books to be written, thank God.

This then? This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty ... what you will. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing. I will sing while you croak, I will dance over your dirty corpse...

To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing."

...God. That is a wordgasm, right there. Henry Miller, you are a complete asshole but I worship at your foul feet.


The second is Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. I confess that I’m not a big fan of Dickens, I don’t think there’s one book of his (aside from A Christmas Carol) that I’ve been able to finish because he's just too damn verbose and there are too many characters! (Sort of makes me think of Emperor Joseph II and his criticism of Mozart's use of "too many notes" but this is my assessment and I'm owning it.) I abandoned this one somewhere in the middle, but man, this opening is completely marvelous. He really knows how to set the scene, I will give him that. I can feel this atmosphere.


"London. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest."

And it goes on from there. And on. And on. Thirty paragraphs to tell you "it was foggy" but you bloody well know it to the very bone by the time you've slogged through.

Ahhhh. So now that I’m dank and shivering and chilled to the core, how about warming me up with some of your favorite openings?

Comments

[scarylady]

You like the big descriptions, huh? Me, I like it snappy and I want it to draw me in and make me desperate for the rest. So here's my contribution from PG Wodehouse (I could have chosen any of about half a dozen of his books, but I plumped for 'PSmith, Journalist' because I adore the silly, somewhat slanted peep into the New York of 1915):

The man in the street would not have known it, but a great crisis was imminent in New York journalism.

Everything seemed much as usual in the city. The cars ran blithely on Broadway. Newsboys shouted "Wux-try!" into the ears of nervous pedestrians with their usual Caruso-like vim. Society passed up and down Fifth Avenue in its automobiles, and was there a furrow of anxiety upon Society's brow? - None. At a thousand street corners a thousand policemen preserved their air of massive superiority to the things of this world. Not one of them showed the least sign of perturbation. Nevertheless, the crisis was at hand. Mr J. Fillken Wilberfloss, editor-in-chief of Cosy Moments, was about to leave his post and start on a ten weeks' holiday.

[intothewood]

Oh I love Wodehouse! He's one of the few writers who can make me laugh out loud. I especially love the Bertie Wooster stories, they're perfect. Have you read Hugh Laurie's essay on how Wodehouse civilized him? So good.

[analect]

Oh, yes! Some gorgeous choices there. I confess, I like both the concise and artfully spare (Wodehouse, Miller, Steinbeck) and the verbose, though like you I'm not that crazy about Dickens. I always found the Victorian sentimentality he was obliged to leaven things with a bit off-putting but, as Wilde said, one would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at the death of Little Nell. ;)

For my two cents, the opening to 'Fishboy' by Mark Richard. I love this book, though it's really a kind of Marmite thing. You'll either be absorbed in its lyrical rhythm, gothic dark humour and picaresque horror, or just get fed up of the wurbling and wander off. With that in mind:

"I began as a boy, as a human-being boy, a boy who fled to sea, a boy with a whistling lisp and the silken-tipped fingers of another class. A boy with put-away memories of bedclothes bound tight about the head, knocked by a hammering fist; the smell of cigar and shoe leather and the weighted burlap bag, thrown from a car into a side-road swamp. A child born again there, slithering out of the sack, a new beginning into life, holding back water to breathe through sour mudded filth and green surface slime. Put-away memories of my gums pushed back and bloody gnawing slugroot; the ripped frog muscle spasms tickling my tongue as I ate the things almost whole, and then the all-night chorus of croaking reproach; the bitter-centred snake eggs I washed down with the stagnant sulphured water, a mushroom cap for a cup, all of it heaved back up, a slack-jawed torrent of spew splashing around my ankles, heaving up my own new creations of life in the mire, bits and pieces wiggling and squirming and convulsing, web-footed and scaled, tiny dead reptilian eyes like pretty black beads in pearls."

It's dense but, whoa, it's visceral. The author is from Louisiana, and the whole book - though it doesn't have that denseness all the way through - is wonderfully evocative in its sense of place and experience. (Also: writing like crazy. This is good. Consider me doing the cheerleader pom-pom dance for you. *grin*)

[intothewood]

Ahh see I never made it as far as the satisfyingly hilarious death scenes of Little Nell or of Pip's love life or anything of that sort because I just couldn't stick it out!

Wow, I love that. And am a little sheepish to say that it's sort of how I write. Not quite to that extent (or perhaps sometimes more? oh man) but definitely in the neighbourhood of crack-and-pomposity induced wurbling at times. So naturally I would most likely love this book and will get a copy right away.

Your pom-pom dance is very inspirational, I will wurble some more!

[analect]

Meh, Pip's love life was missable, but there are giggles to be had elsewhere, I think - and, as you say, those gorgeous moments of incisive description.

I totally recommend Fishboy; be interested to know what you think if you can track it down. I love to write with that kind of textural element of words, and I love to read it - especially, as with that book, where it's something that actually gives you a flavour of culture, region etc. - but I recognise it does put some readers off. I think it's probably a matter of taste, and possibly the mood it catches people in, but... yeah, to my mind it's about painting with words, and that works so well, especially in darker tales. Luvverly!

Also: pom-poms. RAH RAH RAH!

[intothewood]

I was looking at the reviews for Fishboy on amazon and you're right, seems people either love it or hate it. In fact I can't remember ever seeing @#$%! type stuff in a book review before! Makes me even more interested.

[analect]

I'm somehow not surprised, though I haven't looked at the reviews. I think people either get things or don't get things. Another favourite of mine, Like People in History, by Felice Picano, kind of revolves around the concept of propelling its cast of characters through major events of late 20th century gay history - and is heavily informed by Picano's own role in the Violet Quill set, and his own experiences of Fire Island Pines, Stonewall etc. Yet one of the most common complaints about the book from readers? "It is unbelievable these people were at all those places and events."

*facepalm*

I call it Missing The Point (TM). I mean, fiction doesn't always have to be a linear story with complete realism and explanation. Sometimes it's about an idea, or a theme, and that *can* be enough. Still... subjective, I suppose.

[intothewood]

Another book I'll have to look for - I feel great debt coming on, both in my bankbook and to you for your recs.

[analect]

Heh heh... no probs. I'm very good at spending other people's money for them. *grin*

I like the Picano, I admit, because - to me, anyway - it's a concept book, and I enjoy the darting between time periods, and the evocative prose. If you haven't already, I also recommend looking at Edmund White. Admittedly, I find some of his stuff very pretentious but, again, it's interesting and frequently very well put together. I read Le Flaneur for some Left Bank/Lost Generation research a while back, and rather liked it.

[intothewood]

Haha damnit, stop that! Well at least I'll have a good reading list to take me through fall.

I used to work in a book store several years ago and was always picking up books left and right, I kid you not I have 8 bookcases worth. But after I left I settled into this long period when I was only reading classics, and I never really broke out of that. So it's good to lift up my head and look around again, thanks for encouraging that.

[analect]

I shall behave. For a while. ;)

I know the feeling... I currently have a stupidly huge backlog of writing to get through, having been more-poorly-than-usual for effectively 18 months, and I find I read much less when I'm writing - never sure entirely why - so the to-read pile has been growing unabated, and I've ignored an awful lot of modern stuff completely. Shameful. Still, there's much to be said for delving into the classics and staying there!

[intothewood]

Threads a-go-go! I'm taking the three we have open and compiling them here, I hope you don't mind but I though it might be easier.

First, I'm sorry to hear that you've been poorly for awhile. I hope it's something you can break through in time.

I don't read an awful lot when I'm writing, either, or if I do I read stuff totally unrelated. I like the inspiration of prose, but I don't want to be influenced by anything too close to what I' doing.

As for the sneaky get-out clause, I'm a big fan! I use all kinds of outs to save me from committing to too much accuracy. Laziness is the culprit.

Glam rock! I could go for some glam rock wurbling. The very first record I ever chose on my own was the New York Dolls (I was 8, and attracted by their androgynous cover shot), so I cut my teeth on that stuff, I love it. I've done my share of fanfic so I'm all for it. I'll check out vol. 1 of Feasting on Dreams and am looking forward to the grime, gore and bare bits in your future post!

[analect]

Carry on ;)
Thanks - the health thing is a pain. I have CFS (M.E.), so it's a kind of ongoing thing, but... hey.

Yes, I think it is a case of wanting to avoid influences. Seems people come down either on reading and absorbing piles of stuff, or abstaining completely for fear of cross-contamination. *grin*

Hee! I think I remember you mentioning the Dolls. I was waffling about some (post-Dolls) Johnny Thunders/Walter Lure stuff t'other day... they were such an important break in music, though.

Hope you enjoy the bits of FoD. Dragon Age is the first thing to ever make me stump up any fanfic - there's a bunch of shorter stuff up there too, but FoD is the playthrough story that just runs and runs. And runs.

I shall get on with the gore, grime, and bare bits asap. ;D

[intothewood]

Oh man, so sorry to hear that. I had a coworker (back in my bookstore days) who had CFS. She was always very chipper but it was clear that she struggled just to get through the day sometimes.

Yes that's it exactly! Abstinence for fear of literary VD. :P

I read what you said about Thunders, and you're right. I'm drawn to artists with issues, not because of their issues, but in how it reflects their artistry, I suppose. Like Pete Doherty, I adore him, I think he's so good when he's in the zone but even when he's there his issues overshadow everything and it's a shame. A spiral of cause and effect.

I've just started reading! :)

[analect]

Thank you - yeah, it's a pain in the proverbial, but eh.

Hahaha! Literary VD! I have an amusing mental Fry & Laurie sketch around that concept now.

Cause and effect indeed... and even when you can sympathise and understand the problems, it's still so bloody frustrating. *sigh* Ah, well. Hope you enjoy my wurblings! ;D