Recently, I had to fill out a survey, and one of the items asked me to include my favorite line from a book. I didn’t hesitate. A line that has stayed with me for thirty years is the first line of part two, chapter nine of Walker Percy’s debut novel, The Moviegoer. The line is on page 83 of the Avon paperback edition, which is my favorite. I read this book five summers in a row. The book is narrated by a deep-thinking, yet semi-shallow smart-ass. Or maybe it is more fair to say that the narrator is a thoughtful person who observes society but can’t help being a product of the times. Here is the line:
"For some time now the impression has been growing upon me that everyone is dead.”
The survey got me thinking about other books. I love the opening paragraph of John Fante’s novel, Ask the Dust…
“One night I was sitting on the bed in my hotel room on Bunker Hill, down in the very middle of Los Angeles. It was an important night in my life, because I had to make a decision about the hotel. Either I paid up or I got out: that was what the note said, the note the landlady had put under my door. A great problem, deserving acute attention. I solved it by turning out the lights and going to bed.”
Here are five books that make my reshuffled Top 25 deck no matter how many times I shuffle the cards:
The Stranger, The Lover, Ask the Dusk, The Moviegoer, Savage Detectives, Last Nights of Paris.
Okay, so that’s six. What can you do? So many books. Camus’ opening line in The Stranger is perhaps one of the most remembered opening lines of a novel: “Maman died today.”
I actually rewrote the opening line of my novel, Your Silent Face, many times. Too many to count.
“Earlier we had argued whether The Smith’s lyrics were over-indulgent.”
I felt like that opening line had to capture something if not everything the book was about—being young in the 80s.
I always sample the opening lines of a novel before deciding whether to take the plunge.
Marguerite Duras, author of the famous novel, The Lover.