Bad starts

[Alan]

Hi,

How important to you are the opening lines of a book? Are you influenced by them and do they make you want to continue reading or put the book down?
Since 1982 the English Department at San Jose University, California, has sponsored the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for the worst beginning to an imaginary novel (see www.bulwer-lytton.com: ‘Where “WWW” means Wretched Writers Welcome’). The competition was inspired by the clichéd opening to Paul Clifford (1830),

[Boke]

My eyes hurt now, thank you
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福山市　英会話

[Jamie (K)]

Alan, I don't think the contest was inspired by just the opening lines of that novel, but by Bulwer-Litton's labored, verbose prose in general.

As to your real question, though, personally I'm not very affected by the opening words of a book one way or the other. However, there are certain things about a book's cover that ensure that I will never open it at all. Among them are:

1. If the title follows the pattern "(verb)ing (noun) in (place name)". This would be something like "Smoking Cigarettes in Baghdad" or "Searching for Love in Poland".

2. If the title or subtitle of a "nonfiction" book begins with the words "The Coming...", such as "The Coming Global Warming Crisis and How Humanity Can Survive It" or "Catastrophe: The coming collapse of the Bengali economy and what it means to you". Books that have "The Coming..." in the title always predict major catastrophes that never happen.

3. If the book is a novel and the title contains the name of some author, musician or artist who is far greater than the person who actually wrote the novel. These would be titles like "Looking for Goethe in China" or "Mozart's Last Mistress".

4. If the book is a novel and uses some historical figure as the main character, such as detective novels in which Dostoyevsky is the main investigator. I consider these books a sort of libel against the dead.

5. If the book is a novel set in a place where many people in New York and Boston like to go on vacation.

6. If the story has a Jewish or gay character, or especially a Jewish gay character, and there seems to be no reason at all for the character to be Jewish or gay. Then I know it's a marketing tactic. American publishers know from marketing research that the heaviest buyers of highbrow contemporary fiction are in the Jewish and the gay communities, so they sometimes tell authors of novels to make the main character Jewish or gay -- or Jewish AND gay -- in order to sell to these readers. If there is some good reason for the character to be Jewish or gay, then I'm okay with the book.

7. If the description of the story on the back of the book contains the phrase "his lifeless marriage to" or "her lifeless marriage to".

8. If the cover of the book doesn't explain what it's about, but just lists "praise for" it from critics.

These are the quirky things that will make me put a book back and never read it.

[prezbucky]

So Jamie... I suppose I should change the title of my upcoming book. It's currently titled "Searching For The Coming Rain: A Tale Of Clouds"

hehe
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Billie Jean is not my lover. Hee.

[Alan]

Maybe you should use your mysterious mantra as the title.

Alan
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English as a Foreign Language
You can read my EFL story Read the Signs...

[Yankee]

Whose (and which) mantra are you referring to, Alan? Is it Prezbucky's use of "hehe"?
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Amy
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ESL teacher, translator, and a native speaker of American English