On the First Pages of Novels

The question came up, not for the first time among writers of my acquaintance, of whether readers actually buy books on the basis of great opening lines. As my friend Dirk says, "There is amazing pressure from profit-making publishers and agents to begin with something that hooks the reader. The theory is that how books are sold is: people walk into bookstores, pick up books at random or on the basis of the cover, read the first couple of pages. If they are intrigued they buy the book, if not, not. A while ago I asked a New York agent if he thought this myth were true. He replied, 'I don't know if it's true or not, but I know publishers believe it is true so it may as well be.'"

Dirk, who both reads and writes respectable amounts of prose, does not choose his reading matter in this manner, and finds it an annoying assumption on the part of the publishing world. He points out that some of the best-loved and most admired books do not begin with any kind of dazzling hook. From Proust, for instance, we get "For a long time I used to go to bed early." I think that it is safe to say that Dirk and I are not alone in finding this quite an acceptable opener.

I too am always annoyed by this rampant notion that readers buy books based on the opening lines. I can understand how gatekeepers (publishers, agents) find it useful to do so--in reading a stack of student papers, I find that the opening paragraph is usually indicative of the overall quality of the rest--but as a reader of entire books, I pay next to no attention to the opening lines. When considering a book to buy or check out from the library, a good title and good cover art draw my attention (anything emphasizing pictures of high heeled shoes is not a good sign). I may take a quick look at the back cover and flap copy, again to see if the book sounds tempting or not like my cup of tea, and then I open to random middle pages and get a sense of the prose style. 

I have also, of course, been known to read books that got positive reviews either in a publication or from friends, if the said books sounded like something I'd like/find interesting. And I try to be good about reading books by people I know, although I could improve in that realm.

Unlike Dirk, who relies mainly on reviews, recommendations, and familiarity with the author, I don't usually buy novels without having skimmed at least a paragraph or two (again, it will be in the middle, not page one). Therefore, I like to go to bookstores, and also to the library. The book fairs at scholarly conferences are also dangerous places for me to go (how much can I fit in my suitcase?), especially AWP where novels are everywhere and many of the small presses have invested in very appealing cover art.

I want novels to have openings that suit them, which is not to say that I have never enjoyed a snappy opener, such as "Long ago in 1945 all the nice people in England were poor, allowing for exceptions." (Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means.) But usually I have no recollection of how the novels I have enjoyed began.