May 10, 2020

A Good Opening Sentence

The first time Amanda caught fire was the summer she was living on the top floor of a big house on Clinton Street with the drummer of a Leonard Cohen cover band called Eating on Yom Kippur, which was made up almost exclusively of ex-rabbinical students who had been expelled from a local Yeshiva for selling amphetamines to their fellow classmates.

That’s all I have. I found one page in my blue folder. With one lonely opening sentence. I have no idea what the story was going to be about. I like the opening line though. I thought it deserved to see the light of day.

For my money, the best opening line is Mark Helprin’s from his short story The Schreuderspitze:

In Munich are many men who look like weasels.

I just love that. 

The second line from that story is no slouch either. 

Whether by genetic accident, meticulous cross breeding, an early and puzzling migration, coincidence, or a reason we do not know, they exist in great numbers.

To hell with it. I have to give you the entire paragraph because it is so fucking good. 

Remarkably, they accentuate this unfortunate tendency by wearing mustaches, Alpine hats, and tweed. A man who resembles a rodent should never wear tweed.

I just love that!

I like a good opening line. It sets the tone. Makes you sit up and take notice. 

On the other hand, a good opening line can be a burden. It sets the bar too high. I don’t really remember the rest of Helprin’s story. But I don’t think it is as good as the opening. How could it?

I often quit after writing what I think is a good opening. I admire it for a while. Reread it a few times. Send it to friends for their approval. ‘Damn, that’s good,’ I might say to myself. And then I quit and go about my day.  Because, you know, writing is hard.

My friend Tuddy remembers most of what I have written. His favorite is I go to the library and take out books I know I will not read. Classics mostly.

I like that. I mean, it’s not Helprin. But I like it. I don’t think there was any actual story. If there was, it was forgettable. 

A good opening line is a bit like a party trick. It is all smoke and mirrors. I do a lot of that in my life. I can play the opening bars of Bill Withers’ Lean on Me on the piano. Sounds pretty good. It is the only thing I know how to play on the piano. 

A good opening line is a bit like flexing your muscles. You aren’t actually doing any heavy lifting. You are just giving the impression that you can. 

My pride and joy was my Hemingway-esque opening for yet another unwritten story. It was a thing of beauty.

Get this:

It was a hot muggy night in Barcelona and all the good whores had the flu.

Jesus that is good.

How do I come up with that. It’s gold, Jerry, it’s gold.

Well, it turns out I don’t.  And I didn’t. That line was written by famed sports writer and novelist Dan Jenkins. For the better part of 30 years, I unknowingly and unwittingly passed it off as my own. 

It was from a book I don’t remember ever reading. It must have just stuck in my subconscience.

I am only mentioning it here not to apologize to Dan Jenkins. He wouldn’t give a shit. But rather as a reason to give credit to Swedish writer Fredrik Backman. You might not recognize his name. He wrote a bestseller which later became a movie called A Man Called Ove. It is a great book. One of his other books is called Britt-Marie Was Here. I love the opening chapter. The main character is a prickly, opinionated curmudgeon. My type of gal. One of her lines is so good. So laugh-out-loud funny that I have adopted it into my daily lexicon. I use it often. So do some of my characters. So, while most of the words in this collection are mine, know that when you come across “are we at war” that you have Backman, not me, to thank.

Okay. Good.

Now I feel better.

The end.