An Open Door

Yesterday we drew open a new door. We stood in front of hundreds of students (24 at a time) and introduced ourselves politely. First impressions aren’t forgotten, so we tried our damndest to seem competent, entertaining, and, to some degree, likable. We think we pulled it off. We know how the rickety ship of education can sink prematurely. When a new semester of teaching begins, if you don’t impress at the beginning, you won’t impress at the end. It’s like Henry Miller said. Start with drums, then end with dynamite.

In the spirit of new beginnings, we’re thinking about books with memorable opening paragraphs. Dozens of books come to mind. Moby Dick, Plants Don’t Drink Coffee, Ulysses, The Stranger, Under the Volcano. But of all the books we’ve read, there are three that hold as the standards for introduction.

And while we don’t want our semesters to travel the same paths that these tales do, we surely wouldn’t mind if they began as vividly.

The Lost

1. … And the Earth Did Not Swallow Him — Tomás Rivera

That year was lost to him. At times he tried to remember and, just about when he thought everything was clearing up some, he would be at a loss for words. It almost always began with a dream in which he would suddenly awaken and then realize that he was really asleep. Then he wouldn’t know whether what he was thinking had happened or not.

It always began when he would hear someone calling him by his name but when he turned his head to see who was calling, he would make a complete turn and there he would end up — in the same place. This was why he never could discover who was calling him nor why. And then he even forgot the name he had been called.

One time he stopped at mid-turn and fear suddenly set in. He realized that he had called himself. And thus the lost year began.

He tried to figure out when that time he had come to call “year” had started. He became aware that he was always thinking and thinking and from this there was no way out. Then he started thinking about how he never thought and this was when his mind would go blank and he would fall asleep. But before falling asleep he saw and heard many things …

The Lust

2. Lolita — Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.

The Loose

3. Suttree — by Cormac McCarthy

Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the streets lie black and steaming in the wake of watertrucks and now when the drunk and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in the grim perimeters about, now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you.

We know you have your own favorites. Which beginnings blow your hats off? — Brian Allen Carr

Video: Searching for Cormac

Tagged as: Wednesday's Writerly Happenings

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