Raymond Carver: Great First Sentences

I've been revisiting the short stories of Raymond Carver lately, and I have realized that one of his best tactics is a great first sentence. It is so important, especially with the amount of literature out there to read, to pull the reader in immediately. Some writers do this within the first paragraph, but Raymond Carver almost always does it within the first sentence.

For example:

"A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house."
- from "Viewfinder"

"In the kitchen, he poured another drink and looked at the bedroom suite in his front yard."
- from "Why Don't You Dance?"

"I was in bed when I heard the gate."
- from "I Could See The Smallest Things"

Each of these examples compels me to move forward, wither because I have to get an explanation for something bizarre (e.g. "Viewfinder") or because it is so ordinary I have to know why he even bothered to tell me this (e.g. "I Could See The Smallest Things").

Who are some other writers that are able to capture the reader in the first sentence? What do you think of Raymond Carver in general and in comparison to Hemingway?

great opening lines. While I have read everything written by Hemingway, I can't remember any geat openings. The classic one is Dickens' opening line from A Tale of Two Cities, which is too long to repeat here. Daphne du Maurier's opening from Rebecca is memorable:Last Night I dreamt I went to Manderlay Again. Camus' opening of The Stranger is another classic. Poe has some good ones in his Tales of Mystery and Imagination.

The ones quoted by the poster are good and make me want to read this author.

Here's the opening of a short story: No one but the living can know how cold, and desolate a graveyard can be on a blustery day in January.

Good examples laymonite (are they all from 'What we talk about when we talk about love?') Carver is a master of the first sentence as every great short story writer should be. I find him funnier than Hemingway and more enjoyable as a result. Here are some opening lines (from short stories) that i like.

'My wife had just out West with a groom from the local dog track, and i was waiting around the house for things to clear up, thinking about catching the train to Florida.' Going to the Dogs - Richard Ford (Rock Springs)

'There is to begin with the paraphernalia of daily living: all those objects, knives, combs, coins, cups, razors, that are too familiar, too worn and stained with use, a doorknob, a baby's rattle, or too swiftly in passage from hand to mouth or hand to hand to arouse more than casual interest.' In Trust - David Malouf (The Complete Stories)

' Rodeo night in a hot little Okie town and Diamond Felts was inside a metal chute a long way from the scratch of Wyoming dirt he named as home, sitting on the back of bull 82N, a loose skinned brindle - Brahma cross identified in the program as Little Kisses' - The Mud Below - Annie Proulx (Close Range)

"It was now lunch time and they were all sitting under the double green fly of the dining tent pretending that nothing had happened." - The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber - Hemingway

" Madrid is full of boys named Paco, which is the diminutive of the name Francisco, and there is a Madrid joke about a father who came to Madrid and inserted an advertisment in the personal columns of El Liberal which said: Paco MEET ME AT HOTEL MONTANA NOON TUESDAY ALL IS FORGIVEN PAPA and how a squadron of Guardia Civil had to be called out to disperse the eight hundred young men who answered the advertisement."
- The Capital of the World - Hemingway

I do like Carver's work, I just lent a friend What We Talk About When We Talk About Love as a must read, but I prefer Hemingway.

I've never read any Raymond Carver. I just went to look at the first sentence of Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises (the only Hemmingway novel I've read) and rememebered it actually put me off.

"Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton."

I thought, 'Oh no, I didn't think this novel was about boxing.' Turns out it isn't but I wasn't really that fussed by bullfighting either.

I was actually thinking about first sentences yeasterday because I'm going through the first draft of my first novel and editing. I realised I needed a much better first sentence and for inspiration started yanking books off my shelves at random and noting down the first sentences. My favourite was probably from Nabokov's Lolita:

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins."

The whole first paragraph is actually amazing.

Another one I quite liked was from The Nun by Diderot:

"The Marquis de Croismare's reply, if he decides to reply, will give me the opening lines of this story."

I always remember the first sentence of Nineteen Eighty-Four being good, though I don't have my copy at the moment. According to that reliable source, the internet, it is:

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

Joyce - PAYM

'Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo...

And you know you're in for something good at the start of Ian Banks's The Wasp Factory -

I had been making the rounds of the sacrifice poles the day we heard my brother had escaped'.

It's hard not to like Raymond Carver's stories such as they are; but such as they are, they aren't what the author had in mind.

It was recently revealed that Gordon Lish, Raymond Carver's editor, had a such a hand in revising and paring down the author's manuscripts, that the Carver style, the cadence and rhythm of his sentences, are actually the brainchild of Gordon Lish.

As a result it's hard not to feel somewhat scammed.

A link to the Carver/Lish controversy:

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/17/books/17carver.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/17/bo...ewanted=1&_r=1

There. I think I've got it now.

Catatonic brought up a good point about Carver's editor. Here is a link to the original Carver edition of what we know as "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love":

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/fea...urrentPage=all

I'm glad I joined this forum. You are all very knowledgeable and responsive! Thanks for the great replies.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by laymonite

I've been revisiting the short stories of Raymond Carver lately, and I have realized that one of his best tactics is a great first sentence. It is so important, especially with the amount of literature out there to read, to pull the reader in immediately. Some writers do this within the first paragraph, but Raymond Carver almost always does it within the first sentence.

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Nice quotes, and thanks for sharing. Unfortunately I feel a lot more familiar with Carver's poetry than stories, but I can claim that he has some original first lines in his poetry, too, which can read a lot like prose from time to time. Just opening up one of his collections of poetry, All of Us:

From "The World Book Salesman":

Quote:

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He holds conversation sacred
though a dying art.

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From "Interview":

Quote:

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Talking about myself all day
brought back
something I thought over and
done with.

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From "The Pen":

Quote:

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The pen that told the truth
went into the washing machine
for its trouble.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by laymonite

What do you think of Raymond Carver in general and in comparison to Hemingway?

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Carver in comparison to Hemingway?
Carver and Hemingway. Yes. They both wrote a lot. And wrote well. And they both died too soon. They had the talent of saying a lot in short sentences - blunt ones, too. Sometimes fragments. Sentences that pierce to the bone with their raw intensity and emotion. Yes. Carver and Hemingway. :lol:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by laymonite

I've been revisiting the short stories of Raymond Carver lately, and I have realized that one of his best tactics is a great first sentence. It is so important, especially with the amount of literature out there to read, to pull the reader in immediately. Some writers do this within the first paragraph, but Raymond Carver almost always does it within the first sentence.

For example:

"A man without hands came to the door to sell me a photograph of my house."
- from "Viewfinder"

"In the kitchen, he poured another drink and looked at the bedroom suite in his front yard."
- from "Why Don't You Dance?"

"I was in bed when I heard the gate."
- from "I Could See The Smallest Things"

Each of these examples compels me to move forward, wither because I have to get an explanation for something bizarre (e.g. "Viewfinder") or because it is so ordinary I have to know why he even bothered to tell me this (e.g. "I Could See The Smallest Things").

Who are some other writers that are able to capture the reader in the first sentence? What do you think of Raymond Carver in general and in comparison to Hemingway?

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Re your question about similarities between Raymond Carver and Hemingway in first liners, I totally agree. Both writers were first class in finding extraordinary good opening lines as well as finding truly beatiful names for their books. /Ken

My husband just brought home the Friday Sept.11th edition of the Wall St. Journal. Lo and behold there is an article about Raymond Carver. Seems they are advertising a new 'Collected Stories" by R.C. that is now out in hardback, all 1,019 pages. This new collection allows you, for the first time, to read and compare Lish-edited selections with the original manuscripts by Carver. According to the WSJ article, Lish altered a great deal of Carver's works, even changing character names. From this article, it does seem like readers were scammed or duped, but at least now one can compare the two.

The title of the article is Before and After Stories
A reputation shaped by an editor's hand, but a legacy formed by a writer's maturation.

Lynne50 - Thanks for this info! My interest is piqued!

"Call me Ishmael."
- Herman Melville, Moby Dick


It is so simple and genuine, and so effective in establishing personal narrative.

I actually wrote a paper on Lish's editing on Carver last semester, and "scammed" too harsh of a word for it. They certainly weren't Carver's idea, and he had a hard time dealing with the edits. Here's an article from the New Yorker that actaully superimposes Lish's edits and additions over Beginners.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2007...ineonly_carver

It's funny, but my favorite line from Carver is from What We Talk About. "My friend Mel was talking. Mel McGinnis is a cardiologist, so sometimes that gives him the right." Technically two sentences, but I love it. It has such punch, and it really establishes the narrator and Mel.

While I like Hemmingway, I find his characters and situations tend to feel like exaggerations, while Carver's feel almost painfully real.

I'd never really focused on the opening sentance before and found the exercise quite interesting. Ranged from the tersely cogent e.g.
"Mark Sanderson liked women." Frederick Forsyth "No Comebacks"
to real stage set pieces e.g.
"All the efforts of several hundred thousand people, crowded in a small space, to disfigure the land on which they lived; all the stone they covered it with to keep it barren; how so diligently every sprouting blade of grass was removed; all the smoke of coal and naphtha; all the cutting down of trees and driving off of cattle could not shut out the spring, even from the city." Count Leo Tolstol "The Awakening"

A few others that reflect so much the style of the author:

"I believe this is the first English country house you have stayed at Miss Worsley?" Oscar Wilde. " A Woman of No Importance"

"The pebbled glass door panel is lettered in flaked black paint: "Philip Marlow...Investigations." Raymond Chandler "The Little Sister"

"At the hour of the hot spring sunset two citizens appeared at the Patriarch's Ponds." Mikhail Bulgakov. "The Master and Margarita."

"Hale knew they meant to murder him before he had been in Brighton three hours." Grahame Greene. "Brighton Rock"

"I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead." (Sorry 3 sentances!) Henry Miller. "Tropic of Cancer."

"At five o'clock that morning reveille was sounded, as usual, by the blow of a hammer on a length of rail hanging up near the staff quarters." Alexander Solzhenitsyn. "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich."

"I'm going to get that bloody bast-rd if I die in the attempt." James Clavell. "King Rat."

"We were in class when the head-master came in, followed by a "new fellow," not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a large desk." Gustave Flaubert 'Madame Bovary."

A new game. Try using one of the listed authors and adapt their individual style to write one of the above from an opening sentence not their own!

This thread is timely for me. I've been thinking about openings as I think about my own novel.

Blood and Guts in Highschool by Kathy Acker: 'Never having known a mother, her mother died when Janey was a year old, Janey depended on her father for everything and regarded her father as boyfriend, brother, sister, money, amusement, and father.'

Regarding good first lines --- how about this one from the short story 'Adrift', by master storyteller Horacio Quiroga:

'The man stepped on something whitish, and immediately felt the bite in his foot'.

What follows is the snake-bitten man's desperate race against time, his attempt to reach the downriver town where he can get a doctor.

Here's a link I've found to the story in Spanish: http://www.ciudadseva.com/textos/cue...oga/deriva.htm

An opening sentence is useful for setting the scene in which the action will unfold. I particularly like the following from The Octopus by Frank Norris; a story of the struggle of a farming community against the predation of a railroad company:

Just after passing Caraher's saloon, on the County Road that ran south from Bonneville, and that divided the Broderson ranch from that of Los Muertes, Presley was suddenly aware of the faint and prolonged blowing of a steam whistle that he knew must come from the railroad shops near the depot at Bonneville.


I have taken the liberty of giving below the opening sentence to my third, as yet untitled and uncompleted, novel:

A truism is no less true for having become a cliché and, as he looked across the Gulf of Salerno, the words resonated in Jerome Wakefield's brain: "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive."

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Anna Karenina.

A few of the ones that stick in my head:

Camus. The Stranger: "My mother died today, or perhaps it was yesterday."

Daphne Du Maurier. Rebecca: "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."

Anthony Burgess. Earthly Powers: "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."

Rose Macaulay. The Towers of Trebizond. "Take my camel dear" said Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass."

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Originally Posted by MANICHAEAN

Anthony Burgess. Earthly Powers: "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."

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:lol:

Here are two of my favorites. Not Raymond Carver specifically, but still great nonetheless.

"It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." - George Orwell "1984"

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." - William Gibson "Neuromancer"

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife!

Come on, that's an obvious one.

"Vera’s car was there, no others, and Burt gave thanks for that."

A Serious Talk, by Raymond Carver.

Re-read last night. He's among the best at it.


We talk a lot about first sentences on the newspaper. They are the single hardest parts to write and about the most important. A weak "lede" (first line) and you lose your reader, my editors always say. Nothing drives reporters crazy like crafting a suitable first sentence.

I recently read Stanley Fish's newest book, How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One. Interesting discussion of the first sentences power to shape everything that follows.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lynne50

My husband just brought home the Friday Sept.11th edition of the Wall St. Journal. Lo and behold there is an article about Raymond Carver. Seems they are advertising a new 'Collected Stories" by R.C. that is now out in hardback, all 1,019 pages. This new collection allows you, for the first time, to read and compare Lish-edited selections with the original manuscripts by Carver. According to the WSJ article, Lish altered a great deal of Carver's works, even changing character names. From this article, it does seem like readers were scammed or duped, but at least now one can compare the two.

The title of the article is Before and After Stories
A reputation shaped by an editor's hand, but a legacy formed by a writer's maturation.

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that edition is from the Library of America series and it includes the impassioned letter Carver sent to Lish imploring him to not change the stories. Fascinating reading.

I love Carver, one of the bests.

I want to explain how a family, a small group of beings, behaves in a society, and flourishes by giving birth to ten to twenty individuals who appear, at first glance, profoundly dissimilar, but that analysis shows each one intimately bound to the others. Heredity, like gravity, has its laws.

This is the beginning of Emil Zola's, La Fortune des Rougon. The first in his epic twenty novel series about two French families under the Second Empire. It's a huge canvas comprising all aspects of life during that tumultuous period from Napoleon 111's coup d'etat of 1852 until the defeat of the French by the Germans in 1870.

I love this thread! Being a bad project of writer myself, I always grapple with first sentences, because if one is not careful, one's first sentence is always in a danger to look stupid.

Three first sentences come to my mind as I read this thread, one is already put here, from Camus' The Stranger:
"Aujourd'hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas."
Also the first verse from Lattimore's Iliad:
"Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus' son Achilleus"
and also one from my favourite book, Grande Sertão: Veredas (a roughly intranslatable book from Brazilian author Guimarães Rosa, translated to English with the title "The Devil to pay in the backlands". It starts simply with:
"Nonada.", an inexistent word in formal portuguese which, from my reading, mean simply "no", but with MANY other semantic consequences. I love guimarães rosa.

Not familiar with Carver, but I'll offer a few opening lines I enjoy:

"The little town, as I recall it, was of just enough dignity and dearth of the same to be an ordinary county seat in Indiana - "The Grand Old Hoosier State," as it was ued to being howlingly referred to by the forensic stump orator from the old stand in the courthouse yard-a political campaign being the wildest delight that Zekesbury might ever hope to call its own."

James Whitcomb Riley At Zekesbury

"There was once upon a time...
'A King!' my little readers will instantly exclaim.
No, children, you are wrong. There was once upon a time a piece of wood."

Carlo Collodi - Pinocchios's Adventures in Wonderland

"The Christmas of 182__ was remarkable in Guernsey. It snowed on that day. In the Channel Islands, a winter where it freezes to the point of forming ice is memorable, and a snow is an event."
Victor Hugo Toilers of the Sea

.

Moby Dick
"Call me Ismael."

Hard to beat Anna Karenina
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Fight Club
"Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die."