Fascinating, how the pattern-seeking mind fills in the gaps with conjectured information when objective reality omits or otherwise obscures the quantifying data it needs to function.

Speaking in terms of the compelling power of narrative and our instinctual hunger for literary closure and catharsis, have you ever confined yourself to looking only at the beginning and ending sentences of your favorite novel or story? In addition to the aforementioned criterions of reader satisfaction, it is striking how effectively the author’s personal style, tone and thematic concerns come across as a time-delayed one-two punch. Consider:

Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick.

…………………………

Wendy sat down on Danny’s other side and the three of them sat on the end of the dock in the afternoon sun.

                                                —Stephen King, The Shining

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect-like creature.

…………………………

And it felt like a confirmation of their new dreams and their fond intentions when, as they reached their destination, their daughter was the first to get up, and stretched her nubile young body.

                                                —Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis

In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains.

…………………………

After awhile I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.

                                                —Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

I’ll list the opening and closing sentences of three of my short stories, and then it’s your turn! (Shameless plug: These tales were posted here on Book Country for purposes of work-shopping and criticism. After making corrections to the texts, they were published and are now available at Amazon.com and other fine online retailers for the princely sum of .99 each. )

Professor Robert Howard Wilson hated children.

…………………………

“How very nice to see you again.” 

                                                —The Strange & Curious Tale of Professor R. H. Wilson

Seth Freeman awoke with a scream, heart trip-hammering in his bony chest like a panicked sparrow bashing its head against an unyielding gray wall.

…………………………

“You’ve been a very bad boy.”

                                                —Night Terror

The old man sported a black eyepatch and unkempt salt-and-pepper beard.

………………………….

They rose like thunderbolts into the cold night sky.

                                                —Come Haltingly, On Lame Feet  

And now, it’s your turn. Share!

PS. If nothing else, you've now no excuse for clearing out that backlog of books you've been meaning to get to but haven't found the time to read just yet. Amaze your friends! Amuse your family! Agitate your literature professor . . . 

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 9/19/2014, 9:44 AM--

Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach.

------------------

It would be a stronger world, a stronger loving world, to die in.

 - The Watchmen (One of Time Magazine's 100 Best Novels)

Carl!  Delightful to see your voice again.  I admit, I've been largely absent the last 6 to 9 months, and last time I checked around, looking for a story of yours I vaguely recalled you having posted, I couldn't find it. It seemed like maybe you'd packed up and moved on. I glad to see you're still around. The place wouldn't be the same without you.

First lines, last lines.  An excellent topic. I particularly like the pair that bracket "Come Haltingly."

GD, the last line of The Watchmen actually comes from a fantastic album by John Cale called "Music for a New Society," (unless its origin is even older.) An interesting bit of trivia.

Alright. One of my all time favorite pairs is from the great white warhorse. Everybody remembers the first line:

      Call me Ishmael. 

 But how many people remember the last line of Moby Dick:  

      It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.

Such an elegant transformation. Such an exquisitely devious final line!  Like the lash of whip! 

Here's another classic: 

    ...to wound the autumnal city.
    ***
    Waiting here, away from the terrifying weaponry, out of the halls of vapor and light, beyond holland and into the hills, I have come to

Dhalgren, obviously, by Samuel Delany.  All the delicious layers of ambiguity!  Are we meant to read the unfinished last line as the beginning of the unbegun first?  If so, why the superfluous "to"?  But without that extra word, would we even think of looping back to the beginning?  Certainly the second word of the book, "wound," beyond its obvious meaning of attack or injure, also hints at the winding and twisting path of the novel. There's here's no punctuation at the end, no ellipsis, no period. An ellipsis might suggest returning to the beginning of the novel. A period would just mean "coming to," as in "waking up." 

 Being Delany, I think we can safely answer:  E. All of the above.

My own stuff? Alright, if you insist.  From my most-recently completed novel, Whisper Blue:

   "Whis-per...?"

    ***

    It obviously didn't bother him in the slightest.

Plain but intriguing, or so I hope.

And, in honor of it's upcoming publication, I'll finish with Spark:

      It you want to get technical, I suppose it all started with the dead guy.
      ***

      And we went inside.          

Good opening line. The last line isn't really much of anything, but it's just a cadence.

 I'll offer one last classic as a quiz.  I wonder if anyone will recognize it:

Easy if you know it. A great, but not particularly famous book, by a great and famous author.

Later, all.

As usual, Carl has come up with a winner. I'm thinking about it. My own thing won't do - there is no last line yet. But I'm picking up favorite books and looking for killer firsts and lasts. And I'm discovering something that really gives me pause. A few things that I was sure would fill the bill have relatively dud first lines! I never noticed! This really will be a valuable learning experience.

Totally interesting stuff!

I grabbed a book on my to-read pile (SHE LEFT ME THE GUN, a memoir by Emma Brockes published by The Penguin Press) and here's what I found:

"My grandmother thought she was marrying someone vibrant and exciting, a man with wiry hair and tremendous energy."

...

"Enough now."

Okay, some first lines are scene-setters, startling neither in their phrasing nor in their intensity, which do not make for memorable quotes. Alternatively, they often create an emotional framework, not necessarily attention-grabbing, though Dickens certainly nailed that in Tale of Two Cities. I’ve picked up Brideshead, Tobacco Road, Jonathan Strange, no go. Atthys already grabbed the obvious one, Call me Ishmael.  

.

I never get tired of reading that one. So evocative of, well, something grand, and I don’t know the Bible. I'm reading more of it and about it now, in order to shove garbled bits into Sly's mouth, than I have in sixty-eight years of living. I was raised Catholic. As my husband gleefully points out, Catholics don’t read the Bible. We were neither encouraged nor trusted to think for ourselves.

.

I guarantee I’ll have a ton of material by the end of the weekend, for this challenge fascinates me. Now I have to go to work. (I work nights.)

.

I often read first paragraphs, but I don't think I've ever focused on first lines. Never, on last lines. This is damn interesting. Fun, fun, fun Carl. Thanks.

--edited by Mimi Speike on 9/19/2014, 6:31 PM--

In the one hundred and eleven years since the creation of the Spokane Indian Reservation in 1881, not one person, Indian or otherwise, had ever arrived there by accident.

...................................

Checkers and Chess reached out of their windows and held tightly to the manes of those shadow horses running alongside the blue van.

                                  Sherman Alexie - Reservation Blues

So I have sailed the seas and come . . . to B . . . a small town fastened to a field in Indiana.

..................................

There's no one to hear the music but myself, and though I'm listening, I'm no longer certain. Perhaps the record's playing something else.

                                  William H. Gass - In the Heart of the Heart of the Country

 Edna and I had started down from Kalispell, heading for Tampa-St. Pete where I had some friends from the old glory days who wouldn't turn me in to the police.

.................................

I am forty-one years old now, and I think about that time without regret, though my mother and I never talked in that way again, and I have not heard her voice now in a long, long time.

                                  Richard Ford - Rock Springs

 And from my current unnamed long WIP, a very rough draft -

The red bird called from a wire outside the window. Paul lay quietly awake, watching the dark November sky turn to early morning gray and then to rose.

................................

She lifted her head, and they sat together, holding on, and the band began to play.

Atthys, I love this: "If you want to get technical, I suppose it all started with the dead guy." That's an example of hit-em-over-the-head first lines. Works just swell. I hope we're in for a caper with plenty of attitude.

.

Perry, I love your line as well: "The red bird called from a wire outside the window. Paul lay quietly awake, watching the dark November sky turn to early morning gray and then to rose." This is a very graceful, very intriguing sentence that makes me wonder about Paul's state of mind and what's coming next.

--edited by Mimi Speike on 9/19/2014, 10:25 PM--

Good one, GD! One of my favorite graphic novels/comic book movies.

@Janet: I'm always good for the odd giggle, heh! Thanks for contributing to the discussion.

@Atthys: Welcome to the party! So glad to hear from you again, old friend. I was unaware of that bit of trivia re: John Cale & the opening lines of The Watchmen. Thanks for the info.

@Mimi: Can't wait to see what you come up with! Though your observation is interesting enough, in its own right. 

@Lucy: Tireless, everywhere-on-Book-Country Wonder Woman of Community Relations: intriguing opening and closing lines, indeed! Makes me want to read the book.

@Perry: Interesting selections there, sir. 

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 9/20/2014, 6:15 AM--

@Mimi: My god, you were right there and glanced off it! The Bible, Mimi, the Bible--of course!--opening and closing lines (King James version):

Genesis: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

.................................

Revelation: Amen.

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 9/20/2014, 6:17 AM--

Christ, Carl! The Bible, except for Sly-related investigations, is not on my prey matrix, as my husband would say. 

.

Help me out, someone. Right now I'm looking for lines implying a catastrophically disastrous situation. I've got, Daniel in the lion's den. Two or three more similar bits out of the Bible would be much appreciated.

--edited by Mimi Speike on 9/20/2014, 2:24 PM--

This line I love. It certainly does give you a feel for what's to come, and I admire the brinksmanship of it:

.

I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho' not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull: He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call ourselves, and write our name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call'd me.

.

............................

.

All these things, with some very surprising Incidents in some new Adventures of my own, for ten Years more, I may perhaps give a farther Account of hereafter.

.

Daniel Defoe/Robinson Crusoe.

.

Go on, say it. Hell, I'll say it for you: Yeah, figures.

--edited by Mimi Speike on 9/22/2014, 7:25 AM--

OK, the last line is not a wow, but it's a very graceful wrap-up. I love what I was sure was a made-up, or at least garbled, word. (This one will be popping up in Sly! before long) I like the tone, I like the immediate intrusiveness (natch) announcing the author's intentions by way of style. First published 1749. Still eminently readable. Here goes:

.

An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money.

Eleemosynary: pertaining to charity, alms.

.

................................................................

.

And such is their condescension, their indulgence, and their beneficence to those below them, that there is not a neighbor, a tenant or a servant, who doth not most gratefully bless the day when Mr Jones was married to his Sophia.

.

Henry Fielding/Tom Jones

--edited by Mimi Speike on 9/21/2014, 4:20 PM--

@Mimi: Thank you for contributing to the discussion.

And true, the Bible is an entire library of books, not a book, but still--couldn't resist! (Especially as I could recall the opening sentence of Genesis--can't we all?--but not the last sentence of Revelation.)

As for me, imagine my astonishment to discover that I'd ended two different stories by italicizing the word "very" in the--ahem--very last sentence of each story. I had no conscious memory of doing so. (Yet have no intention of changing either story. Perhaps this is part of what they mean by "voice"?)

I started this discussion to draw attention to the opening and closing sentences of story, especially our own.

The opening sentence immediately establishes voice, tone, and grammatical/syntactical cadence, for better or for worse. Hopefully it has that hookish "certain something" that rivets our reader's eyeballs to the page and compels them to read on.

The best closing sentences of story, I believe, provide a sense of closure and catharsis to the reader. They echo in the mind as consciousness shifts from the world of story back to everyday quotidian consciousness. The best-of-the-best closing sentences strike us as sublime, pitch-perfect, inevitable, emotionally colored by all that has gone before. Yes, we think to ourselves as we close the book, of course! It couldn't end any other way. These final sentences may be an authorial long-distance hug, a poke in the chest, or an arched eyebrow intended as invitational goad to further thought, but all effective closing sentences haunt and hector: they echo long after the books have returned to the shelf. Sometimes, their authors inspire us to pull their books down again and re-experience these narratives anew from word one.   

Consider F. Scott Fitzgerald's closing sentence to The Great Gatsby:

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

That haunts me . . .

Carl E. Reed

Age 50

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 9/22/2014, 10:09 PM--

Atthys,

I know. But that quote was the last line in the book.

Great pick, Dhalgren! That book remains one of my all time favorites.

GD.  Yeah, I didn't know that.  I never read The Watchmen. I wondered at first who was quoting who but it looks like the album came first by about five years.  It's from one of Cale's oddest songs, which is saying a lot. 

I'm glad to know there are Dhalgren fans out there, at least among us oldsters. It occurred to me after I posted that another punctuation mark, a comma,  creates yet another reading:  "…I have come to, to wound the autumnal city."  God knows exactly what Delany wanted us to take away, but there's an eerie sense to it, like this dream is over, and now I'm waking up to dream it all over again.  

For those who might appreciate a quick link to the Wiki article on Dahlgren: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhalgren 

Literary Reception: 

Literary significance and criticism[edit]

Cover of Vintage edition.

With over a million sales, Dhalgren is by far Delany's most popular book—and also his most controversial. Critical reaction to Dhalgren has ranged from high praise (both inside and outside the science fiction community) to extreme dislike (mostly within the community).[12] However, Dhalgren was a commercial success, selling a half million copies in the first two years, and over a million copies worldwide since then, with "its appeal reaching beyond the usual SF readership."[13]

Its lack of a linear plot or even a single consistent chronological narrative, its graphically-described homo-, hetero-, and bisexuality, Delany's "modernist" verbal pyrotechnics, and use of stream of consciousness writing has given it a reputation as a difficult novel. It has been compared to Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow—not so much because of the styles in which the two are written, but in terms of the complexity and ambition of the two works.

Some quotes from the back cover of the Vintage Books paperback edition of Dhalgren:

• "a brilliant tour de force." - Raleigh News and Observer
• "I consider Delany not only one of the most important SF writers of the present generation, but a fascinating writer in general who has invented a new style." -Umberto Eco
• "The very best ever to come out of the science fiction field... A literary landmark." -Theodore Sturgeon

The Libertarian Review stated that Dhalgren "seems ... to stake a better claim than anything else published in this country in the last quarter century (excepting only Gass's Omensetter's Luck and Nabokov's Pale Fire) to a permanent place as one of the enduring monuments of our national literature."

The Telluride Times-Journal wrote, "Altogether, Dhalgren is a unique and powerful literary masterpiece."

Darrell Schweitzer, writing in Outworlds, Sixth Anniversary Issue (#27, 1976) stated that "Dhalgren is, I think, the most disappointing thing to happen to science fiction since Robert Heinlein made a complete fool of himself with I Will Fear No Evil."

Theodore Sturgeon called Dhalgren "the very best ever to come out of the science fiction field ... a literary landmark." By contrast, fellow writers such as Philip K. Dick and Harlan Ellison hated the novel. When the book appeared, Ellison in the L. A. Times (Sunday, February 23, 1975, p. 64) wrote: "I must be honest. I gave up after 361 pages. I could not permit myself to be gulled or bored any further." In an interview 27 years later, he said: "When Dhalgren came out, I thought it was awful, still do ... I ... threw it against a wall." Dick called Dhalgren "a terrible book" that "should have been marketed as trash. ... I just started reading it and said this is the worst trash I've ever read. And I threw it away."

But we were talking about Dahlgren, wasn't us?

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 9/23/2014, 1:43 PM--

@GD: I trust your judgement on this matter more than my own. Perhaps I'll take another crack at Delany's tome before my planet time is up.

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 9/22/2014, 11:24 PM--

@GD: Heh! Klaatu barada nikto; res ipsa loquitur.

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 9/23/2014, 2:18 AM--

I first read Dhalgren in college, and it delighted, amazed, disturbed and perplexed, all the things the best books do. I reread it a few years ago. It was not quite the glittering perfection I remembered, but it was still extraordinary. Delany is one of the greats, and he's never been afraid to step into new worlds. The glory of his talent is that he can bring us along.

 I admit, I'm a sucker for big, complicated books. I love it when a novel is also a puzzle, in the literal sense. I don't regard Dhalgren as something to be solved, more something to be admired for its complexity, its depth – for the joy of tracing a path through an intricate house, where every hallway might turn out to be a mirror, every mirror might be a window, every doorway might lead to another house entirely.  

I recall a scene where the Kid passes a mirror (I think this was during the scorpion raid on the department store) and sees, not himself, but a bearded black man in glasses, who moves as he moves, but is entirely unfamiliar. The only commonality between him and his reflection is the Kid's own notebook, which the black man also carries. The man in the mirror is Delany, of course. A simple enough idea, but chilling on paper. It all passes very quickly, but later, reading at random in the notebook, words written by someone else, Kid finds a text that posits that very situation:  If a writer passed by a mirror and saw, not himself, but a character from a book, he might think himself mad or dreaming, but he would at least have a context for what he was seeing. But if the character on the other side of the mirror also looked out and saw the author, what would he have? What in his world could possibly give meaning to such an epiphany? Everything that happens in the damned book is pinned to something else. Reading it is like burrowing a hole through the infolded layers of a tumble of blankets – textures, colors, patterns, appear and vanish, reappear, arrhythmically, but always with the sense that there is a greater, underlying structure to the thing. (I don't, personally, believe that some formal key could explain everything, because I assume there are places where Delany let fancy and instinct guide him, just as we all do. Instinct can create and sustain patterns just as ornate as any computer spreadsheet, but they tend to defy analysis – excepting, of course, intuitive analysis.) The notebook is the novel is the city – but of course, it isn't really the novel, not the one the reader holds in her or his hands.  I believe the notebook begins life as one of Delany's own notebooks, which he leaves in Belona for the Kid to find. The notes within could be the sort a writer might jot down for his own use while constructing a novel. But the Kid takes it, and begins writing poems in it, keeps a journal, until finally this expanding, dimensionally transcendental notebook becomes, in the end, truly the novel itself, and the Kid has vanished into its pages. The fact that the book loops back on itself really seems like the only possible ending, given the circumstances.

Pretentious analysis anyone? Well, the novel invites it.  (In truth, I have read some blistering reviews of Dhalgren, and some of the criticisms are at least partly true. But the value of the book far outweighs its problems.) Of course, all the puzzles would just get tiresome if the book wasn't populated by real people, and driven forward by real story. And whether he's describing an unreal night where the clouds part to reveal not one, but two moons creeping across the sky – or a trip to the men's room to do the most inevitable thing in the world – Delany devotes the rich, vivid, loving prose of a passionate writer to the event. 

Enough.  And Carl, I hope you'll be planet-side for a good many years to come. Your work here is not done.

@ Atthys

I never tried to solve the puzzles in Dhalgren. I wanted to but not doing so was too delicious. The notebook, like the city itself, seemed to be right where they ought to be but only because the story is not linear -it's a work of literary impressionism. Wait... I don't really know that. I'm happy to just enjoy the story.

Still, I really appreciate your post, Atthys. It evokes some good memories of Dhalgren. I may have to read it again.

@Carl

No, no. Atthys & I did not carjack your thread. We just um, enjoyed it, if you will.

Here's the first 2 lines & the last line from The Phoenix Diary:

“The consequences of the Big Bang should have flowed like rows of falling dominoes; the physical universe should be predictable. But it ain’t, because intelligent life forms are messing with it.”

------

With the proper safeguards, of course.

--edited by GD Deckard on 9/23/2014, 8:01 PM--

@Atthys: That's some great expository writing you did there re: the novel Dahlgren.

:::applause-applause:::

It's true what they say: You never really appreciate the beauty, power and/or transfixing ecstatic aesthetics of a thing until you hear it described by someone who loves it. I say again: Bravo!  (I salute you for acknowledging the fact that the critics who savaged the book also have a point. To me this makes the book more appealing and worthy of a re-read, not less so. Perfection is so very boring, whereas marked flaws give a thing character and charm--a very Japanese notion, but one I subscribe to.)

@GD: If this is a hijack, take me with you! I haven't had this much fun on Book Country since the glory days of the site's initial launch. It's almost like old times: stimulating discussion, fine writing on divers subjects by great people who can articulate and expound upon their fervently-held opinions with precision, power and clarity.  I only ask: WHERE THE HELL IS EVERYBODY ELSE?!

Have you ever noticed that some of these threads have thousands of drive-by readers who never comment upon the subjects being discussed?

Come on, people! Don't be shy! We'd love to hear from you.

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 9/23/2014, 11:14 PM--

Jeez Carl,

.

I don't know sci-fi. I'm certainly intrigued what what you guys are writing, but I have so much waiting to be read already, that I need to read and I really want to read, that I can't talk myself into taking on a new genre. What am I supposed to do?

.

I sure am glad to see you back bright eyed and bushy tailed. Atthys and GD too.

@Mimi

Sometimes y'read something so powerful that it breaks the boundaries of preconceived genre. Dhalgren is a trip into the artist's mind, represented as a city.

I have not read it in many years but I can still suggest you just read the opening. I remember the taste of coffee held 30 minutes in your mouth and a woman in a moonlit night becoming a tree.

You'll read it or you'll set it aside. But bingo, it's another need-to-read book off your list!

@Atthys

Apologies if I mischaracterized the details of the opening. I really haven't read Dhalgren in over a decade. But then, I didn't read any sci-fi during the years I was writing my book. Too afraid I'd blatantly incorporate somebody else's good idea into my own. Plagiarism has an honored history but it can interfere with creativity.

@Carl

Penguin demolished their old charming writers cafe & put up a McDonalds. Business people understand programmers better that they understand artists. So our warm, friendly and energetic forum became a fluorescent web site with all the charm of a bus station at 2:AM.

The silent "thousands of drive-by readers" you so aptly noted are just travelers wandering through.

We who happily remain are either totally lost or completely unhinged.

--edited by GD Deckard on 9/24/2014, 7:08 AM--

@Mimi: Trust me, you would absolutely love the unexpurgated version of Stranger In A Strange Land. One of the book's main characters is Jubal Harshaw, a thinly fictionalized stand-in for Heinlein himself: doctor, lawyer, writer and outspoken iconoclast. You'll meet a kindred spirit, methinks.

PS. Why the self-imposed ban against reading science fiction, Mimi? (Or speculative fiction, if you prefer that term.) Just curious.

Well, I did read SF in, I think, junior high school. I believe they call it middle school now. I finally got bored with it. Too much the same thing. Maybe I didn't get hold of the outstanding stuff. I did read Stranger In A Strange Land, I know I did. I don't remember if I was in love with it or not. I want to be in love with my reads, or why do it? There's so much I am in love with. 

.

I'll add Stranger to my list. Give me some more. With quality of prose, along with story, tip-top, in your estimation.

.

OK, another thought: I want to understand the character from the inside out, that's what it takes to hook me. While a guy is zapping aliens, what's he thinking? I want to hear that stuff. In other words, I don't want story to be a stage set. Give me the mundane but illuminating stray thoughts and reactions I can relate to. SF seems to be all outside, damn little inner. Talk to me about that. Tell me I'm wrong.

--edited by Mimi Speike on 9/24/2014, 2:18 PM--

@Mimi: Oh, Mimi--where to begin?!

Harlan Ellison. James Tiptree Jr. (pseudonym of Alice B. Sheldon) Philip K. Dick. Kurt Vonnegut. Ray Bradbury. Ursula K. Le Guin.

If these names--and their acclaimed works--don't do it for you, there is nothing more I can add that will persuade you the genre of science fiction is about anything other than "zapping aliens" and "external appearances".

This might be worth a view, however. First part of an extended interview with Harlan Ellison:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcNQc9DTkLc 

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 9/24/2014, 2:33 PM--

I'll give a few of these a try. And that will be my definite word on SF.

.

I did read, about two years ago, something, I talked about it on here, I can't recall the title. There was South in the author's name, I think. South-something. Or else Swan. Swanwick! Michael Swanwick. Stations of the Tide. I'm not settling into senility yet. The memory kicks in after a bit.

.

It had superb reviews, noting especially the virtuoso prose style, that's what pulled me in. I was indeed in love with the prose. But the talking briefcases and what-not that apparently beguiled everyone else did nothing for me at all. 

.

Now, if those briefcases had been obsessing over a spat with a mother-in-law, I think I could have gotten into them.

--edited by Mimi Speike on 9/24/2014, 3:44 PM--

What an interesting topic. Actually got me to swap my first two paragraphs, which works a lot better now. 

Even though only eight years old, Kayla Nighthawk knew the penalty for possession of science-magic anywhere in Potemia was death—regardless, that was their quest.

“But I now realize that some things should never have been created in the first place.”

That's really pretty good, Scott.

Yeh, Carl had a good idea starting this discussion. It's amazing how juxtaposing the first & last thoughts of a book can carry meaning appropriate to the story.

@Atthys: Right on! I couldn't agree with you more re: Alice B. Sheldon's stories being, in the main, better than her novels. I feel the exact same way about Philip K. Dick: His short stories of the 50s and 60s impress and astonish, whereas many of his later novels are marred (at points) by truly atrocious writing, the tendency to write page-after-page of pedestrian, workmanlike prose and the occasional startling eruption of homophobia and misogyny. Still, PKD hits it out of the park time-after-time: the metaphor of the android, probings into the nature of subjective vs. objective reality, his mind-bendingly brilliant construction of scenarios that have come to be called "Phildickian".  

http://www.philipkdickfans.com/literary-criticism/essays/phildickian-a-definition/ 

Getting back to James Tipptree Jr.: I sat down last year and read a biography chronicling her larger-than-life experiences, The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon. Fascinating, at times appalling, stuff. Well worth the read! Gave me great insight into her character.

BTW: Do you enjoy reading or re-reading a writer's work in conjunction with a biography? Or autobiography? I find that my interest in both (works and life) is heightened when I alternate between reading both within a fairly short span of time.    

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 9/24/2014, 4:34 PM--

--edited by Carl E. Reed on 9/24/2014, 4:33 PM--

Yes, I read the same biography. I've always been curious about the real Alice Sheldon. She was so adroit at keeping her personal life private. It was rather a ghastly life in some ways, but she was a fascinating person. I did enjoy rereading some of her stories with the expanded context. I always tell myself it shouldn't matter. The fact that Phillip K. Dick was a man I probably wouldn't care to have a conversation with doesn't change the value of his stories. But in reality, it does make a difference. Sometimes knowing even the smallest thing about an author can color your appreciation, for better or worse, of the writing.  We are not such ideal readers as we suppose. 

As far as Tiptree's novels, Up the Walls of the World wasn't bad, but I remember parts of it being very tedious and adding very little to the story. But she wrote some of the best, funniest, most inventive sci fi stories I know. 

Okay, I'll bite. Had to rummage around the house for the three examples, but here they are (and I'm not going to speculate about what my choices say about me):

Opening:

So shaken as we are, so wan with care,

Find we a time for frighted peace to pant,

And breathe short-winded accents of new broils

To be commenc'd in stronds afar remote: [I'll end it here because there are quite a number of additional lines before one sees a period!]

-------------------------------

Closing:

Rebellion in this land shall lose his sway,

Meeting the check of such another day,

And since this business so fair is done,

Let us not leave till all our own be won.

                                            Shakespeare: Henry IV, Part I

Opening:

A mile above Oz, the Witch balanced on the wind's forward edge, as if she were a green fleck of the land itself, flung up and sent wheeling away by the turbulent air.

----------------------------

Closing:

"Not yet."

                                            Gregory Maguire: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Opening:

It was the deep dark, unexplored except for robotic visitors.

----------------------------

Closing:

But in the way of such things, maybe atevi hadn't found the exact words for it, either.

                                            C.J. Cherryh: Foreigner

And from version 4,372.09 of the first book of my series, A Kaliphian Matter I: Revelations:

Opening:

The explosion somewhere to left rattled Ben to the core and filled the air with smoke and splinters.

 -----------------------------------

Closing:

He lifted his hand in salute to his mother, the light from the crystal in the wrist cuff shining a brilliant blue, then reined the mare around again and rode through the gates without looking back.

@Angela: Welcome back!!! 

It's great to have you back on these boards; your voice was sorely missed! 

Nice contributions to the discussion; I enjoyed reading all of them.

HY'as Angela!

Yup, what Carl said!

--edited by GD Deckard on 9/26/2014, 4:30 PM--

Been a goodly while since dropping by last. How yo'all do'in?

First and last of my booky...Demiurge; Blood of the Innocent.

The dead awaited William Hassom.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And, for now, this was enough.

Hehe. Does the first line look familiar to you, Carl? Very like something you suggested to me as an opener, for then SEER, about two years ago? Thanks again for that one.

BTW, some of the sentences in between first and last are a bit longer.  

Anyhoo, it must have done the trick...you'll find Demiurge, too, on Amazon. (Official launch not 'til 1st Dec and ebooks not around 'til then, but it's up there now with paperbacks aplenty.)

What else is new? Any books catching the eye, or hot debates to stick me oar in?

See ya round the site,

Mike

@Michael: Good to see ya back, buddy! Check out ADVICE TO NEW WRITERS for an example of an on-going discussion you might feel like jumping in on.

And congrats on your book's publication! I do indeed remember that first line I suggested to you: "The dead were waiting for him in the house." Glad it's still working for you, albeit in modified form. 

Stick around! Workshop your new writing, review others' manuscripts, join the discussions. 

And again: Good to have you back, Michael!

ConGrats! Michael, for finishing Demiurge and getting it onto Amazon.

Carl's right -check out the discussion, ADVICE TO NEW WRITERS.

http://www.bookcountry.com/Community/discussion/default.aspx?g=posts&t=8589936562

Maybe you could share some of your Amazon experience with new writers. (Um, and with me. I may be using them soon. I finished The Phoenix Diary : )

& Welcome back!

--edited by GD Deckard on 10/17/2014, 8:14 AM--

Opening and closing sentences immediately reminded me of this old quote.

“The first page sells this book. The last page sells your next book.” 
― Mickey Spillane

Mickey Spillane sold over 250 million books. Many are still in print and still selling. I figured he knew something.

Another of his quotes that I like "I'm a commercial writer, not an author. Margaret Mitchell was an author. She wrote one book."

I watched one of his interviews on YouTube a while back. In it he explained the above. "I write for the guy on the street not the critics. What do I care whether they think my books are badly written or the story stinks. I've sold over 200 million books. Somebody likes them."

--edited by ChuckB on 10/12/2014, 8:35 PM--

I thought of this thread because our friends at Penguin Digital Products have just released a Bible verse memorization app. Mimi was saying that she wanted to learn some good verses--there's an app for that!