Hayden commented on my last with some excellent remarks on how to start a story, including the following:
I love broadness and specificity in a beginning. A sense of mystery that isn’t addressed by the ample facts stated. The facts situate the event in a time and space, anchor it if you will. The mystery, still unaddressed, is the reason for reading. The sense that there is a story here, something with yet-hazy edges, but something that will eventually be as solid as the mundane detail that cloaks the beginning. That is what makes me draw a shawl around my shoulders on a cool evening, adjust the light and settle in for a good read.
The beginning establishes a frame for the reader’s expectations. Early in 1986 I was working in Dublin. There I bought a delicious anthology of first lines*, from which I show one of the pages, dedicated to Irish authors. Aren’t they fabulous?
It doesn’t include the famous (some might say infamous) first paragraph of A Glastonbury Romance:
At the striking of noon on a certain fifth of March, there occurred within a causal radius of Brandon railway station and yet beyond the deepest pools of emptiness between the uttermost stellar systems one of those infinitesimal ripples in the creative silence of First Cause which always occur when an exceptional stir of heightened consciousness agitates any living organism in this astronomical universe. Something passed at that moment, a wave, a motion, a vibration, too tenuous to be called magnetic, too subliminal to be called spiritual, between the soul of a particular human being who was emerging from a third-class carriage of the twelve-nineteen train from London and the divine-diabolic soul of the First Cause of all life.
It goes on in this vein for four pages before we reach the first bit of real dialogue, that is to say, between two humans, as opposed to soliloquy.
“Canon Crow’s funeral, sir?”
This is followed by a further half-page of “ripples in the creative silence”, as it were, before the response:
“The funeral; Northwold; thank you very much.”
As an online bookseller might say, if you liked Moby Dick you might like A Glastonbury Romance. Indeed I love them both.
Hayden’s comment has made me think deeply about the first lines of my current writing project.
*‘Hell!’ said the Duchess: or First Lines. Gemma O’Connor, Wolfhound Press, Dublin 1985.
a wayfarer’s notes 
How cool is that! Glad I sparked something there.
My all-time favorite beginning goes on for PAGES of mood and place setting before you ever really begin to meet people…. Grapes of Wrath. I go goosebumps reading that beginning … it's like it pulls one deep into a trance – everything that's going to happen is foreshadowed in that lushly written, bleak beginning.
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Hi Vincent,
I can see that your love of beautiful prose has heightened while I was away and in an older post, I was delighted to hear that you now believe in angels. That inspired me enough to make a new post in my blog on your new found belief 🙂
Hayden's blog in the meantime has become a private one visible only to some chosen few so I do not know what she is upto currently and will not until she invites me to the chosen circle
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Thanks Ashok, and for the lovely post on your blog.
I'm sure your comment here will attract Hayden's attention, so that when daylight reaches Michigan, it won't be long before she extends that invitation.
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Thanks Hayden. I haven't read The Grapes of Wrath, only seen the movie. But you've inspired me now to get a copy, for I love what I've read from Steinbeck.
Don't you love the confidence, the sheer chutzpah, of an author who opens that way, and gets away with it?
This puts me in mind of another book by John Cowper Powys, his debut novel in fact, and one of my all-time favourites, one so obscure that I like to think that a review I wrote some years ago has influenced its republication: Wood and Stone.
His first chapter in eight pages describes a hill, without a single human character being introduced, placing it in time, space, history and spiritual influence.
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He quivered over the keyboard wondering how to begin his comment. Some writers prefer to open with an outpouring of context; others a shorter, sharper point at where the action starts. Hmmm. Where does one begin a comment? Frustrated, he pushed the computer away and went back to the newspaper. The Sun, page 2 politics. Now that's how to convey complicated information in a short, precise opening!
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As the highest-paid writer (per word) in Hollywood, you can afford the short precise style, Lehane.
By the way, you have a namesake in Boston, Mass., who writes short stories in the noir style: Dennis Lehane. Or is he your elder brother? Jacob vs. Esau, Dave vs. Ed?
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Ok, I challenge you to do one of your short sharp shocking stories with that beginning:
The Sun, page 2, politics.
Or if you prefer, The Sun, Page 3, topless girl. Do they still have that?
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Grapes of Wrath has been one of my favorite novels. Another has 'Shannon's Way' and Green Years' by A J Cronin. They both create deeply moving situations.
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By the way Vincent, and anyone else who might be interested, I too tried my hand at writing fiction once several years ago. If you wish to read that . It is a brief Novella that can be downloaded free (check the icon on the right at the stated url)and even writing those many words was tough going for me. It is available at
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/mystic-and-the-blossoms/337978
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Yes was certainly aware of Dennis Lehane and read a number of his books. He does look a little like my brother, but there is no direct family connection as far as I know.
Let me see if I can start with either Sun beginning at some point.
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Lehane, with a common last name, some family resemblance and a common talent this sounds like a not so distant unknown cousin (or uncle)
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Ashok, I've downloaded your story. I'm most impressed, have started to read it and find it gripping, and recommend it! More later.
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Yes, I like an expansive beginning too. Bleak House is the novel that springs to my mind. But that opening is very exciting, not really expansive at all by the standards of the time. I also thoroughly enjoy the almost endless accretion of detail that Balzac gives us – sometimes he can be fully half way through a novel before the reader suddenly becomes aware that the plot has begun, ever so slightly, to move forward. Conrad could pull that trick too – The End of the Tether, etc. It's what happens later in a novel that I usually find more problematic.
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Thanks for downloading the story. It will be good to know your views on it after you have read it.
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ashok – I couldn't find your email address, so was unable to extend an invitation. Mine is on my profile…. foster_hayden@hotmail.com. Email me!
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I'm dying to hear your response to Grapes of Wrath, Vincent. The beginning introduces you to – the dust bowl landscape itself, poverty itself – as a felt and observed thing, not as the shorthand it usually is for something else. There are scholars who argue that Steinbeck took liberties and changed the reality of the dust bowl, but it seems to me that the liberties taken are those of the scholars, who appear to expect that a novel of one families' experience is necessarily a shorthand for everyones'.
—- and where do the apostrophes properly go in that sentence? If the experience belongs to the family and I'm to use an apostrophe, than I should also with everyone. But it looks all wrong.
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Hayden I've been waiting for years for you to ask about correct use of the apostrophe.
Here's one mnemonic to learn by heart:
It’s easy to give it its due.
That covers it’s and its.
Now for the rest. One family is a singular family, so it’s family’s.
Everyone is also singular, because we are talking of one. So it’s everyone’s.
What about plurals? Goat’s milk is the milk from one goat. Goats’ milk is the milk from goats in general.
As for The Grapes of Wrath, Hayden, don’t be dying to hear about my response to it. Yes you’ve inspired me to get a copy (my comment above indicates that) but the inspiration has been crowded out so fast by other things that I’d forgotten all about it; and may never be revived in this lifetime. Sorry!
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Michael, thanks for your remarks. I didn't know you were a Conrad fan. Have you written about him in your “Brief History of Western Culture” or elsewhere? I haven't yet come across The End of the Tether, and would put it higher in my reading list than The Grapes of Wrath. But in defence of that, I would give most things priority over Dickens, Cronin, Balzac and a host of other worthies; with the excuse that (especially at my age) life is too short.
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Ashok, I've finished your excellent tale. It's like a synthesis of your life's experience, right? As well as being profoundly rooted in a part of India, its rural communities, the system of government, progress, Utopian vision, karma and reincarnation, all in one endearing tale of sadhu, dacoit, Baba and village personalities. All very convincing and attractive.
I see you have distributed it quite widely and am glad of that.
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Vincent some of it is rooted in my experience and some imagined. Thanks for the nice comments although I daresay that had you been my English teacher at school the book would have been better.
After reading your other comment on language, I think you will be a great English teacher in any school. has anyone told you that?
I never had proper schooling in English and what I have learnt has been largely on my own. My Grammer and especially spellings are poor. Fortunately now there is MS word that corrects spellings.
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“profoundly rooted in a part of India, its rural communities, the system of government, progress, Utopian vision, karma and reincarnation, all in one endearing tale of sadhu, dacoit, Baba and village personalities. All very convincing and attractive.”
This part of the passage or something similar would be great as one of the reviews on the book page incase you find the time or inclination for that.
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I'll try and do a review some time if you'll point me to a suitable place to post it, Ashok.
If I had been your teacher (I'm only 8 years older so I could not have been), you'd have been a star pupil with your command of English.
Your book was written in a very educated and elegant style and nothing stood in the reader's way to appreciate it fully. But a traditional publisher would have assigned an editor to propose to you a few minor corrections, for example to fix some minor ambiguities and change occasional instances of “then” to “than”.
Someone else's (an editor's) eyes can more easily spot these things than the author. If ever you want to revise it again, I could help by going through the proofs for you.
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Vincent Thanks
A suitable place to post the review is the page you downloaded the book from or perhaps at amazon.com (the book page would show up by entering the title in the search box)
Vincent having involved myself with that topic intensely at one time and then having left it I am reluctant to get into it again plus my time is committed for the next little while.
I could not expect you to proof read it, that would be too much effort. However if you or anyone else that was as good and wise a writer and as good with spinning words, were to rewrite while expanding descriptions and correcting language, after agreeing to become a co-author, I would agree in an instant but even that effort is only worth it if we have a willing publisher. If we did that we should change the name of the book and mention briefly inside that an earlier briefer version was published as “Mystic and the Blossoms' by one of the authors —
All that however sounds very daunting to me. First although I manage OK with brief discussions the sort of stuff a novel demands is really beyond my capability, second negotiating with publisher from here is another huge barrier, therefore I would not be of much help towards this revised project but as mentioned I would be delighted if anyone did that because I still believe in its central message that development & change is possible in backward areas with the right sort of action. There are also a lot of spiritual messages in the book that I am not committed to and would not mind if revised in parts if felt essential, by someone wise in such matters such as you.
But do not let me talk you into any new project because as you know yourself such projects require work and time for it.Both of us probabaly already have our hands full with whatever we have planned.
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While at the topic I might mention that I wrote out a draft of another Novel (this time a novel and not a novella) that is twice as long called “A taste of Bliss” just as a challenge a couple of years ago to see if I could turn out eighty thousand words in a month. I succeeeded at that and left the draft after that for similar reasons. Revising the language of this brief Novella of arounfd forty thousand words was easier. This latter story does not have much spiritual content although it has just a bit and this time the story is of a town such as Nainital developing in the Himalayas by joint British and Indian effort. It too has some charming twists to the story while the development proceeds.
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Ashok the proof-reading would not take too long if I had a word-processor version (e.g. Word) to work from, rather than pdf, which I can't update. But as you say there would be no point unless there were further publication plans.
As for the collaboration as co-author, that wouldn't be possible for the reasons you mention and also that I believe that the whole value of the novella is the way it summarises your own ideas in such a complete way. My ideas are different! In particular, I don't share your utopian enthusiasm, whereby you “still believe in its central message that development & change is possible in backward areas with the right sort of action.” To me this is a Gandhian crossover from spirituality to politics, to which I have no objection but no positive urge either.
Coincidentally, I met in town yesterday the subject of a biography, my only published work to date. He was jovial as usual and was keen to have me help him as writer in his new venture to stand for election again. I had never shared his political views. He's a strong supporter of Tony Blair's & Gordon Brown's party, now ousted from power. I couldn't possibly work with him again, because my opposite views are much stronger than they were.
It was a kind of message to me, that I must try and express my own views in my next writing project!
(continued in next comment ….)
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When I was reading your novella, I wanted to give it a different title: the Sadhu-Dacoit. Also, mischievously, but in accordance with my own insight, right or wrong, I wanted somehow to overcome the notion of progressive improvement – which as you have indicated is your key theme – and show an endless cycle of transformation, sometimes forward, sometimes back. Perhaps individuals are redeemed, as the dacoit was by his rebirths. But overall, things get no better. New dacoits are born to replace those who have reincarnated as sadhus. The world as a whole doesn't improve.
A warlord from somewhere discovers Khatpat and forces its inhabitants to grow opium to finance his private war against the Taliban across the border, who as we know finance their own war with profits from opium. And so on.
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Vincent, I will keep your offer to proof read in mind incase i get the will to do a revised version. Presently though I would just let it rest. This is a very old projet that i wrote about twenty years ago. If I had to do it now it would be different in many ways and have a different title.
My views since have changed somewhat and even though they might sound racist to some, it appears to me that the reasons for development or decay, may even be genetic and that human genes can change from time to time, from good to bad and from bad to good in a way that pansmeria describes (about that we discussed earlier and discuused in alienaccount.blogspot.com)
Just one bad gene acquired innocently through a cold infection could be enough to add an element of excessive greed in society and make persons such as bankers who can indulge in it go overboard and take an entire economy down the drain, or, one inspiring gene can cause rapid development as noticed historically at various times through human history.
Not saying that it happens that way necessarily, but it is an entirely plausible thing.
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And, Vincent, in anycase thanks a lot for the offer to proof read. I think that was very generous and kind of you.
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[…] said the DuchessView Post2828 […]
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