Random
First Sentences or Paragraphs #1: Mary Miller Edition
[series note: This post is the first of five, in a week-long series examining first sentences or paragraphs. It’s not my intention to be prescriptive about what kinds of first sentences writers ought to be writing. Instead, I hope to simply take a look at five sets of first sentences for the purpose of thinking about how they introduce the reader to the story or novel to which they belong. I plan to post them without commentary, as one might post a photograph or painting, and open up the comment threads to your observations as readers. Some questions that interest me and might interest you include: 1. How is the first sentence (or paragraph — I’ll include some of those, too, since some first sentences require the next few sentences to even be available for this kind of analysis) interesting or not interesting on grounds of language? 2. Does the first sentence introduce any particular (or general feeling of) trouble or conflict or dissonance or tension into the story that makes the reader want to keep reading? 3. Does the first sentence do anything to immerse the reader in the donnee, the ground rules, the world of the story, those orienting questions such as who speaks, when and where are we in space and time, etc.? 4. Since the first sentence, in the wild, doesn’t exist in the contextless manner in which I’ve presented these, in what kinds of ways does examining them like this create false ideas about the uses and functions of first sentences? What kinds of things ought first sentences be doing? What kinds of things do first sentences not do often enough? (It seems likely to me that you will have competing ideas about first sentences. Please offer them here. Every idea or observation gets our good attention.) The sentence/paragraph sets we’ll be observing: 1. first sentences from Mary Miller’s Big World; 2. first sentences from physically large novels; 3. the first sentences from every book written by Philip Roth; 4. first sentences from the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction; 5. first sentences from Best European Fiction 2010.]
There’s a leak, I told him, it’s right over my bed. He didn’t believe me. I was a girl.
– “Leak”
My sister is inside watching a movie and bleeding. I don’t bleed anymore. It’s not something I thought I’d miss.
– “Even the Interstate is Pretty”
He had an air gun, a beer box set up to shoot. We were in a hotel room in Pigeon Forge.
– “Fast Trains”
At the breakfast table my mother said the world was my oyster.
“While I’m still young and pretty,” I said.
– “Pearl”
At lunch I sit in the ditch with the thin popular girls and pretend to be one of them.
– “Aunt Jemima’s Old Fashioned Pancakes”
“You’re wearing Coco Chanel,” he says to the girl at the bar. She was watching him. They all watch him. The pills he takes makes this pleasant, like he’s a scuba diver and they’re a school of fish.
– “My Brother in Christ”
My father did not like my sister’s orange hair.
– “Big World”
I sat across from a crumpled woman who seemed to be miscarrying.
– “Animal Bite”
The first thing Norbert tells me is he’s been to all seven continents, including Antarctica.
– “Not All Who Wander Are Lost”
Tags: first sentences, mary miller
Nice.
Any fans of remixing first sentences? That is, using previous written/thrown away sentences to create an entirely new/different story. For example, Cheever mentioned his idea of an ideal noir opening line in an interview with the Paris Review, which lead me to writing this-
“The first day I robbed Tiffany’s it was raining. A hard rain, the type that made you think it would never end. I ducked in to escape the downpour, every part of me soaked save the gun. The lighting was bright and all-consuming, just begging the sophisticated shopper to drown in the opulence below.”
The thing I like about pretty much all of these openings is how they aren’t outrageous, relying rather on typical settings/scenes/details that are just twisted enough to be intriguing. Like sitting across from a woman, just one who happens to be apparently miscarrying, or like being in a hotel in Pigeon Forge, except with an air gun with beer box target ready to shoot. Miller seems to do a good job of tilting her openings, actually whole stories really, without pushing them over, making for really interesting yet accessible stories.
a good tilt without a push
And from the new story, added special for the second printing:
“They had just been to IHOP, where they’d sat in the middle of the room at a two-top a couple inches from a four-top, a man and a woman. The woman kept saying the man’s name over and over again, visiously. It was a good name for hurling. They had gone in happy.”
— “Cedars of Lebanon”
Nice.
I’ve always thought that the first sentence/paragraph is extraordinarily important . . . not to mention the importance of how you end a work.
But before I go into more depth, I’ll just be really simple and say that the ones that really intrigue me are #’s 1 & 2, and the second-to-last. Beautiful openings.
Any fans of remixing first sentences? That is, using previous written/thrown away sentences to create an entirely new/different story. For example, Cheever mentioned his idea of an ideal noir opening line in an interview with the Paris Review, which lead me to writing this-
“The first day I robbed Tiffany’s it was raining. A hard rain, the type that made you think it would never end. I ducked in to escape the downpour, every part of me soaked save the gun. The lighting was bright and all-consuming, just begging the sophisticated shopper to drown in the opulence below.”
1 & 2 are my favorites, too, and “Cedars.” I love how the percussive consistency of the sentences in 1 & 2 carries us over the tilts in logic Tyler refers to, and how much we can infer so clearly. Expressionistic sentences and gaps; direct access to an attitude.
First sentences/paragraphs need to start something tonally.
In “Cedars…” the long first sentence gets me a good distance in before “a man and a woman” tells me to pause, evoking, maybe the kind of second glance around one would give in the IHOP. That’s nice, but then the second sentence echoes the same pause; really nice; then a switch in rhythm, then a shift in time/focus.
Beautiful.
What works most in Mary Miller’s opening sentences is the elegance. They have a quotidian air about them but there are really interesting things going on. I see this, especially, in the first line of Leak but really, each of these openings is quiet and odd and inviting and I don’t know that you can ask for more.
It’s the line “I was a girl”, of course, which makes that opening so brilliant. A leaking roof is a leaking roof — I’ve had two; I’m sure they’re very common. One landlord cared, the other didn’t. Asshole landlords are nothing new. But… the line “I was a girl” has all sorts of connotations, and this makes the reader want to read more, to find out just what this line ends up implying. That’s really, maybe, one of the best functions — if not the best function — of an opening paragraph. A great opening paragraph either enchants the writer into reading further, or it impregnates the reader with a curiosity that must be satisfied.
It might be interesting, too, to have a discussion on endings.
One thing I think I’ll stick my neck out on is that I do not really like openings that’re charged, like the one Dg quoted. (Sorry, Dg.) I mean, the line “The first day I robbed Tiffany’s it was raining.” Not that I didn’t catch the de-qualification of store-robbing with a mundane thing like rain (although the idea of robbing Tiffany’s is a little… well… odd, to me, and perhaps that oddity was intentional, but I think that if that was the author’s thinking then it’s a little too much, to pair up with the “it was raining” modification. The presence of one occludes the other.
So… well, I guess that’s not the best example of what I mean, but it was available. Things like, say, (off the top of my head, don’t make fun of me): “The guy I was meant to kill had been my neighbor for a week.” …or something, I don’t know. What I mean is: openings that’re supposed to either shock or else suddenly put you into the mindset of something gritty.
…I guess this prejudice comes mostly from my dislike for gritty writings and realistically violent stories. (As opposed to absurdist/metaphorical/oddly-psychological violence like, say, the works of Brian Evenson.)
The elusive and especially the lightly odd are the most enchanting of all, to me, I think.
Anyhow, Kyle: Thanks for introducing me to Mary Miller. Hadn’t heard of her, before. Now, to locate a collection… .
Big World is the place to start. It’s published in Hobart’s Short Flight/Long Drive series.
Yes: introducing the mood. Preparing the room for the reader.
And I shall.. thanks.
I do like the cover, too. Attractive covers are rare, rare. When I was in art school I never quite learned how to handle colors like that. I can’t help but admire people who can handle such disparate and traditionally-conflicting colors with such seeming carelessness (in other words, not careless at all) and make it all work with such beauty.
The first edition was hand-colored. I have one of the ARCs that is still in black-and-white.
Hobart really makes some beautiful books. Adam Novy’s The Avian Gospels is even more interesting, design-wise. I’m going to post the first sentence to that one on Tuesday.
the casualness of these first lines is great. it makes me want to dig out big world from the moving boxes and reread it. tomato red also has a really great first line.
but think of the spoilers!
I think what Mary does best, with most of these intros., as all but one are in the first person, is give you a great introduction to the attitude of her narrators. I think that is the function of first sentences. To definitively establish point of view, attitude, and, if possible, give some hint at trajectory of a story. Not necessarily where the story will go, but the method in which it will get there. Maybe. Maybe not. “Gimpel the Fool” does a terrific job of this, as does Tropic of Cancer. I think Mary’s true talent lies in her ability to intimately introduce a sircumstance, and then, later in her tales, she’s able to introduce deeper areas of her characters, becuase she does the work meticulously, slowly. She coffee drips her character on you. Until you get the full pot of the story. I think. But it should be noted I’m fairly hung over, and I’m severly bruised after a weekend of debauchery and ashes spreading.
I Just reread Tomato Red this last week and… wow. That first line is so good.
This is a great book. I do recommend.
they say, this story is going to be funny and smart and crazy engaging.
[…] observation gets our good attention.) The sentence/paragraph sets we've been or will be observing: 1. first sentences from Mary Miller's Big World; 2. first sentences from physically large novels; 3. the first sentences from every book […]
I’ve never heard of Mary Miller, but I like her first lines. They seem to be fully charged with gender differences, which set up my expectations for a creative discussion about feminism. Toni Morrisson is great with first lines too.
I like looking at these first sentences, or paragraphs, in isolation. (I do feel that the titles should precede these first sentences since the title words are the first words that contact the reader, and often inform the first sentence.) Right away I notice a consistency to these first sentences: the matter-of-fact bluntness of the language gives a kind of clinical introduction to a warped situation. The only sentence that seems to vary this pattern is the last, which introduces something curious but not immediately disturbing or off-kilter. When I read these sentences, I feel frightened, as if I’ve just knocked on a creepy door and can hear weird noises coming from inside while I wait for someone to answer.
yeah. I reread it a couple of weeks ago after rereading Winter’s Bone. Soon to reread Death of Sweet Mister.
I’ll just echo that BW by MM is a fantastic collection, as you can see from the opening lines here. What any good narrative hook does is pull you in, hint at something larger and more expansive, and urge you to read on to see what happens. What MM does so well is show us that tip of the iceberg, and hint at what else lies buried underneath the surface. She gives us a bit of character, and often a touch of setting. I love that she grounds her work quickly and often. Often she hints at a dysfunctional relationship, or trouble, or people that are on the outside, misfits, or simply in a situation. And that always fascinates me. Pick up BW for sure people. And I think Magic Helicopter Press re-released LESS SHINY as well. Also worth it.
Similar to Amelia Gray and Lindsay Hunter, MM deals with the dirty reality of life at the edges, the mundane, the fractured, but often taking us to places that are unexpected. Love her work.
Eh… spoiler-fear is for the weak.
…Not that many decent writers will put a spoiler in the final paragraph, but… ah, I just killed my own joke.
…And felt so good about it that I went ahead and posted it. [shrugs]
I dunno . . . Feminism isn’t quite as interesting to me as watching two different personalities who haven’t previously learned how to understand and deal with one another have to very quickly learn how to understand and deal with one another . . . or watching them choose not to do so. Feminism is just too narrow and calcifying.
Kathy Acker’s works, for example, are sometimes described as ‘feminist’, but to me it’s much more about a person struggling to cope with a world she cannot quite grasp and which cannot quite grasp her. …Something Jeanette Winterson, as brilliant as she is, hasn’t quite… well… grasped.
[…] observation gets our good attention.) The sentence/paragraph sets we've been or will be observing: 1. first sentences from Mary Miller's Big World; 2. first sentences from physically large novels; 3. the first sentences from every book […]
[…] observation gets our good attention.) The sentence/paragraph sets we've been or will be observing: 1. first sentences from Mary Miller's Big World; 2. first sentences from physically large novels; 3. the first sentences from every book […]
[…] observation gets our good attention.) The sentence/paragraph sets we've been or will be observing: 1. first sentences from Mary Miller's Big World; 2. first sentences from physically large novels; 3. the first sentences from every book […]
[…] V.C. Andrews #1: The Book of Genesis This Basque is Badass First Sentences or Paragraphs Series: #1 Mary Miller Big World Edition #2 Big Novel Edition #3 Philip Roth Edition #4 Norton Anthology of Short Fiction Edition (A-G) #5 […]