“Ye’re no a good man”
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009Here are the first sentences of 10, okay, 11, of my favorite books. I plucked them from the bookshelf without rereading the openings, and it’s cool to see the different approaches, some poetic, some seemingly casual, and some downright profane.
“In the corner of a first-class smoking carriage, Mr. Justice Wargrave, lately retired from the bench, puffed at a cigar and ran an interested eye through the political news in the Times.”
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
“They entered the house at 9:02 p.m. on the evening of April Fools’ Day.”
We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
“Decimation means the killing of every tenth person in a population, and in the spring and early summer of 1994 a program of massacres decimated the Republic of Rwanda.”
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch
“I ran into Steve a couple of days ago.”
Rumble Fish by S.E. Hinton
“Ye wake in a corner and stay there hoping yer body will disappear, the thoughts smothering ye; these thoughts; but ye want to remember and face up to things, just something keeps ye from doing it, why can ye no do it; the words filling your head: then the other words; there’s something wrong; there’s something far far wrong; ye’re no a good man, ye’re just no a good man.”
How Late It Was, How Late by James Kelman
“I am forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow my advice without knowing why.”
At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
“Do not set foot in my office.”
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
“I went back to the Devon School not long ago, and found it looking oddly newer than when I was a student there fifteen years before.”
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
” ‘Sons of bitches.’ ”
Who Killed Palomino Molero by Mario Vargas Llosa
“My birthday’s the fourth of January, 1951.”
South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami
“Ree Dolly stood at break of day on her cold front steps and smelled coming flurries and saw meat.”
Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell
For the record, the first sentence of my book is: “It started out as just another Tuesday at the Tits: first period, Practical Mathematics, nothing special.” But only because “Ye’re no a good man” was taken.
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