Literary Beginnings and an Ending

P.G. Wodehouse begins one of his Jeeves books, Right Ho, Jeeves, with this (in Bertie Wooster's voice):

"I don't know if you have had the same experience, but the snag I always come up against when I'm telling a story is this dashed difficult problem of where to begin it. It's a thing you don't want to go wrong over, because one false step and you're sunk. I mean, if you fool about too long at the start, trying to establish atmosphere, as they call it, and all that sort of rot, you fail to grip and the customers walk out on you.
"Get off the mark, on the other hand, like a scalded cat, and your public is at a loss. It simply raises it eyebrows, and can't make out what you're talking about."

Wodehouse is cheating, of course, drawing the reader in and asking for acceptance in advance, but his point is sound. Especially in this era when agents and publishers often stop reading after the first paragraph or so.

I am convinced that a strong beginning will cause your audience to forgive any weaknesses that follow. My first real experience of this was in my junior year of high school, when I did a book report on Huckleberry Finn. I opened with this quotation from the book:

"It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a n[****]--- but I done it and I warn't ever sorry for it afterward, neither."

After that I followed up with some rather mundane talk about Twain summarizing the gap between the races back then and making the point that what mattered was doing what was right. I don't think the discussion merited a lot, but the opening was so strong -- according to the teacher -- that it merited an A+. I usually feel the same way about books I'm reading.

That Twain quotation brings to mind another incident a couple years later. I had dropped out of college and persuaded an uncle to give me a job at the downtown furniture store I worked for, as a stockboy, moving furniture around and unloading and loading it into trucks. I had a co-worker, a black guy named Dennis, a couple years older than me. We got along very well, though we were on different tracks; I was on my way up in society about as far as I would choose, and he was about at the limit for an uneducated black man in a white-dominated world, back in the days before affirmative action and antidiscrimination laws.

But we had some interesting and friendly conversations. At one point I mentioned Twain to him as a good writer, and demurred, saying that Twain wasn't so nice to black people. From there I talked about how most of the really intelligent people, albeit uneducated people, in Huck Finn were the black characters. I think he appreciated the point, though I'm not sure; a few months later he was gone, fired by the racist boss of the store for "being lazy," even though he worked as hard as I. I thought about quitting in protest, but didn't. From the store he went into the army, during the Vietnam War.

Fast forward a few years and I saw his obituary in the local paper, with a picture. I'm sure it was him, and I gathered from the obit that he had never really found himself after the war. I nearly went to the funeral, but didn't want to impose (and was only 99% sure it was him). So I guess I let him down twice, though he never knew about it in either case. I hope he knows now that I send him my sincere prayers and best wishes.

You're in my thoughts, Dennis.