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What I'm Reading

 Alice McDermott says that an opening paragraph has to suggest something extraordinary; if there isn't a sense of magic within those first three or four sentences, the book is never going to take off. (Or, at least, takeoff is unlikely.)


As an example, McDermott cites Virginia Woolf.

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer's men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning--fresh as if issued to children on a beach.

What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her...when she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the opening air...

Through small, thoughtful choices, Woolf turns a British morning into an adventure. "Lark," "plunge," "burst." The day is like ice cream on the boardwalk--"fresh as if issued to children on a beach."

Something similar happens in Lorrie Moore's "Willing." The main character, Sidra, is asked to appear in semi-pornographic films. We've all been in awkward work discussions where no one's meaning is entirely clear. What makes Moore special is her attention to detail. Friction is everywhere; though Sidra seems to make a joke, her eyes do not participate. ("She looked away, not smiling.") The studio heads--superficially deferential--have a terse inner monologue, and we get to hear it. ("A hip that knew Latin. Christ.") In this bad-faith conversation, Sidra is just as duplicitous as her nemeses. ("Work was all playtime to them, playtime with gel in their hair....")

I admire Moore's opening because of its wit and its sense of economy; Moore doesn't waste time by clearing her throat. I'm hoping she will publish another book of stories soon; it's frustrating that she requires a decade or so....From these lips to God's ears...





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