Sunday, January 28, 2007
The first paragraph
I stop blood.
I stop it between rounds for fighters so they can stay in the fight.
Blood ruins some boys. It was that way with Sonny Liston, God rest his soul. Bad as he was, he'd see his own blood and fall apart.
Now, if a literary agent reads this, say, in a literary review like ZYZZYVA, he's going to think, this is a guy I need to send a letter to. And he drops FX Toole's name into the open form letter on his computer, and then he keeps reading first paragraphs all through the journal until he find another good first paragraph. When he's done, he does a mail merge and runs off to the post office. I know this because I read an article in a literary review by a literary agent named Nat Sobel, and he cited this first paragraph as one that caught his eye and led to beaucoup money and success for everyone. Sobel says when he's hunting writers, he only reads the first paragraph of each piece, and suggests that this kind of skimming is industry-standard.
Actually, that FX Toole is smarter than Sobel realizes, because this excerpt Sobel quotes is technically three paragraphs. Toole tricked Sobel into dropping his guard. A bit of advice from a wily old boxing cut man: write short paragraphs.
I think many writers who write literary work want to believe that the form gives them license to do all sorts of creative things that they couldn't do if they were writing sitcoms or motorcycle reviews. Reading Sobel's piece makes me doubt this. The form of literary writing seems to be quite narrowly prescribed. Of course, Nat Sobel isn't the only agent, and there are many literary reviews, but the sum of it is an industry feeding a market for novels. A short story is really like an advertisement for a writer who wants to publish a novel, and the market for novels seems mature enough to know what it wants—maybe after reading that all-important first paragraph.
Many of the writers I feel the most kinship with didn't come up through literary reviews. Spalding Gray, Joan Didion, Garrison Keillor, David Sedaris, David Antin, George Orwell, John Fante—none of these writers wiggled their way through literary journals, and I wouldn't call all of their best work precisely novels. I don't think I can emulate any of their approaches, but I'm hoping to find some way to work that's a bit less of a Kabuki dance and a bit closer to the accidents and contingencies of life.
Maybe I need to become a cut man. ¶ 9:08 AM
I stop it between rounds for fighters so they can stay in the fight.
Blood ruins some boys. It was that way with Sonny Liston, God rest his soul. Bad as he was, he'd see his own blood and fall apart.
Now, if a literary agent reads this, say, in a literary review like ZYZZYVA, he's going to think, this is a guy I need to send a letter to. And he drops FX Toole's name into the open form letter on his computer, and then he keeps reading first paragraphs all through the journal until he find another good first paragraph. When he's done, he does a mail merge and runs off to the post office. I know this because I read an article in a literary review by a literary agent named Nat Sobel, and he cited this first paragraph as one that caught his eye and led to beaucoup money and success for everyone. Sobel says when he's hunting writers, he only reads the first paragraph of each piece, and suggests that this kind of skimming is industry-standard.
Actually, that FX Toole is smarter than Sobel realizes, because this excerpt Sobel quotes is technically three paragraphs. Toole tricked Sobel into dropping his guard. A bit of advice from a wily old boxing cut man: write short paragraphs.
I think many writers who write literary work want to believe that the form gives them license to do all sorts of creative things that they couldn't do if they were writing sitcoms or motorcycle reviews. Reading Sobel's piece makes me doubt this. The form of literary writing seems to be quite narrowly prescribed. Of course, Nat Sobel isn't the only agent, and there are many literary reviews, but the sum of it is an industry feeding a market for novels. A short story is really like an advertisement for a writer who wants to publish a novel, and the market for novels seems mature enough to know what it wants—maybe after reading that all-important first paragraph.
Many of the writers I feel the most kinship with didn't come up through literary reviews. Spalding Gray, Joan Didion, Garrison Keillor, David Sedaris, David Antin, George Orwell, John Fante—none of these writers wiggled their way through literary journals, and I wouldn't call all of their best work precisely novels. I don't think I can emulate any of their approaches, but I'm hoping to find some way to work that's a bit less of a Kabuki dance and a bit closer to the accidents and contingencies of life.
Maybe I need to become a cut man. ¶ 9:08 AM
