First lines: The art of setting the hook

When I'm browsing books, I always give special weight to the opening line. The very best of them set up the essential conflict right off the bat. They reassure you that, yes, there's a story here, and you're not going to have to wait until Chapter 8 to get interested in it. I'm a great fan of opening lines, from the famous to the obscure. Often they're the reason I take a closer look at a book I might otherwise pass by.
So it's interesting to examine this list, compiled by American Book Review, of what they deem the 100 best first lines of all time. Some I agree with; others ... meh.

For example, the No. 1 choice: "Call me Ishmael." I don't know. While eloquent, as a single sentence it doesn't really grab you by the throat, or suggest the epic struggle to come in Moby Dick.

Then there's that other famous beginning: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Leo Tolstoy's oft-quoted opening to Anna Karenina ranks No. 6. This, I think, does a better job of what a first sentence should do: tell you that this is not going to be a story about happy (and therefore boring) people.

Personally, I am most fond of lines like this: "It was the day my grandmother exploded." I haven't read this book, The Crow Road by Iain M. Banks, but with an opening like that it's just a matter of time.

Of course, I wouldn't bring this up if I didn't have an opening line of my own to offer, from my upcoming story "Strange Days" in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. It's not literature, but I think it helped sell the story: "Loin cloth, black loafers and a foot-long Bowie knife: It wasn't a great look for an out-of-shape man in his 60s, especially one whose torso had not seen the sun since the Carter administration."

Any great first lines stick in your mind?

Comments

Peter Rozovsky said…
That's a good opening sentence -- from "Strange Days," I mean. There are some pretty dreary and some pretty thoroughly unsurprising entries on that list. I always wonder when I see such lists why none ever seems to include the opening to The Man Without Qualities, Robert Musil: "There was a depression over the Atlantic."
===================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
July 28, 2007 at 1:10 AM
Peter Rozovsky said…
Iain M. Banks' opening line sounds like an echo of James Thurber's "I suppose that the high-water mark of my youth in Columbus, Ohio, was the night the bed fell on my father," if I remember it correctly. Now, that's a good opening line.
===================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
July 28, 2007 at 1:14 AM
Dave Knadler said…
Agreed. They really don't make writers like James Thurber anymore.

Upon further reflection, I think that list gave more weight to fame that actual effectiveness.
July 28, 2007 at 8:22 AM
Anonymous said…
There speaks a journalist.

First lines are it, wherever you find them.

First lines of poems represent an art form (think of the first bars of a symphony or similar: you're in there, ready or not).

I'm having a look at a couple of Don deLillo's as I write.

'White Noise':
'The station wagons arrived at noon, a long shining line that coursed through the west campus.'

'Falling Man':
'It was not a street anymore but a world, a time and space of falling ash and near night.'
July 28, 2007 at 3:07 PM
Dave Lull said…
From Rasselas:

"Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow; attend to the history of Rasselas prince of Abissinia."
July 30, 2007 at 4:11 PM
Dave Knadler said…
That's a wonderful line! It does just what an opening line should do: Make me want to read more about this Rasselas guy. I'm assuming all does not end well.
July 30, 2007 at 6:52 PM
Dave Lull said…
From The Rambler No. 32:

"Infelicity is involved in corporeal nature, and interwoven with our being. . . ."
July 31, 2007 at 12:55 PM
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