Famous First Words

This is a negative way to begin, I know. Let me stress that my main impulse is not to poke fun (the sentence, by the way, is a pastiche […]).

A pair of examples might make my point more obvious. The first is a portion of the opening passage of Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady:

Now here is the opening paragraph of Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier:

I would like to explore this transition by looking at the opening passage of Saul Bellow's novel Humboldt's Gift:

Consider the squared-off diction of the opening sentence of Wilson's 1925 review of a work by Mencken:

Pynchon's opening sentence is, it's true, arrestingly declarative:

Breathing Lessons opens as follows:

He announced his new prose in On the Road's first lines:

Boris Pasternak chose to begin his memoir, Safe Conduct, with a curious description of an incident:

With the opening sentence Mr. McFarland not only situates us, but also plants the subliminal conviction that Francis is wrong, that there will be some other metamorphosis and that the 'slow, affable decline' will be anything but.

Here is a fairly random sampling of some opening lines:

I could go on, but the point is made.

(Sven Birkerts)

An Op-Ed for the Chairman

Guy in government exclaim that no reading which is fun equals not doing good in school on grades. Also fewer money in life after school. Also not "communicating clearly." He say "fact" is number people reading say "I am enjoy books" who are rich. Like dorks with flashlight in bed i.e. unathletic. This guy spend dollars from people pay taxes! For this tax money? Not right. This guy has write books around poems. Maybe he also write poems? I not knowing. But basically what is? Is government poetry. Is such right? No is not right. Thus I contain many questionings. I demand knowing! Why government having poems instead of more extra wars? Why not one more very small war in tiny country for more gas? My gas costing many more dollars. Maybe I pay less taxes to government for more wars not poetry? Hey is this threat? No no threat is simply one idea I am suggest. Is free. So federal poem guy you exclaim reading "fun." Well I am disagree. Also I am make money too which I spend on like excellent big television. Is this not being patriot? Hey I thought dollars were for helping America not for nagging America in re book reports. Whoa the truth "hard"? Easy. I just "call a spade a spade." Perhaps you are from olden times when all had was books. Well excuse me this is now when we are watch athletic television and are make more money than you did in times of old. Hey government poet this is way things are why not "wake up and smell coffee." As they say this is not your grandfather's "fun"! What it all boils down? Welcome to America now get out. Really why not you up to Canada? Canadites all sit inside and read books and get sickly. Canadite government has lots of tax dollars but Communist bad medicine! Not like America! Maybe in olden times there was equation "reading for pleasurable equals later make money." But not modern now. Read your report? I have not. I skim article on Internet. If there one thing I learn while schooling? I am important. I matter. If skim something? Therefore opinionated. And robustly! Then I am voicing democracy. Ergo "hell and damnation" if my dollars going for your poems! Are we back to tax dollars thrown for artists smearing selves with chocolate inside the hot and tangy? I am vote no on chocolate book report! Go back Soviet Union Mister Poems because we are have had it! For you I am "communicating clearly" enough?