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Complex Numbers #1009033 added April 24, 2021 at 12:13am
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So let's talk about actual writing again.
I don't effing think so.
One hundred and one years ago today, Shirley Jackson was born.
Article is dated December 15, 2017, so that's the "today" she's talking about. That's fine; that's how time works. Just making it clear.
I'll skip to the actual opening paragraph in question.
My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.
I'll be honest: None of this interests me in the slightest. By which I mean, okay, fine, whatever; don't care. I'm neither tempted to read on nor ready to throw the book against the wall. As opposed to this article, which does evoke emotion in me, all of it negative.
I'm willing to admit that this might be because I lack historical context; the werewolf thing has been done to death now, but was probably somewhat fresh when it was written.
Back to the article:
It almost seems like overkill to explain why this paragraph is so wonderful.
No. No, it doesn't. Explain to me, a lifetime reader of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and supernatural genres, exactly what makes you think this is anything but boring.
You must have a certain sensibility to truly appreciate its charms.
Oh, hell no; you're not going to get away with tricking me into liking it by making me feel inadequate. I could just as easily say "You must have a certain idiocy to think this paragraph is anything but mediocre."
The rhythm is key.
Bovine excrement.
It begins straightforwardly, with our narrator’s name—a somewhat old-fashioned way of opening a book, appropriate for our somewhat old-fashioned, or at least sheltered, perhaps even stunted, narrator.
Sure, it's old-fashioned, but that's not a problem; it's arguably better than waiting until some arbitrary later point to give the reader the protagonist's name. The problem is that nothing else in that paragraph says "sheltered" or "stunted." On the contrary, you're not sheltered if most of your family is dead and you're not stunted if you're familiar with the botanical binomial of a fungus, nor if you feel like you have to explain said fungus by also using its colloquial name.
And what a name it is—a somewhat old-fashioned name, Mary Katherine Blackwood, evocative of witch trials and cultists, dense trees in far-away continents and Nancy Drew mysteries
All I could tell was that the name was so white I could barely make it out against the website's background.
She tells us she is eighteen, but by the very next sentence, she already sounds younger, and she sounds younger still by the third (“I dislike washing myself” is a prim schoolgirl’s complaint—well, prim in tone if not in meaning). This too presages what will we come to discover about Merricat (for that is what she is most often called), who lives by a logic quite disconnected from that of the the adult world, i.e. the world of men, the world exterior to her cherished sororal bond, and who will aggressively reject all encroachments by same.
Oh, now what you're saying is that at least part of the supposed charm of the opening paragraph can only be discerned as it relates to the rest of the story. The story that I'm not going to read if the first paragraph doesn't hook me. Fail. I'm skipping over a bit here, but...
The perfect surreality of her matter-of-fact association—the length of her fingers to her potential as a werewolf—signals that Merricat is a magical thinker, and a confident one.
Again, I read fantasy and horror. This sort of thing neither disturbs me nor intrigues me. A person "confident" in magical thinking is, as far as I'm concerned, an unsympathetic character.
Some readers might be tempted to wonder if I'd say the same thing if the protagonist's name were, say, Mark Aloysius Blackwood. The answer is yes. I don't give two shits about the gender of a protagonist.
Submit to her logic or give up now.
I choose the latter.
As for her likes: first we get a second pointed mention of Constance in twice as many lines, which should alert us to her importance.
I can actually agree with this bit, though again, it's only on reading the actual story that the theory "Constance is important" will play out or not.
So at any rate, now we know we’re dealing with a teenage girl bizarre and erudite enough to name a member of an ancient English dynasty, killed before he could achieve the goal he’d fought his whole life for, as one of her three favorite things.
Thus once again contradicting the "sheltered" and "stunted" descriptions.
The third favorite thing, of course, is a poisonous mushroom. This should set off certain alarm bells, especially when it is immediately followed by the revelation that everyone in her family is dead. I also count this revelation as a third mention of Constance.
That's because you read the story, which, I reiterate, won't happen if the opener fails to hook me. A good opener has to stand by itself, and not be good only in hindsight.
This paragraph is brilliant because of Merricat’s voice, and so is the rest of the book. It immediately teaches us who she is, and what this book is going to be like.
Oh? Well, then HARD pass on the rest of it.
And now that I've forever destroyed any chance of getting published on LitHub, I'll stop ragging on the article and on a story I've never read. Yes, of course I've read other stuff by Shirley Jackson; it was required reading in high school. And I liked it. I'm not criticizing Shirley Jackson here.
So what does Waltz think is the greatest opening paragraph of all time? Well, obviously, to answer that, I'd have to have read every story ever written, and that's an even less attainable goal than my desire to visit All The Breweries.
But the one that has always stuck out in my mind is the opening paragraph of To Reign in Hell, a somewhat obscure novel by one of my favorite authors, Steven Brust:
Snow, tenderly caught by eddying breezes, swirled and spun in to and out of bright, lustrous shapes that gleamed against the emerald-blazoned black drape of sky and sparkled there for a moment, hanging, before settling gently to the soft, green-tufted plain with all the sickly sweetness of an over-written sentence.
What can I say? I prefer my fiction to be self-aware.
How about the rest of you? Any favorite opening sentences/paragraphs? Why not make it a
Merit Badge Mini-Contest!
Give me your favorite opening line(s) (including title and author). Copy them in if you can; or link to them. My favorite will win a Merit Badge. Yes, you can try entering your own effort, or that of other WDC authors. My requirement is that I be able to read it, else I won't be able to tell whether I like it or not. The one I like best will get a Merit Badge sometime on Sunday. As usual, you have until midnight tonight, the end of the day on Saturday, in accordance with WDC time. |
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