Part One - I - The first Paragraph and the First Sentence

[Mark Thibodeau]

PART ONE - I - First Paragraph



Okay, first of all, looking at the first paragraph taken as a solid whole,
is absolutely marvelous. So beautiful, so evocative, so lush and tactile.
It’s an incredible opening paragraph. It tells us so much about the
environment that we’re starting off in. “The sights, the sounds, the
smells” to paraphrase Spinal Tap. And capping it with a reminder that we’re
at the cusp of America’s birthing… that the departure of the British
Loyalists still rings in the heads of the people who will populate this
novel.



Shrinking our perspective even more, that first sentence. Again, it’s just
fantastic, ranking among my favorite first lines in all of literary
history. Much has already been made over the parallels between the
“Snow-Balls” and “their Arcs” being a gentle, even whimsical counterpoint
to the deadly serious rockets “screaming” across the skies of Gravity’s
Rainbow (another killer first line, perhaps more significant for its
brevity). The playful stuff of snowball fights and sleds, and sweet home
cooking and children running amok… it’s a far cry from the grim evacuations
of the London Blitz, when the world, itself, was “given over to” the
“carefree assaults” of fantastically over-powered madmen.



But there’s one small section I’d like to focus on that has niggled at my
brain since first reading. The fragment: “among rhythmic slaps of Batter
and Spoon”. I don’t know about you folks, but personally, whenever I come
across the line “rhythmic slaps” in fiction, it’s usually as part of a
scene that is sexual in nature (“the rhythmic slaps of their bellies”,
etc). Spoon and Batter (both capitalized) are also both easy to see as
phallic (the Spoon, as opposed to the more probably whisk) and vulva-like
(the batter, presumably in a bowl or receptacle, long seen as a universal
symbol for the feminine archetype). Indeed, “Batter” itself has become a
bit of a euphemism for sperm (“baby batter”).


Anyhoo, just a couple thoughts to start things off.

MT
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