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Novermber 27, 2002, 9:35 a.m. Ignorant or hateful? Books and covers. Sing me an opening! &c.

hat’s the most despicable thing you’ve read in, oh, the last six months? I know I have my candidate. It came in a movie review by David Denby published in the Nov. 11 New Yorker. Here goes: “People who are convinced that Eminem is destroying America might want to consider the delicacy of the white-black friendships in ‘8 Mile.’ (Perhaps the spectre of such friendships is what right-wingers actually hate most.)”

That’s right: We’re trying to keep blacks and whites from being friends of each other, when we’re not trying to keep women barefoot and pregnant.

David Denby is either a very, very ignorant man — does he know any conservatives? does he ever get out? — or a bundle of malice, in the Sidney Blumenthal/Lewis Lapham mold. How such a sentence could have been published — certainly in 2002 — is a mystery. The New Yorker, a great magazine, and David Remnick, its editor, and a great journalist, should really be ashamed.

A reader writes, “Thanks for using ‘Michigander’ instead of ‘Michiganian’! The latter term was something imposed on us, like the metric system and soccer.”

Another letter: “Like you, I grew up and went to school in Ann Arbor, and while I suspect we have little in common politically, other than a distaste for obvious buffoons, I always enjoy your reminiscences of the place as the slacker theme park it is. A couple of years ago I took my Southern Belle wife to Ann Arbor and her comment was, ‘My oh my, I have never seen such a number of people just sitting about — and all of them have such nice teeth!’ Maybe you have to hear her say it, but it still cracks me up.”

Another: “Your thoughts on Chambliss vs. Cleland in Georgia — and on the tactics of John Kerry — brought to mind a tale about a post-Civil War candidate. He was going on at length about his experiences:

“‘I marched hundreds of miles, through the rain, sleet and snow; hardtack and salt pork alone sustained me, and the cold, hard ground was my bed. I stained four battlefields with my blood as I followed the colors . . .’ And a heckler breaks in from the crowd: ‘All right, we see: You’ve done ENOUGH for your country already! That’s why I’m voting for the other guy — you go on home and rest!’”

Another: “I enjoyed your comments on not judging a book by its cover, when it comes to a person’s politics. It reminded me of some of my own thoughts in 1968. I was a cadet at West Point and, for a project, I surveyed approximately 100 other cadets about their preference for president that year. Perhaps surprisingly, the results were mixed. About 40 percent were for Nixon, about 40 percent were for Humphrey, and the balance were for [Eugene] McCarthy (as I was).

“At the time, we marched in the Armed Forces Day parade in New York City. We always had to be briefed on how to handle protesters if they chose to assault us (we were to protect the flag and our rifles, but otherwise to endure any attack). There were no assaults during this parade, but there was a clump of protesters along the route, and they were shouting in unison something or other. My thought as I passed them was that we in the same uniform all thought differently, while they, dressed in a wide array of clothing, all thought the same way.”

“Mr. Nordlinger: I’ll accept certain liberals’ contention that only those with combat experience should pronounce on Iraq if they will agree that only those who pay income taxes can decide on what the rates should be and how the money should be spent.”

“Jay, I’m a native Southerner and an assistant professor of chemistry in Virginia. As a frequent reader of your Impromptus, I know you’re from Michigan, so I find it interesting how often you use the word ‘y’all.’ I think it’s an excellent contraction and a much better candidate for you-plural than ‘youse,’ for example. [We certainly need a you-plural — other languages have them, but we don’t. That’s why I say “y’all” or “you-all” or “you guys” — but mainly “y’all” and “you-all,” not just Southernisms, but necessities, for understanding’s sake.] Nevertheless, I thought you might be interested in the following:

“At a recent conference, I had a conversation in which I mentioned the utility of ‘y’all.’ Another scientist — one at a university in Texas, no less — said, ‘“Y’all’ won’t become widely used because it’s too politically incorrect.’ I was stunned by this assertion and asked him how in the world this inoffensive term could carry such baggage. He replied, ‘Because of all the atrocities that have happened in the South.’

“I had no idea how to respond to this comment. Perhaps this fellow should listen to any current rap album: The use of the word ‘y’all’ in the lyrics would offend him more than the violence and misogyny.”

Okay, sports fans, what you’ve long been waiting for (some of you): Great First Lines. The nominations come from readers, and the project — or whatever it has been — is now closed (thank you very much). As you may recall, my two favorite first lines are these: from Marchette Chute’s The Search for God, “Job was not a patient man”; and from one of P. G. Wodehouse’s golf stories (can’t remember which one, just now), “It was a morning when all nature shouted Fore.”

But, as I said in my last treatment of this topic, the all-time champeen — as a reader pointed out — is “In the beginning . . .”

I will go in no particular order — and if you don’t see your nomination or nominations, please forgive me. It’s probably not that I’ve deliberately omitted them: just that I’ve been careless.

From my NR colleague Julie Crane:

Whittaker Chambers: Witness: “In 1937, I began, like Lazarus, the impossible return.”

J. R. R. Tolkien: The Hobbit: “In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit.”

Margaret Mitchell: Gone with the Wind: “Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.”

And this is not a first line, but an epigraph: L. P. Hartley: The Go-Between: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”

One seams-loving reader said: “I think careful and objective consideration will cause you to agree that this is the greatest opening line of any printed work: ‘Baseball is a game between two teams of nine players each, under direction of a manager, played on an enclosed field in accordance with these rules, under jurisdiction of one or more umpires.’

“It is, of course, Rule 1.01 of the Official Rules of Baseball.”

More nominations: Robert Louis Stevenson, The Master of Ballantrae: “The full truth of this odd matter is what the world has long been looking for and the public curiosity is sure to welcome.”

(I pause here to tell you that I’ve checked none of this: titles, authors, lines. So please be indulgent — and, again, this particular case is closed, enjoyable as it’s been.)

From T. E. Lawrence: “Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances.”

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.”

Mitchell Smith, Due North: “She stood on the fox until it died.”

A reader writes, “While ‘Call me Ishmael’ is no slouch, I couldn’t help but think yesterday morning, as I walked up a rainy Fifth Avenue, of another line in that opening paragraph: ‘whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul . . .’”

“Hi, Jay: One of my favorite first lines is from Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale (1953), the first of the James Bond novels (making these words, of course, the first words presented in the lore of James Bond): ‘The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning.’ [Ooh, that is good, isn’t it.] I like this line because it is in stark contrast to the popular image of the Bond of blockbuster-movie fame — and it illustrates why books are almost always better than movies.”

From a Hemingway short story, “In Another Country”: “In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it anymore.”

Writes a reader, “Though it’s actually the first sentence of the second paragraph, ‘I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking’ (from Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood), is a near opening line that’s always stuck with me.”

From John Varley’s Steel Beach: “‘In ten years, the penis will be obsolete,’ said the salesman.”

From Charlotte’s Web: “‘Where’s Papa going with that ax?’ said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.”

Here are the opening two sentences from Ring Lardner’s Champion: “Midge Kelly scored his first knockout when he was seventeen. The knockee was his brother Connie, three years his junior and a cripple.”

Comments the reader — the nominator — “What more do you have to know about Midge Kelly?”

“I very much enjoyed your recent Impromptus relating favorite opening lines. As a longtime P. G. Wodehouse fan, I especially appreciated your personal choices. May I recommend another from the master? It’s from the hilarious The Luck of the Bodkins: ‘Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French.’”

(FYI, many readers submitted this opening — especially British ones.)

From Ayn Rand: “Who is John Galt?”

From Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind: “There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.”

From Gravity’s Rainbow: “A screaming comes across the sky.”

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.”

The Sun Also Rises: “Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn.” (That was two lines — cheating — but okay.)

Catch 22: “The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.”

“My favorite first line comes from Donald ‘Skip’ Hays in The Dixie Association: ‘I sat in my cell, packing my sh** in a cardboard box.’ By far, this is the best book about baseball I’ve ever read. Interestingly, we read this book in a class taught by a very left-wing feminist professor. It was introduced as a book about sex and baseball.”

Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall: “You must go back with me to the autumn of 1827.”

F. Marion Crawford, The Witch of Prague: “A great multitude of people filled the church, crowded together in the old black pews, standing closely thronged in the nave and aisles, pressing shoulder to shoulder even in the two chapels on the right and left of the apse, a vast gathering of pale men and women whose eyes were sad and in whose faces was written the history of their nation.” (Whoa — shivers.)

From Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea: “The year 1866 was signalised by a remarkable incident, a mysterious and puzzling phenomenon, which doubtless no one has yet forgotten.”

From Poe’s “Silence — A Fable”: “Listen to me, said the Demon as he placed his hand upon my head.”

Max Shulman, Sleep till Noon: “Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Four shots ripped into my groin, and I was off on the biggest adventure of my life . . . But first let me tell you a little about myself.”

“Elmer Gantry was drunk. He was eloquently drunk, lovingly and pugnaciously drunk” (two again — sorry).

“Life is difficult” — The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck

Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: “We were an hour outside of Barstow when the mescaline kicked in.”

Quest for a Maid by Frances Mary Hendry: “When I was seven, I hid under a table and watched my sister kill a king.”

“Sing, Goddess, Achilles’ rage / black and murderous, that cost the Greeks / Incalculable pain, pitched countless souls / Of heroes into Hades’ dark / And left their bodies to rot as feasts / For dogs and birds, as Zeus’ will was done.” — Iliad, Book I, Lombardo translation

“Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of sight of the kitchen.” — Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass

“Tell me, what is happiness?” — Iain M. Banks, The Use of Weapons

“Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, ‘and what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice ‘without pictures or conversation?’” — Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

A reader writes, “‘I wear the ring,’ from Pat Conroy’s The Lords of Discipline. Admittedly, it does not have broad appeal because the book is about a sometimes-anachronistic military school in South Carolina. But as I am a graduate of The Citadel, the school upon which the book is loosely based, it ‘rings’ true with me!”

George Orwell, Coming Up for Air: “The idea really came to me the day I got my new false teeth.”

“‘Call me Ishmael’ is a tough act to follow, but Sena Jeter Naslund came close in her book Ahab’s Wife, with this line: ‘Ahab was neither my first husband, nor my last.’”

“I was born in the house my father built” (Richard Nixon, Memoirs)

Robert Heinlein, Year of the Jackpot: “At first, Potiphar Breen did not notice the girl taking her clothes off.”

“My all-time favorite is from William Gibson’s 1983 sci-fi classic Neuromancer: ‘The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.’”

Charles Portis, True Grit: “People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father’s blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day.”

Ford Maddox Ford, The Good Soldier: “This is the saddest story I know.”

Orwell, “England Your England”: “As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.”

Kurt Vonnegut, “Harrison Bergeron”: “The year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal.”

Says a reader, “I can’t think of an opening line that better captures the essence of the story to follow than this one, from A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean: ‘In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.’”

Stephen Becker, The Chinese Bandit: “That summer, they hanged a fat man from the western gate, as a warning to all.”

V. S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River.: “The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.”

Okay, guys, to end, a couple of last lines? That seems fitting:

“Overhead, one by one, the stars were going out” (Arthur C. Clarke, The Nine Billion Names of God)

The end of Jim Bouton’s Ball Four: “You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.”

And can anyone beat Fitzgerald? “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Or is that one of those faux-profound sayings — pretty, but stupid?

That was strictly a rhetorical question, thank you very much.

Many thanks, guys — I mean, y’all (or y’unz — for all my Ohio Valley friends).