bumping a kafka type beat
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when i was in high school, my favorite english teacher had this franz kafka quote tacked on the back wall of his classroom:
“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”
i disagree with this sentiment, as i do think that guilty pleasure/cozy reads have their place in most readers' diets, but there's something to be said about literature that moves you so greatly that the earth feels as if it has shifted a few degrees on its axis. in my experience, many of the stories that have cratered the surface of my soul share a few cosmetic similarities: matter-of-fact and/or wicked sharp prose; a certain elegiac melancholia; and absolute banger first sentences. it's more of a squares and rectangles situation (aka the mere presence of these qualities does not guarantee my boundless praise/adoration/etc), but i'll admit that i'm particularly weak to a well-written opening hook. even if the book ends up being hot garbage, it'll be more likely to stick around in the recesses of my mind, similar to a melodically unique bridge in an otherwise unassuming pop track. to paraphrase kafka, they're so affecting because they've just got sauce!
i've gathered a handful of my favorite first sentences here and arranged them in a narratively pleasing manner (to me), as a treat. three (3) excerpts with second sentences have also snuck their way in, to provide a little more context. this is by no means a comprehensive list—just the lucky few that managed to surface from the murky depths of my long-term memory:
"She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue.1"
"She felt their eyes, all those executioners.2"
"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.3"
"The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.4"
"On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming on. He'd dreamed he was going through a grove of timber trees where a gentle drizzle was falling, and for an instant he was happy in his dream, but when he awoke he felt completely spattered with bird shit.5"
"Maybe it was that Cyrus had done the wrong drugs in the right order, or the right drugs in the wrong order, but when God finally spoke back to him after twenty-seven years of silence, what Cyrus wanted more than anything was a do-over.6"
"It is said that the effect of eating too much lettuce is 'soporific'. I have never felt sleepy after eating lettuces; but then I am not a rabbit.7"
"Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of the ocean, the jellyfish drifts in the tidal abyss.8"
"Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his.9"
"All the world began with a yes.10"
tl;dr kafka may have been wrong about books, but imo his philosophy maps more appropriately onto first sentences. not all good books have them (some classics are sleeper hits, i'll admit), but it makes them just that much sweeter when they do.
scrumptiously,
t
eveline by james joyce↩
chain-gang all-stars by nana kwame adjei-brenyah↩
mrs. dalloway by virginia woolf↩
the restaurant at the end of the universe by douglas adams↩
chronicle of a death foretold by gabriel garcía márquez↩
martyr! by kaveh akbar↩
the tale of the flopsy bunnies by beatrix potter↩
the lathe of heaven by ursula k. le guin↩
invisible cities by italo calvino↩
the hour of the star by clarice lispector↩