Good first lines

[Michael Bailey]

My choices:
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan...
Later than usual one morning...


re: The Lesson, I think I read this in a writing class text and a darn
good story it was.
Harcourt Brace?  A glossy hardcover the size of a paperback?
Good writing text.  Darnit had to leave it in Kansas...
anyway, do they go to a department store?
If that's the one, I wonder if the author wrote anything else...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toni_Cade_Bambara
apparently yes...she's now on my short reading list along with the
Recognitions...




On 7/31/08, Krafft, John M. <krafftjm at muohio.edu> wrote:
> I promise I'll stop with this one, but taking my cue from otto, here's a terrific story opening. It's worth the price of admission just to get to the first comma, but here's the whole first paragraph:
>
>         Back in the days when everyone was old and stupid or young and foolish and me and Sugar were the only ones just right, this lady moved on our block with nappy hair and proper speech and no makeup. And quite naturally we laughed at her, laughed the way we did at the junk man who went about his business like he was some big-time president and his sorry-ass horse his secretary. And we kinda hated her too, hated the way we did the winos who cluttered up our parks and pissed on our handball walls and stank up our hallways and stairs so you couldn't halfway play hide-and-seek without a goddamn gas mask. Miss Moore was her name. The only woman on the block with no first name. And she was black as hell, cept for her feet,--which were fish-white and spooky. And she was always planning these boring-ass things for us to do, us being my cousin, mostly, who lived on the block cause we all moved North the same time and to the same apartment then spread out gradual to breathe. And !
>   our parents would yank our heads into some kinda shape and crisp up our clothes so we'd be presentable for travel with Miss Moore, who always looked like she was going to church, though she never did. Which is just one of the things the grownups talked about when they talked behind her back like a dog. But when she came calling with some sachet she'd sewed up or some gingerbread she'd made or some book, why then they'd all be too embarrassed to turn her down and we'd get handed over all spruced up. She'd been to college and said it was only right that she should take responsibility for the young ones' education, and she not even related by marriage or blood. So they'd go for it. Specially Aunt Gretchen. She was the main gofer in the family. You got some ole dumb shit foolishness you want somebody to go for, you send for Aunt Gretchen. She been screwed into the go-along for so long, it's a blood-deep natural thing with her. Which is how she got saddled with me and Sugar and !
>   Junior in the first place while our mothers were in a la-de-da!
>   apartme
>  nt up the block having a good ole time.
>   --Toni Cade Bambara, "The Lesson" (1972)
>
>
>
>  --
>
>  John M. Krafft / English
>  Miami University–Hamilton / 1601 University Blvd. / Hamilton, OH 45011-3399
>  Tel: 513.785.3031 or 513.868.2330
>  Fax: 513.785.3145
>  E-mail: krafftjm at muohio.edu
>  WWW: http://www.ham.muohio.edu/~krafftjm or http://PynchonNotes.org
>
>