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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

First paragraph / last line

08:58 / 06.09.02

Does anyone else do the "first paragraph & last line" game? Wherein, if you're deciding whether or not to buy/read a book, you look at the opening paragraph and the final line make your decision based on that?

I used to do that all the time and stopped after spoiling one too many suprise endings (The Wasp Factory springs to mind). But anyway, I've started doing it again recently, and the results from Steve Aylett's Slaughtermatic have absolutely blown me away:

first paragraph:

Dante Cubit pushed into the bank, thinking about A.A. Milne. Why hadn't he ever written Now We are Dead? No foresight, Dante Decided. Always think ahead. Under Dante's full-length coat was an old 10-gauge winchester, an Uzi machine pistol and a Zero Approach handgun. Against his heart was a thesaurus bound in PVC. He smiled at the entrance guard.

Last line:

And the Pentagon ignited, going up like a pirate flag.

Oh boy! Oh boy! This is gonna be the best book ever!!

09:23 / 06.09.02

I usually do the ‘first paragraph check’, though I don’t check the last line.
I was idly looking at the first page of Frank Skinner’s autobiography in a shop recently, and it said something like ‘If you’re like me, you look at the first paragraph of a book before buying it’, then he tells a story which is probably from his stand-up routine or something, which takes you over the page, where it says something like ‘if you’re still with me, let me assure you there’ll be no drop-off of quality, so why not go and pay for this book?’ or words to that effect.
Which I thought was quite neat.

But looking at the topic abstract, I may be threadrotting. Oop.

DBC

13:00 / 06.09.02

I prefer the 'random page somewhere in the middle' myself.
i guess I'm paranoid that I might buy a book where the first line is:

'"If it wasn't for my lizard DNA" thought Abraham Lincoln's black-ops clone, "that Lava Eel would surely had snapped me in half! Praise Eris..."'

But then continues.

'After reading that first line Polly put the book down immediately. Why did Eric, the hunky copier repair guy, read this rubbish? Maybe she should stick with Tarquin, the rich if slightly damp importer/exporter she met at the Christmas Ball...'

Murray Hamhandler

16:46 / 06.09.02

I thought that the last line in David Foster Wallace's Broom of the System was really intriguing and cool when I noticed it before reading the book. Then I read the book and it wasn't so much cool as it was completely hair-tearingly frustrating.

02:53 / 13.09.02

yes... slaughtermatic will indeed seem like the best book ever for quite sometime... and if ANY SINGLE sentence in that entire, incredibly dense book had been first, you still would have bought the motherfucker.

14:15 / 13.09.02

I'm inclined to agree. It's a hoot!

17:27 / 13.09.02

You've just reminded me of my favourite last line ever, from William Peter Blatty's "Legion".

But in keeping with the thread subject here's the first paragraph.

"He thought of death in its infinite groanings, of Aztecs ripping out living hearts and of cancer and three-year-olds buried alive and he wondered whether God was alien and cruel, but then remembered Beethoven and the dappling of things and the lark and "Hurrah for Karamazov" and kindness. He stared at the sun coming up behind the Capitol, streaking the Potomac with orange light, and then down at the outrage, the horror at his feet. Something had gone wrong between man and his creator, and the evidence was here on this boathouse dock."

and the final line:

"Hurrah for Karamazov," Kinderman murmured.

which just crashes down own you like the first night in your bed after a long time away from home. If you haven't read it then trust me, the journey to that last line is exhausting and worthwhile.

14:03 / 16.09.02

< threadrot > Omigod! Deric, I so completely agree re: The Broom of the System. I (literally) gritted my teeth and whimpered the entire time I was reading it, but my love for DFW made me soldier on to the end. I thought I was the only one who was driven crazy by it...

I've thought about giving it another try, but don't know that I have the psychological tools at my disposal to deal with the frustration. < /threadrot >