The Monkey King's Used Primate Emporium and Book Reviews

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Michael J. Nelson, �Death Rat!�

Started February 12 - Finished February 16, 2003; 326 pages. Posted 12 March 2004

It's a clich� to say the opening sentence of a novel will tell you if the novel is going to be any good, but there is truth in saying that the opening sentence may be the only thing people remember.

I can say, "Call me Ishmael," and most people will know what book I'm talking about, even if they haven't read it. Hell, I haven't even read that book, yet I know how it starts. I also know "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.� But lots of great books have a great first sentence:

�Listen: Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time.�

�We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.�

�It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.� (Fine, fine, that's two sentences. Even if the first sentence isn�t totally familiar with you, you can often tell just by that first paragraph that a book is going to be excellent.)

�My name is Nick. Someday, if I grow up to become a gangster, perhaps I will be known as Nick the Prick.�

�Early in the spring of 1750, in the village of Juffure, four days upriver from the coast of The Gambia, West Africa, a manchild was born to Omoro and Binta Kinte.�

�Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.�

�A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head.�

�If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.�

�The beet is the most intense of vegetables.�

��What's going to be then, eh?��

�All this is the fault of Dr. Barren.�

In case you didn't know what those books were, they are, in order:
Slaughterhouse-Five, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Catch-22, Youth In Revolt, Roots, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, A Confederacy of Dunces, The Catcher in the Rye, Jitterbug Perfume, A Clockwork Orange, and the best book of all, Mad Cows Indeed.

Here�s the opening sentence from Nelson�s book:

�Given his advancing age and his current stature in the business community, Pontius Feeb knew that it was unseemly for him to be driving giddily though town at mid-day, whistling and thinking fondly of spit-roasted chicken and buttered fingerling potatoes.�

And if you�re anything like me, you�re thinking, fuck, this is going to be great.

And it was close to great — a little too long and a little too down-home-folksy-aw-shucks style for my tastes, but after the horrible essay collection Mind Over Matters Nelson released, this is a reminder that Nelson can actually be funny. He makes thinly veiled jabs at pop icons like Tom Clancy and whom I can only assume is Bootsy Collins tied into a down-home-folksy-aw-shucks author who decides to write about giant rats. And he�s brave enough to preface all of this with the words �buttered fingerling potatoes.�

That�s got to be worth something. I�d say it makes it...


Rating: Worth used.

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