Thursday, 06 October 2005

How to Open a Victorian Novel; or, The Greatest Opening Sentences That Never Were

I'm always stumbling across sentences in the middle of paragraphs buried deep within chapters nestled in some sub-sub-section which, if I had my druthers, would instead find themselves the opening line of a classic Victorian novel.  "Why," I ask myself, "would someone bury this perfectly serviceable first sentence of a Victorian novel in the middle of the middle of the middle of a book?"  I've often thought of keeping a notebook of such sentences, or at the very least, a running list of them on this humble blog.  It could be a series easier to update than the failed "A. Cephalous Word of the Every Other Day or So."  (Which, I should add, I remind myself to update whenever I bump into words like "calcate," which means "to trample or stamp under heel."  But while I'd love to show my shiny new word to the world, writing faux-usage histories seems so been-there-done-that I can't bring myself to go there and do it again.)  But I digress.  This sentence from the third chapter of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking should be opening some dusty Victorian tome:

It was deep into the summer, some months after the night when I needed to be alone so that he could come back, before I recognized that through the winter and spring there had been occasions on which I was incapable of thinking rationally.

Marvel at its potential.  Looking at it now though, I wonder whether this particular example is more Victorian or postmodernly faux-Victorian.  Because I think I may've read that Paul Auster novel.  Back to the point: I'm going to start a collection of such sentences, and if you run across any feel free to deposit them in the comments section.  I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with this collection, or what possible purpose it could serve humanity, but at the very least it could be a way to think more systematically about great opening lines without having to limit ourselves to idiosyncratically great opening lines.  (As we did a few months back at Bérubé's place.)  We'd limit ourselves to Victorian or postmodernly faux-Victorian novels instead.

Oct 6, 2005 2:29:09 PM | Academia, Books, Literary Journalism, Literature

3 Comments

Miriam

This Victorianist thinks the sentence is more in the neo-Victorian line...

Posted by: Miriam | Friday, 07 October 2005 at 11:40 AM

Miriam

This Victorianist thinks the sentence is more in the neo-Victorian line...

Posted by: Miriam | Friday, 07 October 2005 at 11:43 AM

Scott Eric Kaufman

I'm so wrong you have to say it twice? Those vicious, vicious Victorians. Anyhow, since I associate "neo-Victorianism" with "steam-punk" and the like, you'll have to tell me whether you're talking about that or something else entirely. I will post more of these as I run across them; we'll see if I can't peg me a modern day Dickens...

Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Friday, 07 October 2005 at 03:00 PM

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