Thursday, September 29, 2016

"Mother, I want a divorce"

Idly skimming The Guardian's "10 best first lines in fiction" (it's sort of like eating potato chips while seated comfortably in the bathroom) reminded me of what I once thought would be a pretty good opening for a D.H. Lawrence novel. The line was "Mother, I want a divorce."

Nowadays, the line seems a bit too raucous and contrived, but back then I thought it was pretty spiffy, the kind of lead line that would flow into the higglety-pigglety of men-women-Freud-et-al. Not bad for a ninth-grader, I guess, but too easy-trick for my taste today.

Now I prefer the quiet that may or may not invite and is not so concerned about whether anyone accepts the invitation.

2 comments:

  1. For Joyce i'd have gone with the first line of Ulysses. But they left out Vonnegut and Douglas Adams so, what can you expect?

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  2. I can use some potato chips instead of a wife. I didn't want to come by today as the big hoo haa of Singapore celebrating 50 years of official peace with Japan is over at long last, yet between Japanese exports or getting a divorcing marriage I felt more at ease here.

    Gautama Buddha probably said, give where confident. I am not confident about the notion of monogamy though I recognise the logical reasoning behind it. A good thing the heavy downpour came.

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