The first house I bought did not come with a refrigerator, and two friends, Meredith and Ian, were kind enough to donate their old one, a truly old one, faded white and round. Its shape reminded me of a Studebaker pickup truck for which I still yearn, whose humpbacked cab and color put me in mind of Moby Dick. I used to glimpse it on the streets of San Antonio, but I could never catch up with it.
The refrigerator, alas, did not last long. But I loved it so that I kept it in the backyard — padlocked, of course. At some point, I was inspired to start writing favorite first and last lines on its side. “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul, my Lolita.” (Not truly the first line.) “[T]hat’s nice, that’s real nice, but I knew a place once where the lights were brighter, and the air was filled with dreams.” (The last line of “Emma Who Saved My Life,” an all-time fave.) Rafael Alvarez added “Fat Curt is on the corner.” There was Marjorie Morningstar and Philip Roth. (“Now vee may, perhaps to begin. Yes?”)
The neighbors did not like the refrigerator. They reminded me, pointedly, that bulk trash was coming through. I bowed to the communal standards, which decreed that old refrigerators, no matter how literary, led to cars on blocks, which led to — well, wherever such homeowner worst-case scenarios lead.
Two lines should have been on the refrigerator, but were not. Both were written by Iowa grads — Gail Godwin and John Irving, to be precise — and both come at the end of wonderful party scenes that are almost Shakespearean in scope.
From “A Mother and Two Daughters,” after Nell (the titular mother) mulls over her life, sees how all these people on the mountaintop are connected to her and her late husband, and then blushes at the thought of just how happy her new husband makes her:
“Oh my, look, thought Dickie, who happend to glance at this grandmother as he launched into a duet with the horn, we’ve made her rapturous with our playing.”
And from “The Water Method Man,” in which Fred “Bogus” Trumper’s loved ones, old and new, celebrate Thanksgiving. (Trumper has his own Moby Dick issues, which play into the last line.) “Mindful of his scars, his old harpoons and things, Bogus Trumper smiled cautiously at all the good flesh around him.”
I hope the holidays found you, smiling cautiously at good flesh, or blushing at the memory of new flesh. And I hope that you have a place to keep cherished lines, first and last, that the neigbhors do not deem a threat to their property values.
I collect first lines. I’ve never had much use for last lines but anytime I see a favorite first line I write it down in a journal I bought specifically for that purpose. I wish I would have had a refrigerator. Here is my favorite, from “Catcher in the Rye”, I think it says a lot about me. “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap…”
In a way, I think that heavily influenced the opening line of my first (nominated for the CWA Debut Dagger, not to brag) novel manuscript. “My name is Kenny Shepard. It’s not as studious sounding as Watson or jovial as Archie, but I like it and it beats something like Myron, or worse, being Nameless.
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Byron –
Brag away. That’s a terrific honor — and a killer first line.
First lines are important. I don’t like the first line of The Great Fire, so I decided not to buy it the other day. I don’t dislike it. It just didn’t engage me. I’m aware that bloggers I admire, such OGIC at Terry’s site, love it, but I’m heading out with a copy of David Lodge’s Thinks and The Time-Traveler’s Wife, along with a heavy dose of Karin Slaughter, in prep for our interview in Harrogate.
So, summer reading, anyone?
Summer reading. Ah, I finally have time to do summer reading. When the bosses at my newspaper found out I was leaving in August for grad school they canned me. I was initially going to fight it, but this way I get two months of unfettered free time and a weekly unemployment check.
I will be reading a lot of hypertext and multimedia works in preperation for my first graduate creative writing workshop and I will be rereading a few favorites including Breakfast of Champions (which has another of my favorite opening lines…”This is a tale of a meeting of two lonesome, skinny, fairly old white men on a planet which was dying fast.”) and The World According to Garp. Also a short story collection “Kissing in Manhattan” by David Schickler and some of the old Ben Perkins novels by Rob Kanter.
New stuff includes Just One Look by Harlan Coben, The Narrows by Michael Connelly, Little Children by Tom Perratta and Ice Run by Steve Hamilton. Also By a Spider’s Thread by some hack PB writer named Larry Lippman.
So far so good with “Thinks.” In fact, it’s very much a novelist’s novel, as it’s shaping up, with a novelist and a scientist squaring off over the subject of consciousness.
>>>David Lodge’s Thinks<<<
I’ve read everything by Lodge except this one…let me know what you thinks, Laura.
I JUST reread Small World, probably my favorite of Lodge’s novels, in preparation for a comic novel I’m revving up to try writing. Small World is a joyful book, with a passage of sustained and ever-building erotic suspense the match of any I’ve read.
That would be another topic to talk about: not opening lines, but scenes, stories within the story, or monologues that stick in the mind apart from the book they’re part of. My vote for one of the best ever: The opening chapter/prologue of Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love.
Summer reading — oh yes! I read a really fun “medium boiled” book by a new (to mysteries) author — Linda Palmer’s Love is Murder was a great, light read. Just the thing for hanging out in the hammock while the dogs wrestled and I fanned mosquitoes away.
Am also working my way through Stephen R. Donaldson’s Mick Ambrewster series — a wonderful hard-boiled series from the 80s, recently re-released. The first book blew me away — the second one was good, too. Books three and four should arrive in the mail any day.
I’m also really looking forward to the newest Rick Mofina, an author who should be much more well-known than he is.
Ahhhhhhhh, summer reading!