Tuesday, January 05, 2010

First Lines of Novels I Never Expect to Write

For whatever reason, I haven't managed to make a real post over these past few days -- possibly due to shock from having to go back to work -- so I'm pulling something out of the archives, just to prove that I'm still alive. So have this bit of frivolity, which came from a first lines thread on the Straight Dope Message Board back in 2000:

Understand, first of all, that I take no responsibility for what happened in Taos.

(or)

That bastard always had it in for me, since the day we met in Basic.

(or)

Lester was a perfectly ordinary man in all respects, save one: he had abnormally large elbows.

(or)

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the bands that have connected their neighbors with life, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. I hold these truths to be self-evident: that Arthur Gallo deserved to die and is now burning in hell.

(or)

There's no good way to tell a man he's already dead.

4 comments:

Nick said...

Those are nice openers but it raises an interesting thought. I've got a friend who works in publishing and she talks as if it is the secret dream of all publishers to be authors. I have only ever heard of one author who became a writer, Mark Charan Newton (although I'm sure there are plenty more) but I assume that most of us in the publishing industry are perfectly comfortable working in publishing, not frustrated writers.

Unknown said...

I vote for the last one.

Anonymous said...

I like both the first and the last of these. Susan Loyal

Anonymous said...

30 years ago, as an overly-smart (or overly-smart-ass) adolescent, I worshiped Ron Goulart. My favorite of his books (all of which have long since disintegrated) started with the following:

"I feel like a new man," said the lemon yellow dwarf.

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