A quiet place.
The day broke grey and dull.
Of Human Bondage, W. Somerset Maugham
*****
It’s a great opening line, and it sets the mood for the book, even to the contrasting last line:
‘Cabs and omnibuses hurried to and fro, and crowds passed, hastening in every direction, and the sun was shining.’,
a line which I assume is supposed to fill the reader with optimism. I closed this book with a groan, my mood still grey and dull.
I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.
Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
*****
This week’s WP Photo Challenge, Kiss, prompted one blogger to tell us that his hometown isn’t a place where public kissing is encouraged. He compared it with Starkfield in Ethan Frome.
I was brought here from Senegal when I was two years old by the chevalier de B., who was then governor there.
Ourika, Claire de Duras, translated by John Fowles
*****
John Fowles was the author of The French Lieutenant’s Woman, whose opening line I posted yesterday, as no. 3.
An easterly is the most disagreeable wind in Lyme Bay – Lyme Bay being that largest bite from the underside of England’s outstretched south-western leg – and a person of curiosity could at once have deduced several strong probabilities about the pair who began to walk down the quay at Lyme Regis, the small but ancient eponym of the inbite, one incisively sharp and blustery morning in the late March of 1867.
The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Fowles
*****
If The Hobbit is one of my favourite books but far from my favourite movie, The French Lieutenant’s Woman is a favourite in both forms. I was once obsessed with the movie, hiring it and playing parts of it over and over. Before writing this novel, John Fowles had translated a French novel by Claire de Duras, Ourika, based on a true story about a Senegalese girl taken to Paris as a baby and raised separately within the nobility. As she grew older she was surprised to find she lived in a culture of racial segregation. Fowles believed that this story affected his telling of Sarah Woodruff’s tale as the fallen and outcast French Lieutenant’s Woman.
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.
The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien
*****
One of the best books ever written. Not one of the best movies ever made.
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
*****
From today I’m going to attempt a self-imposed challenge: post 54 great opening lines from books on my shelves. After reading a post by Zany4Days about challenging himself to paint a watercolour every day for 30 days, 100 days, the whole year, I’ve decided to study the first few words in good stories, an activity which might, which should, affect my own writing. The opening lines that I post will be in English, but not all of them will be from English-language stories. Some will be my translations of great French opening lines. After browsing my bookshelves, I initially chose a figure of 50, but I could possibly come up with four more and make it 54, my age from today…
I’ll begin with the first line from a novel I read when I was 13 which gave me a plan for my life, a plan I haven’t always followed but, in hindsight, I see has often followed me. It begins with:
There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.
Go to the nearest window. Look out for a full minute. Write about what you saw.
I don’t have to get off my chair for this prompt; the nearest window is twelve inches from the back of my computer screen. Or rather it’s a bank of windows which ‘look’, as they say, onto the front yard and the street. But I look, and I can’t see much of either. In a full minute, I see a small green forest, a patchwork of trees, some planted by us, others by nature. Leaves of diverse shapes sway in a light breeze. To the right are seven-lobed maple leaves and conventional one-lobed leaves of an unidentified shade tree which made its home where carnations once grew. To the left, three rich green ash trees grow up beyond the roof. The blue-grey needles of the spruce provide the only contrast, its branches inversely arching as it towers into the sky, blending with the blue heavens where today there’s no sign of fires or storms. A good day. From a small drawer beside the window, I take out a camera to photograph the scene and a black currawong flies into the frame and sits on a branch, keeping his eye on me. I move to get a better view of him but he doesn’t trust me and jumps to another branch, then another, and flies away.
In this full minute I neither saw nor heard another human. But now, as I write, toddlers are squealing and mothers chatting in the flats opposite. Always a comforting sound, like a promise.
Six years ago I was in Collioure on the south-east coast of France, wandering around the outer walls of the Château Royal. An artist had attached his paintings to the wall and I couldn’t take my eyes off them. Alas, I didn’t buy one because my friend, another local artist, didn’t think they were the best. But I loved this photo and have had it stuck on my wall at home all these years. I plan to return to the region this year and perhaps this time I’ll pick up a small painting to stick to my wall. If you like the colours, take a look at the blog header above where you’ll see the painter’s inspiration: between blue sky and sea, under terracotta roofs and above ancient cobbled streets, the yellow and pink walled houses fill souls with sunshine and Matissey urges.
Check out Ailsa’s beautiful wall photography here: http://wheresmybackpack.com/2013/01/25/travel-theme-walls/
What do librarians think about? Every week I exchange words with them and every week I walk away wondering: do they ever read the books that put food on their tables? Where is the quirkiness that goes with bookishness? They have, instead, certain employer-imposed behaviours that can make or break my day in a two-minute encounter. National Library librarians are silent and serious, always well-dressed, sometimes helpful, seldom more knowledgeable than me about the book I seek. National University librarians are closer to retirement, slow to attend the counter and slower to answer my questions. Public library librarians are young and energetic, more of them male, more of them migrants, at once serving two customers and aiding three other librarians. But of all the librarians that fill my week, none can compare with the women in the little Catholic University on the corner, five minutes’ bike ride from my house.
The Catholic librarians are a special group. Quiet, controlled, suspicious, pale-skinned and small-smiled. Employed through a joy filter. Practical women who can explain the system without expression or superfluity, leaving me to wonder if they ever read more than the call number.
And yet! When I need to fire young imagination or teach literacy through literature, all I need is the Catholic library, the most excellent of all for tutors like me. If I need to teach perfect pronunciation to adults or social justice to children, there are posters listing the books I need. Shelves are loaded with children’s literature and mind-changing novels and histories, filled to the ceiling with up-to-date books by broad-minded authors, about family and culture and difference and music.
The women behind the counter, did they acquire these books? Surely they are mistresses, hunting out secret pleasures to please their book-lovers.
When they don a pious mask and slip behind the counter to take my book selection, scan it, swipe it and push it back to me with a small comment and a smaller smile, what are they thinking about?
Today’s Daily Prompt asked for free associations with the words
home, soil, rain.
My home has not burnt down in the last few weeks, but several homes in south-east Australia have been in the path of merciless bushfires, and now some people have nowhere to lay their heads in peace.
Photo: A large 40,000 hectare bush fire is burning in the Warrumbungle National Park. Fires have destroyed more than 30 homes in New South Wales. (FILE:AAP)
The soil in my yard is dry and a large crack has appeared in the ground at the side of the house. The lawn that grew in spring has died. In open farmland and bushy forest, the long grassy stalks are thirsty brown fire fuel.
In 1908 Dorothea Mackellar published a poem about this country, which many of us think of in weeks like these. It’s called My Country and is famous for its line ‘I love a sunburnt country’. A couple of later stanzas are on my mind:
Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart around us,
We see the cattle die –
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain.
Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold –
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze…
