First Paragraphs: Inspired Openings for Writers and Readers

by Donald Newlove

Newlove combines human insight, personal taste, and his own crackling talent as a writer to show writers how, with an inspired beginning, a work of genius can be created. The 75 selections here range from works as diverse as Dickens' Bleak House to more contemporary openings from Updike, Joyce, Welty, and Dinesen.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction

171 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1992

About the author

Donald Newlove was born in Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1928, and currently lives in New York City's Greenwich Village. As a reporter, book reviewer, and short story writer, his work appeared in Esquire, New York Magazine, Evergreen Review, and The Saturday Review. His first novel, The Painter Gabriel (1970), was hailed by Time Magazine as "one of the best fictional studies of madness, descent, and purification that any American has written since Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Newlove is the author of several other novels, a series of books on the art of writing, and the critically acclaimed memoir, Those Drinking Days: Myself and Other Writers (1981).

Reviews

[Mark Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

In their opening paragraphs, storytellers are out to woo us into a relationship with the story they have to tell; like lovelorn users of match.com writing their profiles, they splay in full before us the peacock's tail of their technique, and convey within a couple of hundred words or so what we may expect from their narrative. Editors, and writers who need to make money from their writing, know that readers are a very fickle lot; studies of book buyers on closed circuit TV in bookstores (for those born after 1990, these were places people actually went to in order to purchase objects known as 'books', which had paper pages and bindings and usually only contained the work of a single author) have found that prospective readers look at the front cover, then read the blurbs on the back and flyleaves, then begin reading the first page. Within at most three pages, they will either put the book back on the shelf or into their shopping cart. Assistant editors and those pitiable flunkies known as 'readers' will give a manuscript from an unknown writer a maximum of three pages to convince them to keep going. These folk are faced with the Sisyphean task of reading ceiling-high stacks of submitted manuscripts panning for literary gold, with about as much chance of success as the gold prospector; it is fair to say that they do not suffer fools gladly. The initial paragraphs of a novel tell the reader a great many things: style, tone, theme (often), genre, setting (often), point of view. It is well worth an avid reader's time to revisit the greatest examples of opening paragraphs; for the professional or wannabe writer, it is essential.

This book by David Newlove uses the trope of presenting extraordinary first paragraphs as a springboard into Newlove's own thoughts about literary excellence. All of the usual suspects are represented ("Call me Ishmael"; "You don't know me without you have read a book by the name of "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," but that ain't no matter."; "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it."), as well as some surprises - for Dickens, he chooses neither of the most famous openings - those from "A Tale of Two Cities" and "David Copperfield" - but rather, the opening paragraph of "Bleak House" - and some discoveries.

A book such as this is asking to be challenged, and I have a couple of quibbles, one over a sin of commission and the other a sin of omission. Taking the last objection first: I can't understand why the brilliant opening lines of Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were on God" wasn't included. Secondly, I have a hard time trusting a person who claims to have read and loved "Finnegan's Wake". I listen to them politely, as I do the people who are always nattering on about quantum physics, but inside I am saying "What a load of horse shit. Who does this guy think he is?" Fortunately, Mr Newlove did include my own personal favorite Chapter One beginning, so all is forgiven. I can't resist quoting in here in full, pretending that I am typing the words for the first time: "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita." Can it ever get better than that? I don't think so.

[Clancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's a point roughly in the middle of this fucking thing where Newlove recounts a conversation with one of the authors of an opening he's taken, and she calls him out on his rampant faux-intellectual literary-critic bullshit. He admits fault, then proceeds to go on in the same fashion for the rest of the book.

It's perhaps a fault on my part that I disliked this thing as I did. When faced with this kind of high-minded intellectualism, my natural instinct has always been to pull away. To reject it. It's difficult for me to believe that anyone can truly think in this manner. It rings false.

Ultimately, all these mostly good opening paragraphs did, was constantly remind me how much happier and satisfied I'd be if I was actually reading a novel.

[Roy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a gem of a book, to me anyway. I agree, it reflects the author's biases about what does and does not constitute good writing, but that is fine. You can take his opinion about a given text with a grain of salt. More importantly, you can analyze why he thinks one thing is good, and why you disagree, and you can use that learning to inform your own writing. I created some exercises for myself -- take one of the first paragraphs and rewrite it, exchanging one of my characters, and my story's situation. (For example, "Call me Ishmael" --> "Call me Dewey".) Then, rewrite again, in more my voice than, say, Herman Melville's. I came up with a handful of pretty fun, and useful snippets of text.

"Call me Dewey. Some years ago, having little or no ambition and nothing in particular to interest me in the city, I thought I would try a little of the shuttle pilot’s life, escape the bounds of gravity now and again, and see the big, round, watery world from space. It’s become a way I now have of driving out the demons of despondency, of regulating the psychological circulation."

[Roger Bradbury · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book at a used bookstore, and, sadly, from the condition I may have been the first or second reader. This is a delightful book by a masterful writer spouting erudition and opinions by the geyser about the first paragraphs of novels everyone has read or should have. His comments about Isak Dineson inspired my September blog. Take a look.

[Clay · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would've found this book much more useful if: 1) the author had chosen more engaging examples, 2) had offered much less commentary and many more examples. Not worth bothering with.