First Sentences

I recently came across a feature in Poets & Writers, entitled Page One:  Where New and Noteworthy Books Begin, which offered P&W’s editorial staff’s selection of exceptional first sentences in recently released books.  While style and content preferences are subjective, simply stated, a first sentence should draw the reader in and set the tone.  Here are a couple of openings, plucked from the article, that do exactly that:

“Ronnie swore it was talk and nothing more.”  From Late One Night, by Lee Martin.  And:

“Ten years ago, I helped a handful of men take my brother’s life.”  The Reactive, by Masande Ntshanga. 

Both of these strong sentences make me want to read further.  They predict violence and strife and soured relationships.  They tell me that an interesting story’s coming. 

This one, I’m not so crazy about:

“In June, the book club was at Zoe’s house, which meant that Elizabeth had to carry her heavy ceramic bowl of spinach salad with walnuts and bits of crumbled goat cheese a grand total of half a block.”  Modern Lovers, Emma Straub.

This is all over the place—two names, three types of food, a book club, and a walk.  I’m not drawn in.  I don’t care about Elizabeth and her heavy bowl.  It sets the tone, but it’s not something I want inside my head. 

Also, this next one bothers me; however, it is translated from French, so maybe that’s the reason for the befuddling lack of color:  

“She was Malinka again the moment she got on the train, and she found it neither a pleasure nor a burden, having long since stopped noticing.”  Ladivine, Marie NDiaye.

The lack of clarity is unsatisfying.  I reread it, feeling that I’ve missed something.  I’m put off that Malinka seems at ease with her duplicity.  I’d read a little further in this one, though, because the mystery (why does she change to Malinka on the train?) interests me. 

There are certain openings that are so offensive that I read no further.

Foul language is a turnoff.  Because vulgarity signals a lack of vocabulary and imagination, not to mention a lack of taste, my thought when I find a “Fuck” in the first sentence is that this author’s going to be limited, and will rely heavily on the shock factor.  I’ve probably missed out on many good reads because of this literary handicap; but really, who wants to read two hundred pages of that?

This first sentence (from my collection, not P&W’s) taken from The Cowboy and the Cossack, by Clair Huffaker, is written from the perspective of a teenaged cowboy in the 1880’s.  It meets the goal of a first sentence—to interest the reader and set the tone—but the weak attempt to capture a nonexistent dialect remains annoyingly unnatural throughout.  A forced narrative makes me feel itchy and sick.  I read it from front to finish, feeling like I needed to throw up the whole time.  Having said that, if you’re looking for a fun read, and don’t mind an amateurish style, you might like it.  Here’s its opening:

“It’s the spring of ’80 on the coast of Siberia when our greasy-sack outfit first runs up against those Cossacks.”

Keeping in mind the goal of a first sentence, I examine a few of my attempts and compare them to those declared outstanding by Poets & Writers. 

“I own the only building in a two-mile radius that has a basement.”  This is from Why Stuff Matters, to be published by Arcadia early next year.  Trying to assess it with a fresh eye, I’m not thrilled; but I’m not displeased either.  The sentence’s significance is based on a regional awareness—if you’re from northwest Texas, you understand that mention of a basement signals the imminent arrival of a tornado.  A reader from elsewhere might not comprehend the implication.  Does it make a reader want to read on?  I just don’t know!  How about this one?

“Before they’d let me out of rehab someone had to agree to act as my legal custodian.”  This is from Old Buildings in North Texas, to be released in the UK in September.  Once again, ambivalence.  It lays out a universal situation—every person on the planet knows an addict.  And the phrase “had to agree” portends conflict, hinting that the relationship with this custodian will not go smoothly.  But I’m noticing a pattern—my sentences are similar to those I chose as my favorite examples from Poets & Writers.  I suppose it’s good that I like my own work.  

Here’s the opening sentence of a mystery series, as yet unnamed, that I’m trying to get off the ground:

 “During the break several of us slip through the side door and troop to the sidewalk across the street.”

Hardly inspiring.  It tells of a person with friends.  Slipping through the side door implies some sort of furtive activity.  Does it make the reader want to continue?

I’ll finish with what is probably the most famous first sentence ever written, from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.  Its balance is exquisite, and the assertion that we all believe ourselves to live in extraordinary times creates universality and a sense of continuity that is almost holy.  On the other hand, it is so old-fashioned, so overblown, that no modern writer would dare release such a run of words in this instant-gratification world:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.   

Now that’s a first sentence.  Does it set the tone and draw the reader in?  Or, because it’s obviously going to be a slog, does it cause the reader to close the book and reach for Nora Roberts? 

Though it's mostly advertisements about MFA programs and writers' retreats, the articles are helpful and informative.  

This is the article you have to thank for this rather dry and self-aborbed posting.  

Texas Wine Adventure

This weekend David and I are hosting a tasting at a local winery.  Tere, Anna, and Curtis come to the house, and we drive from there.  We meet the rest of our friends at the winery.  The place is bustling.  A tour bus has recently arrived.  I check the twelve of us in at the counter and we’re led to the mashing floor where we’re given a history of this particular winery (I’m not really captured at this point); and then we listen to a lecture about the process (mildly interesting to the science-minded).

I’m distracted because I’d rather spend time with my friends than the wine.  Only Tom and Gitte are relatively new to us—David met Tom through Habitat, and we look forward to getting to know them better.  Except for Curtis and Anna, the rest are people I went to high school with in Amarillo; and spending time with them is a nostalgic business, stirring up memories of my hometown and old times and what it meant to have adventures with good friends.  No one knows you as well as your buddies from way back when, and I want to race ahead to the social part of the day, the conversations and catch-ups.  But first we must hear about what to do with grapes. 

Wine is not something I associate with the hill country of Texas, but apparently it’s a big deal; we’re practically Napa of the south.  The road between Johnson City and Fredericksburg is packed with wineries, and twenty-seven more permits have been issued for the next year. 

Few of the Texas wineries actually grow their own grapes—oh, there are vines in nearby fields to lend ambiance, but to produce the amount these wineries bottle, the vintners must bring in grapes from Oregon, Washington, and—this one amuses me—Lubbock.  Yes, Texas Tech friends, Llano Estacado still marches on; and surprisingly their grapes are revered. 

After the educational segment, the twelve of us circle around a table while a presenter pours a small amount in each of our glasses, elaborating with great enthusiasm about the types and combinations of grapes used to make each wine; the inspiration behind the wine; the flavors drawn from the soil; the weather requirements for the sweetest grapes and the thinnest skins—this goes on for a long time while, nestled in my palm, is a glass containing ten drops of wine.  We all don interested expressions, though mainly what we want to do is down the wine and move on. 

Being surrounded by these people that I’m so fond of makes me ponder the question of why, for all these years, I’ve felt bitter toward my hometown.  Amarillo was brown and windy and the people seemed unimaginative and inert.  I felt, when I was young, that the primary goal of the collective population was conformity.  No exotic flowers were allowed to flourish in the infertile soil.  Success was a good thing, but too much of it was impolite.  Yet, considering this exceptional group, the majority of which come from there, I realize that I’ve been closed and wrong.  The hard dirt of the panhandle, despite the mediocre schools and the derivative mindset, gave the world some exceptional people.  Back to the wine.

Each winery has a club.  If you join their club you get three bottles of wine three times a year, a free glass of wine at the winery once a month and, periodically, a free tasting.  Also, you get a members’ discount on every bottle.  Several couples we know have joined three or more wineries, which causes me to surmise that these wineries are thriving because all the retirees in Marble Falls and Llano are desperate for something to do. 

A counter-intuitive aspect of this winery culture is that the people who wear matching shirts and strive to find original adjectives are not necessarily employees—in many cases they’re volunteers who are actually reimbursed with bottles of wine.  Am I wrong, or is this the opposite of volunteering?   

After we’ve finished the testing we move to the patio, a shady area with a view over the vineyard and a live band set up in the corner.  Our friends pull two benches together while David and Curtis transfer snacks from the truck.  I hang back to buy bottles of wine.  We drink and eat and laugh and tell jokes.  A cake comes out and we sing happy birthday to Curtis and David, finishing the bottles just as the winery is closing—but it’s too early for us to say good-bye.  We invite everyone to our house, which isn’t far, where we sit around the fire pit, look out at the cedars and hummingbirds, eat more food, and drink more wine.  Slowly people depart.  Tom and Gitte ran a five K this morning and they’re exhausted.  (Congratulations on placing first, Gitte!)  Nonny and Mary Ann have a long drive to get home.  (Bye, drive carefully!)

Then around the circle it’s just Diana and Charlie, Tere, David and me.  Curtis and Anna listen from a nearby lounge chair, unimpressed by our reminisces, which are foreign and absurd to them—a legal drinking age of eighteen, the get-high-for-lunch-bunch at school, kids skipping classes because they were so bored, bored, bored.  Tere and Diana were two of my best friends from high school.  We have stories.  A while later Diana and Charlie head out.  (See you soon!)  The kids go to bed.  Tere, David, and I stay up talking.  It’s been a long time since I’ve had a chance to pick Tere’s brain and, as always, there’s much to be learned.  She’s heading in a new direction, passionate about new evidence proving the correlation between mental and physical well-being; positing that when self-contempt (we all hate ourselves a little) is replaced with self-compassion (forgive yourself), a person is not only physically healthier, but healing is more likely to occur.  (Hope it goes well, Tere!)

It’s after one when we get to bed.  In the morning David calculates that we drank wine for ten hours straight.  Babe, we’re too old for this. 

David, me, Tere, Diana, and Charlie.  

At the winery.  Nonny and Mary Ann in front.  Mary Ann helped pass out cake.  Thanks, Mary Ann. 

Tom and Gitte.  David and Tere in chairs.  Our back yard.

On a different topic:  The cleaning lady occasionally brings her nine-year-old daughter with her.  The little girl scratched this into the leather of our new custom-ordered couch.  We are heartsick.  

A Walk is Good

Walking along the Terry Hershey footpath in Houston, I have issues to ponder.

A couple of years ago I decided to write a mystery series.  There seems to be a market for them.  There’s nothing funny about murder, but I know myself well enough to know that the humor will come through.  Would someone want to read a book on a serious subject that doesn’t take itself seriously?  Sure; I do it all the time.  I can think of several amusing mysteries where people die in bloody horror in every other chapter. 

I wrote the first book, Caprock Snoop, and was pleased with it.  The protagonist, Fran Furlow, is nosey and interfering; a control freak and a compassionate bully; tiny and feisty; and she comes with a compelling backstory.  She lives to get to the bottom of things.  She gets knocked around a time or two, but how else would I show her to be so impressively intrepid? 

Now I’m almost finished with the second in the series, and half an hour ago I wrote myself to a complete stop.  There’s no place to go except forward, but something about the previous chapters nags at me.  Did I take a wrong turn?  Write an inconsistent dialogue?    

So, a walk to clear my head. 

Here’s the plot:  Someone’s murdering Caprock’s senior population and leaving their bodies in unexpected places—the back of a car, the gazebo in the park, the locker room at the city pool.  Clues and suspects pop up everywhere and Fran sorts through the plethora.  Meanwhile, she obsesses over her friends’ bad habits, attends support groups, and deals with her two co-workers who, after thirty years of working in the same office, decide to abandon their spouses and move in together. 

Are the motives of the villains—a grandmother/grandson duo—believable?  When confronted by Fran, the grandmother claims the deaths to be mercy killings—the victims are in pain and suffering from dementia; but the grandson has been robbing the victims, which is hardly altruistic.    

My mind veers.  I’m here in Houston to give moral support to my sister.  Her boyfriend of twenty years died a couple of months ago, and last week our mother wasn’t able to get out of bed.  It was time to call in hospice care.  And now helpful strangers are popping in to do evaluations, discuss the legalities, and prepare Trina for what’s coming. 

Trina is exhibiting undeniable signs of depression.  I won’t get into the personal bits of it, but she’s really going through a hard time.  I’ve seen her become desperately anxious, almost panicked, over what’s coming.  She’s closely involved, almost intertwined, with our mother.  This is going to be painful.  As I put one foot in front of the other, I promise myself that I’ll do better, get down to Houston more often, call more.  Trina needs to know she’s not in this by herself, though she pretty much is. 

Back to my analysis.  Why did the grandmother and her grandson leave the bodies in such peculiar places?  It was an interesting turn when I wrote it, but in the end the purpose behind it seems weak.  The explanation the grandmother offers is that they were trying to publicize the plight of the demented elderly, a lame rationalization.  There must be another, more credible, reason for the weird choices.  Perhaps some psychological significance to each location?  This is the inherent difficulty in my organic method—sometimes I write myself into the back of a cave, at which point I’m forced to retrace, rethink, and rewrite.  Hair-pulling is involved. 

As the backbone of the book is the strong main character, is the inexplicable location of the victims really that important?  Of course it is.  An irrefutable component of the bond between the writer and the reader is that if a writer doubts what she’s writing, the reader will, too.

The air is warm and humid.  The foliage is lush and green, and the birds are loud and cheerful.  I take a deep breath of the heavy air and sigh it back out.  All will be well.  I’ll fix the story.  Trina will get through this.  Our mother will get to where she needs to be.  Though I was glum when I started out, my heart feels lighter as I arrive back at the house. 

I’m inside for only a minute when there’s a knock on the door.  It’s the hospice minister.  Not too concerned that I’m a sweaty mess, I invite him in.  He seems a mild man, unexpectedly large and hairy.  Trina greets him and leads him back to the bedroom where Momma slumps in the hospital bed and looks out at surroundings that are incomprehensible to her.  She’s more feral than domesticated these days.  Yesterday when she was hungry she lifted Trina’s hand to her mouth and bit it.  I hope she doesn’t bite the minister! 

These shoes that I walk in are absurdly garish.  

Bea Haenisch Peery.  It's sad that mothers eventually change and die.  

Trina has a good job with a finance company.  Is it a blessing or a curse that she's allowed to work from home?  

The sunglasses I'm wearing are inspired by the rural children of China.  I bought them from Sam's company, Mantra, in Beijing.  The theme of their next line will the hutongs.  

Households at War

The two men live across the street from one another.  Once they were on friendly terms, but one of them is meticulous and controlling; and the other, younger by a few years, is casual about his responsibilities.  Sometimes he doesn’t bring in his garbage container fast enough.  Sometimes his lawn is more weeds than grass..  With each passing day the easy-going attitude of the younger irritates the older, who emails letters of complaint to the entire HOA, citing the umbrages, affronted by the lack of focus, the inexplicable priorities.  And these letters are taken as an insult.  At one time the two men exchanged greetings and fell into spontaneous conversations.  Now they no longer speak, no longer wave when their cars pass going in and out of the gate.  In fact, the sight of one to the other causes blood to heat up, anger to pound in hairy ears. 

The wives, too, are involved.  They glare at each other from their across-the-street porches.  

“Let me warn you about her,” Hillie tells me, glowering balefully at the house on the other side of the road.  “She’ll tell you one thing and do another.  She acts like she’s your friend, but you can’t trust her.  If she sees you talking to me, you’ll be her enemy.”

It’s eighth grade all over again.

“Maybe I’d better go, then,” I say, yanking on Trip’s leash, wanting to get away before someone hates me for no reason.  The afternoon sun shines on my vulnerable nose.  I forgot to apply sunscreen. 

I like Hillie, who’s energetic and pretty—thin, straight teeth, cute haircut; but not vain about it.  Unhappy, made anxious by the intensity of the bad feelings, I hurry down the street, to the safe harbor behind my door, where no one ever argues, not even a little bit, and the only thing to be concerned about is what to have for dinner and where we’ll go on our next vacation. 

The next morning, once again I walk Trip up the street.  The birds are going crazy and the bluebonnets are popping up, a joyful signal that spring’s arriving.  There’s not a cloud in the sky.  I contemplate all these things peacefully.  It has certainly been a mild winter.  On the way home I bump into Monica, Hillie’s duplicitous foe.  She’s lurking in her driveway.  I suspect she saw me walk by and raced out to catch me on my way back. 

“G’morning,” I say.

In her late sixties, Monica is a gray smudge—hair, eyes, complexion; all gray.  She’s stylish, tenacious when it comes to accessorizing.  Bare legs poke from beneath her gray coat.  While it’s warm for March, it’s still chilly; but she wears sandals with sparkling straps, toe rings and ankle bracelets.  Who puts on toe rings and ankle bracelets at seven in the morning?  I’m wearing sweat pants, two sweaters, and fluffy bed socks stuffed into my shoes.   I’m pretty sure my hair is poking straight up, as it tends to do in the morning. 

“You’re new here, and I see that you’re getting friendly with her.”  She juts her sharp chin toward Hillie’s house.  “You’ll find out soon enough that she never thinks of anybody but herself.  And if you don’t agree with her about every little thing, she’ll badmouth you to everybody.”

“Oh dear,” I say.  “She seems real nice as far as I can tell.”

“Just be careful.”

She makes it sound like I’m in danger.  I say good-bye and move on.

Monica and Barney invite us to dinner.  We accept the invitation and take a bottle of wine.  It’s a nice meal—chicken, salad, homemade bread, and pie from the Bluebonnet Cafe.  They tell us about themselves and the history of the development.  It’s all very convivial until they start complaining about Hillie and Edgar.  Their bitter words batter our minds for an hour, at which time we’re able to politely thank them and depart. 

Hillie and Edgar ask us to accompany them to a wine tasting at a local winery.  The afternoon is lovely—clear skies, gentle breeze, mid-seventies—and the atmosphere is bouyant.  Strangers talk to each other; bustling workers pour wine and explain its aspects in terms so flowery that we make fun.  It’s an entertaining few hours, until Hillie and Edgar get started on how evil Monica and Barney are.  David and I exchange a look.  This can’t be healthy.  Later, at home, we discuss the situation.

“We’re going to have to move,” I say sadly.

“That’s not going to happen,” David tells me.  “We’ll remain neutral.”

“They seem to place importance on choosing sides.”

“How do the other people in the cul-de-sac handle it?”

I think about it.  Our neighbors wave from behind their steering wheels.  When we run into them on the street the talk is of the weather and the pesky armadillos.  They keep a distance.  A safe distance.  And that’s what we’re going to have to do. 

The first bluebonnet.

Hillie and Edgar's house.  The round garden in front looks messy but, in all fairness, nobody's area looks good this time of year.  

Monica and Barney's. The tree in front, beside the door, is bare right now, but in autumn it's a glorious gold.