Michael J. Nelson, “Death Rat!”
It's a cliché 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...
