Five Great Book Openings

'You’ve got to grab them by the balls on the first line. And don’t let go.’ Sound editorial advice- for once- that has been the anchor for some of the greatest books of the last century. The who, what, where, why, and whens that wouldn’t let you look away. Of course, there are many more than five, but few do it better than this lot.


Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas (1971) Hunter S. Thompson

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive...” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! What are those goddamn animals?”

As someone who’s been to ‘Barstow on the edge of the desert’ en route to Las Vegas, I can tell you it’s not the kind of place where you’d want your car swooped on by huge bat-looking creatures. But Hunter doesn’t care; he’s dragging you along with him ‘about a hundred miles an hour’ anyway. From the masterly understatement of ‘I feel a bit lightheaded’ to ‘a screaming voice’ that probably only exists in the intrepid Doctor’s head, we’re reminded that when you take a trip, you better take a trip.


Fahrenheit 451 (1953) Ray Bradbury

It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.

He’s talking about burning books here, in case you didn’t know; about as heinous a crime that can be committed against art- unless of course he’s torching his way through a stack of Jeffrey Archer first editions, in which case, more power to him. I’ll bring more kerosene. The hook here is the dual-effect of the fact that its books that he’s conflagrating, and that there’s pleasure to be had in doing so.


The Long Goodbye (1953) Raymond Chandler

The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of The Dancers. The parking lot attendant had brought the car out and he was still holding the door open because Terry Lennox’s left foot was still dangling outside, as if he had forgotten he had one. He had a young-looking face but his hair was bone white. You could tell by his eyes that he was plastered to the hairline, but otherwise he looked like any other nice young guy in a dinner jacket who had been spending too much money in a joint that exists for this purpose and no other.

Oh, to have been a writer in post-war L.A. Even so, you wouldn’t have gotten within range of Chandler’s slick dialogue and character description- the latter showcased here in the inebriated form of Terry Lennox. We go from knowing nothing of his existence to discovering where he drinks- and how much- what he drives, and what he looks like, in less than 25 words. From his box of tricks Chandler goes on to pluck out ‘plastered to the hairline’, as good a four-word description of drunkenness you’ll find anywhere in print. The whole brilliant book, like Chandler’s entire oeuvre, is best read aloud in a Dragnet-style voiceover.


Down & Out In Paris & London (1933) George Orwell

The Rue Coq d’Or, Paris, seven in the morning. A succession of furious, choking yells from the street. Madame Monce, who kept the little hotel opposite mine, had come out onto the pavement to address a lodger on the third floor. Her bare feet were stuck in sabots and her grey hair was streaming down.

‘Whoever writes in English is struggling against vagueness’ Orwell once said. He certainly wasn’t.
He starts as a journalist should, with the facts, and lets his full-stops do the work of another thirty-odd words that countless other writers would have used. (Present company included).
We’re on the congested, polluted Paris street- actually rue Moffetard- being bawled out by an overbearing old landlady. They events he describes took place over 80 years ago, but, as anyone who has visited the City of Light recently can testify, it could have been written yesterday. Ahead of his time, as always.


Hellfire (1982) Nick Tosches

It was three o’clock in the morning, and the master bedroom of Graceland was still. Elvis Presley lay in his blue cotton pajamas, dreaming. A small bubble of saliva burst softly at the corner of his lips, and, breathing heavily, he turned. It was the same old dream.

The master of metafiction opens his seminal Jerry Lee Lewis biography in a setting never before conceived of in literature: that of Elvis Presley’s bedroom. We learn that Elvis is just like us; snoring away in his pyjamas, drooling in his sleep, and tossing and turning. Except, we aren’t woken at 3am by Lewis ploughing his car into the front gates and waving a pistol around, as Tosches goes on to describe. 262 pages of sin-soaked, Devil-chasing brilliance spew forth thereafter.