I just got a package from amazon.com, which included, among other things, Chabon's new book, The Yiddish Policemen's Union. How could I resist a cover that featured Pacific Northwest Native American stylings and referenced a fictive part of the Jewish diaspora? The first line: Nine months Landsman's been flopping at the Hotel Zamenhof without any of his fellow residents managing to get themselves murdered.
First lines being so fabulous, I've collected a few more here (stunners and flops):
When they write my obituary.
Young Seymour had a big heart, a small brain, and a mother who, I am sorry to report, was an ogre.
They were a rich and a rowdy bunch at the Epicurean Club in those days.
Here is the truth about Raul: He cannot tell the difference between a city and a woman.
There once were two twins: Junior Fancypants and John Smartypants.
The suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged as a cloud of sunset.
Do you wan' somting to dreenk?
***
So, ummm, send me some lines (yours or published). I'd like to post a few more here.
[first lines from The History of Love, Seymour's Last Wish, Sunbird, (the second chapter of the book I haven't written), (the last short story penned at 826 CHI, where I tutor), The Man Who Was Thursday, La Perdida]
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1 comment:
I have admitted that to identify J as a woman is a fiction, but so, of course, is the usual easy assumption that J was a man.
"The Book of J" Hebrew Translated by David Rosenberg, Interpreted by Harold Bloom
All sin starts from the assumption that my fase self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered.
"New Seeds of Contemplation", by Thomas Merton
If God is our heart's desire, then the heart knows its own path.
"Thoughts Matter", by Mary Margaret Funk
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