These entries were supposed to be weekly, but I'm so utterly far behind.
Sorry to deprive you of your rightful dose of Nabokov.
I guess you deserve something special, so I'm going to treat you to my third-favorite opening sentence of any novel, of all time, that I have encountered. In this case, it's also the first paragraph.
From Laughter in the Dark, Chapter 1:
Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster.
Heeheehee. Pretty ballsy opening, huh? That's the whole book, that's all that's going to happen. For two hundred ninety two pages.
Hard to imagine how he could milk such a slight story so that long, hard to imagine why we would want to endure it.
And then he plunges into one of the most riveting and delicious tales you'll be lucky enough to experience in this lifetime.
The story doesn't require that first sentence, but I love the lesson in literature it inspires. (I know lesson is a dirty word, but it didn't soil itself--it's the long, ugly line of narrow-minded schoolmarms who have been pooping on the concept since the early invention of the schoolhouse. But if you can't get over the eat-your-brocoli connotation, try this one: "The story doesn't require that first sentence, but looking back on it once you've gobbled up the story, it will mesmerize you with the vision of a whole new conception of art--writing by direct illustration, all other art by extension. I still get tingles from it ten years later. Giggles, too." How's that? More appealing? That's what I said, you'll love the lesson it inspires.)
Four basic plot points, 292 pages. And not a single moment of padding. Read this book and I dare you to come back here and show me the extra word you found squeezed in. That's right, that's what they built this comment section for, and it will alert me with an email if it takes you two years and you think I've forgotten. I can wait. And I dare you.
These books, these wonderful books, they seem to be packed with so incredibly much, and they are packed with ideas and images and insights and individuals . . . But not so much really has to happen.
Romeo and Juliet: "Two kids who fall in love, their families get pissed, they try to hide it, screw up the plan and end up killing themselves."
It's all in the telling.
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And if you're pissed at me for giving away the whole story, check out the second sentence/paragraph:
That is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling; and although there is plenty of space on a gravestone to contain, bound in moss, the abridged version of a man's life, detail is always welcome.
Is it ever. But is he illustrating how rich the story is behind the surface or how rich the human?
Human, story, do you see a difference?
