Rather remarkably, there are now over 1500 of us in this little fledgling community. We were a ‘Featured Publication’ last week which has led us to triple in size in the span of just a few days. Not bad for a Substack that is only a month old!
To the newbies, I’d like to extend a warm welcome. Though our primary focus is on books, this newsletter is really about two things: (1) the transformative power of literature, and (2) celebrating the great writers to be found here on Substack.
To give you an idea of schedule, we have a discussion thread every Monday, and every Thursday we feature a different guest writer, each discussing a book that played a pivotal role in their life. I have big plans in the works for some new community features too. My goal is provide more opportunities for the many brilliant writers among us to get their writing in front of a wider audience, but I’ll save that announcement for next week!
So far we’ve featured three excellent guest posts, and if you missed last week’s I can recommend going back and reading “An Ordinary Man” from the excellent
The one that comes immediately to mind for me is none other than....”It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
It's a great start, but if I had to pick the novel's strength, it's the ending--which often gets unfairly overlooked because of opening's fame. Those last few pages, as Carton marches and monologues, are among the finest ever written.
"I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids--and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”
Cormac McCarthy "Child of God" - “They came like a caravan of carnival folk up through the swales of broomstraw and across the hill in the morning sun, the truck rocking and pitching in the ruts and the musicians on chairs in the truckbed teetering and tuning their instruments, the fat man with guitar grinning and gesturing to others in a car behind and bending to give a note to the fiddler who turned a fiddlepeg and listened with a wrinkled face.”
100%. It was actually writing about Blood Meridian on my main substack after McCarthy died last month that gave me the idea for this Substack. Would definitely count this as one of my own foundational books
The opening line cold-cocked me the first time I read it, framing a tension between presumed innocence and a premonition of hellacious violence. From it McCarthy simultaneously builds in both directions in the next three paragraphs until the die is cast: "Night of your birth ... God how the stars did fall ... He can neither read nor write and in him broods already a taste for mindless violence. All history present in that visage, the child the father of the man."
I have so many favourites but this is the one that came to mind today:
"It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York." - The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
It's brilliant. I first read it at 16 when my English teacher gave me a battered old copy she had in the classroom. I still have that copy and treasure it!
This is my favorite opening line in literature! It does so much. And it echoes with the second half of the novel in profound way. Plus that sound. The tone. It got inside me and, in a way, changed my life. Afterward, I just kept thinking: what else can I read that sounds like THAT?
Haha I am on this one! Books That Made Us has rather exploded and gotten over 1500 subs in a month. Cosmographia has been a slow burn over the last year, but undoubtedly my passion project
Here's the first line, plus a bonus b/c I love both:
"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board."
And how wonderful is this:
"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.
"No, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget.. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly."
~ from "Their Eyes Were Watching God," Zora Neale Hurston
Further props to Banks, because the final word of the final sentence on the last page of his novel "Feersum Endjinn" (where he's writing scifi as Iain M. Banks) solves the mystery that the entire novel revolves around. The final word. Now *that* is controlled writing.
Robert Jorden reached into the pocket of his peasant woolen pants and removed a knife and an onion. He sat on a stone hard and gray. Robert Jordan cut the onion into thin slices and placed them between two slices of the smoky bread made yesterday morning by Pelar. Robert Jordan ate the onion and bread sandwich as he stared into the morning sky. In the far distance he saw the black dots of Fascist aircraft. He felt a hand placed softly on his shoulder.
“How art thee, my little rabbit.” Robert Jordan stroke the hand lovingly and tenderly and manfully.
I don’t know who was better at involving every human sense in their writing - I can feel the woolen pants and cold stone and smell the onion and taste it with the smoky bread. And I can all while see and hear the aircraft and feel the touch of the peasant girl. I just love it. Thx for bringing it back. And for The Old Man and the Sea - it can be even more evocative.
Although I have to say I think the rest of that opening paragraph is a bit over the top in terms of description, but I realise that I'm probably in a minority of one!
Hi Terry, I have a facsimile copy of Orwell's original typescript/manuscript with both his handwritten and typed alterations and the changes from his first draft are quite dramatic.
His original paragraph was,
It was a bright cold blowy day in April, and a million radios were striking thirteen. Winston Smith pushed open the front door of Victory Mansions, turned to the right down a passage way and pressed the button of the lift. Nothing happened. He had just pressed a second time when a door at the end of the passage opened letting out a smell of boiled greens and old rag mats and the aged prole who acted as porter and caretaker thrust out a grey seamed face and stood for a moment sucking his teeth and watching Winston malignantly.
"Lift ain't working" he announced at last ...
It's fascinating to see how Orwell wrote, rewrote and rewrote again (and again) before achieving what he wanted.
I don’t think any first line has ever sold me on a book purchase faster than this one:
“I have been afraid of putting air in a tire ever since I saw a tractor tire blow up and throw Newt Hardbine's father over the top of the Standard Oil sign.”
It's been a good 25 years since I read it, but it remains a favorite. I should really revisit it one of these days. I adored it along with Pigs in Heaven and Animal Dreams.
I had trouble getting into the Poisonwood Bible and am not sure off the top of my head if I've tried anything new of hers since that. But those first three are just magical.
That’s actually the only one of hers that I’ve read and loved it. But I was living in Zambia at the time right up next to the border of the Congo so perhaps that’s why. Always been fascinated with that country, if you can even call it that
I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me. - Tristam Shandy
My love of reading started very young so here's one that really got my attention as a child. E.B. White speaking plainly to his little readers, as always, in Charlotte's Web:
“Where's Papa going with that axe?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.”
My favorite E.B. White book, after Charlotte’s Web, was a book he cowrote with Professor William Strunk that is called called The Elements of Style. It’s a great little book I should pay more attention to, and one I gave ESL staff as they struggled to polish their writing skills. Here is a typical nugget of wisdom from the book:
“I remember a day in class when he (Professor Strunk) leaned forward, in his characteristic pose - the pose of a man about to impart a secret and croaked, "If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loud! If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loud! "This comical piece of advice struck me as sound at the time, and I still respect it. Why compound ignorance with inaudibility? Why run and hide?”
I also love 'There was a boy who used to sit in the twilight and listen to his great-aunt's stories'. (George MacDonald - The Golden Key) ... Something magical and enthralling about it.
The one that comes immediately to mind for me is none other than....”It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
Legendary!!!!
Big up Jane
I knew it would be top of mind for many - well done!
An absolute classic.
This is the one I came here to say too. :) Great minds and all.
So good!
IMO, nobody will ever top Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”
Oooo this is new to me but I love it
to me it's perfect because it opens up so many questions just from that one line
And the cadence of the line is so hypnotic. You can say it over and over in rhythm, and it never grows less mysterious.
I agree, Elinor
A Tale of Two Cities. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times"
I knew this would be suggested and deservedly so
that's the one I was gonna suggest! It was bound to come up
It's a great start, but if I had to pick the novel's strength, it's the ending--which often gets unfairly overlooked because of opening's fame. Those last few pages, as Carton marches and monologues, are among the finest ever written.
Sydney Carton is such an underrated character!
He's one of the original anti-heroes!
Best starting ever.
Opening line from Tale of Two Cities for me as well.
I’m also a sucker for French existentialists writing about Africa. Camus, The Stranger:
“Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.”
Yes love this one
Great reminder. This is one that knocked me over from go.
First lines ++ of Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison :
"I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids--and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”
God that hits right in the heart from the get go
Have to read this one
Cormac McCarthy "Child of God" - “They came like a caravan of carnival folk up through the swales of broomstraw and across the hill in the morning sun, the truck rocking and pitching in the ruts and the musicians on chairs in the truckbed teetering and tuning their instruments, the fat man with guitar grinning and gesturing to others in a car behind and bending to give a note to the fiddler who turned a fiddlepeg and listened with a wrinkled face.”
Another McCarthy great is the literal command into the world of Blood Meridian “SEE the child.”
There are few works of literature with more memorable passages than 'Blood Meridian'.
100%. It was actually writing about Blood Meridian on my main substack after McCarthy died last month that gave me the idea for this Substack. Would definitely count this as one of my own foundational books
One of the best. I just re-read it again to write about him for (what would have been) his 90th birthday on the 20th. He was singular.
Yes absolutely!
The opening line cold-cocked me the first time I read it, framing a tension between presumed innocence and a premonition of hellacious violence. From it McCarthy simultaneously builds in both directions in the next three paragraphs until the die is cast: "Night of your birth ... God how the stars did fall ... He can neither read nor write and in him broods already a taste for mindless violence. All history present in that visage, the child the father of the man."
https://www.cormacmccarthy.com/works/blood-meridian/
I have so many favourites but this is the one that came to mind today:
"It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York." - The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
ooo that’s good. Another book I’ve never got round to reading
It's brilliant. I first read it at 16 when my English teacher gave me a battered old copy she had in the classroom. I still have that copy and treasure it!
This is my favorite opening line in literature! It does so much. And it echoes with the second half of the novel in profound way. Plus that sound. The tone. It got inside me and, in a way, changed my life. Afterward, I just kept thinking: what else can I read that sounds like THAT?
I often think more writers should spend time reading their own work aloud to make it more lyrical, more verse-like
Hear, hear. My heart is with the stylists all the way.
I subscribed to your stack to help you get to your goal -- although it looks like you’re already there. Congrats!
Haha I am on this one! Books That Made Us has rather exploded and gotten over 1500 subs in a month. Cosmographia has been a slow burn over the last year, but undoubtedly my passion project
Here's the first line, plus a bonus b/c I love both:
"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board."
And how wonderful is this:
"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.
"No, women forget all those things they don't want to remember, and remember everything they don't want to forget.. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly."
~ from "Their Eyes Were Watching God," Zora Neale Hurston
That is excellent. I don’t know this book but now I want to
It’s a wonder.
For Whom the Bell Tolls. Amazing book. I believe a Pulitzer Prize winner.
One of the best books 💫
Facts.
Ha! I just said the same one before I saw you’d shared it! It struck me hard the first time I read it and I was like, wow.
Another book where the language is the thing.
"It was the day my grandmother exploded."
-The Crow Road, by Iain Banks.
Talk about readbait! Why did she explode?! I have to know!
*SPOILERS SPOLIERS SPOILERS*
...
...
She's being cremated, and they forget to take her pacemaker out.
Probably an easy thing to forget. I’m now thinking of getting a tattoo on my chest: Upon death, remove pacemaker herein.
Even though I don’t have a pacemaker, it’ll help remind them of proper procedures.
Further props to Banks, because the final word of the final sentence on the last page of his novel "Feersum Endjinn" (where he's writing scifi as Iain M. Banks) solves the mystery that the entire novel revolves around. The final word. Now *that* is controlled writing.
Holy smokes
I absolutely loved The Crow Road and Iain Banks. Thank you SO much for throwing me back to the 90s and making me laugh!
Yaaay. 🙂 Did you see the TV series of it?
I did. There was a period in the 90s when I was consuming all things Iain Banks, but not Iain M Banks. Did you watch it?
Oh, Iain Banks...
He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.
Is this The Old Man and the Sea?
Yes.
Feeling pretty happy with myself after that guess 😏. Then again Hemingway’s style is pretty clearly his so perhaps I shouldn’t be!
Robert Jorden reached into the pocket of his peasant woolen pants and removed a knife and an onion. He sat on a stone hard and gray. Robert Jordan cut the onion into thin slices and placed them between two slices of the smoky bread made yesterday morning by Pelar. Robert Jordan ate the onion and bread sandwich as he stared into the morning sky. In the far distance he saw the black dots of Fascist aircraft. He felt a hand placed softly on his shoulder.
“How art thee, my little rabbit.” Robert Jordan stroke the hand lovingly and tenderly and manfully.
Or some like that.
I don’t know who was better at involving every human sense in their writing - I can feel the woolen pants and cold stone and smell the onion and taste it with the smoky bread. And I can all while see and hear the aircraft and feel the touch of the peasant girl. I just love it. Thx for bringing it back. And for The Old Man and the Sea - it can be even more evocative.
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
You'll know the book - I think it has a great closing paragraph too...
Everything in between is pretty good too now that you mention it!
Although I have to say I think the rest of that opening paragraph is a bit over the top in terms of description, but I realise that I'm probably in a minority of one!
Hi Terry, I have a facsimile copy of Orwell's original typescript/manuscript with both his handwritten and typed alterations and the changes from his first draft are quite dramatic.
His original paragraph was,
It was a bright cold blowy day in April, and a million radios were striking thirteen. Winston Smith pushed open the front door of Victory Mansions, turned to the right down a passage way and pressed the button of the lift. Nothing happened. He had just pressed a second time when a door at the end of the passage opened letting out a smell of boiled greens and old rag mats and the aged prole who acted as porter and caretaker thrust out a grey seamed face and stood for a moment sucking his teeth and watching Winston malignantly.
"Lift ain't working" he announced at last ...
It's fascinating to see how Orwell wrote, rewrote and rewrote again (and again) before achieving what he wanted.
Thanks, Harry, that's really interesting.
I don’t think any first line has ever sold me on a book purchase faster than this one:
“I have been afraid of putting air in a tire ever since I saw a tractor tire blow up and throw Newt Hardbine's father over the top of the Standard Oil sign.”
Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees
Love that one, too! And the rest of the book.
It's been a good 25 years since I read it, but it remains a favorite. I should really revisit it one of these days. I adored it along with Pigs in Heaven and Animal Dreams.
I reread The Bean Trees a few years ago and it held up as I hoped it would. I have a whole shelf of Kingsolvers that could use rereading.
I had trouble getting into the Poisonwood Bible and am not sure off the top of my head if I've tried anything new of hers since that. But those first three are just magical.
That’s actually the only one of hers that I’ve read and loved it. But I was living in Zambia at the time right up next to the border of the Congo so perhaps that’s why. Always been fascinated with that country, if you can even call it that
For sheer volume:
I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me. - Tristam Shandy
Bloody hells that’s good! What book is that?
Tristram Shandy
“Call me Ishmael.”
I mean that’s such a great book. No comparison!
Agree. Burn all Abridgers, all Amenders, all would-be Book Burners.
Flay them and salt them first.
Is that too harsh?
🤣
Maybe we can get an angry mob going
Moby Dick is fantastic!
I haven't even read this book, but when I opened David Copperfield by Charles Dickens and saw,
Chapter One: I Am Born
"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."
I knew I needed to buy it.
Dickens never misses with his openings!
“In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly-fishing.”
(A River Runs Through It)
My love of reading started very young so here's one that really got my attention as a child. E.B. White speaking plainly to his little readers, as always, in Charlotte's Web:
“Where's Papa going with that axe?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.”
Oh that’s great. First book I ever cried reading
Oh me too. Wonderfully heartbreaking.
My favorite E.B. White book, after Charlotte’s Web, was a book he cowrote with Professor William Strunk that is called called The Elements of Style. It’s a great little book I should pay more attention to, and one I gave ESL staff as they struggled to polish their writing skills. Here is a typical nugget of wisdom from the book:
“I remember a day in class when he (Professor Strunk) leaned forward, in his characteristic pose - the pose of a man about to impart a secret and croaked, "If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loud! If you don't know how to pronounce a word, say it loud! "This comical piece of advice struck me as sound at the time, and I still respect it. Why compound ignorance with inaudibility? Why run and hide?”
Hahaha. Yes! A witty classic.
'Marley was dead, to begin with.'
- Charles Dickens ('A Christmas Carol')
I also love 'There was a boy who used to sit in the twilight and listen to his great-aunt's stories'. (George MacDonald - The Golden Key) ... Something magical and enthralling about it.