Sometimes the first thing you write is perfect. Sometimes it’s perfect shit.

Take openings. They are so important that a well-known book for writers is titled The First Five Pages in recognition of the fact.

To Love Mercy originally began something like, ‘It was a bright sunny day and Steve Feinberg was dreaming about the White Sox game he would go to that night’ blah blah blah blah blah. That sort of opening persisted through many drafts because I just couldn’t imagine not explaining the background before I launched into the story itself.

Then I met Tim Junkin.

Tim is the author of a lyrical first novel (The Waterman) and several other novels, and Bloodsworth, the remarkable story of the first inmate exonerated via DNA evidence. I took Tim’s first workshop at the Writers Center in Bethesda MD. It was a painful experience. Tim is a terrific guy but a tough taskmaster, a Marine Corps drill sergeant. He kicked my first chapter’s ass all the way around the block.

He was right of course. By the time he got done with me, the first line of the first chapter read much as it now reads:

By the time I get back, …

That, if I say so myself (and thanks to Tim Junkin), is a hell of an opening line.

First, it acts to throw you off balance. What “time”? Who is “I”? “Back” from where? And it’s a dependent clause, which makes you feel like you’re overhearing a conversation. In just six words, O gentle reader, you are hooked. At the least, you must finish this first sentence to look for answers to the questions raised by those first six words.

The rest of the first sentence does answer some questions, but it raises new ones:

… Dad and Grandpa are standing in the gangway, smoking.

OK. We’ve learned that the speaker is a kid (”Dad and Grandpa”). But “smoking”? Not too many smokers these days. Maybe this story takes place in the past. Maybe this particular Dad and Grandpa are different than some Dads and Grandpas who don’t smoke, and therefore interesting. Maybe I’ll just read one more sentence and find out …

But the rest of the first paragraph only deepens the mystery and,importantly, stirs in tension:

They’re talking about Earl Caldwell’s single, the one that won
it, but they look nervous. I know Dad is going to be mad because
I took so long with the autograph. But something else is the
matter too.

Who is Earl Caldwell? What autograph? What else could be the matter? Hopefully, in four sentences, I’ve got you where I want you.

And good thing too, because almost immediately I take a big risk. In the fifth paragraph, Steve launches into what I think of as his “aria.” It is an extended disquisition on the prospects of the 1948 White Sox that concludes, Rickie says they’re crummy and he’s going to start rooting for the Cubs.

This “aria” is 189 words long and comes on the first page of the novel. The risk is that it comes too early — that you get bored and put down the book.

But the “aria” is there for a purpose. It establishes Steve’s “voice” — breathless, naive, un-self-conscious, engaging, a little nerdy. If I haven’t lost you, you are beginning to see how you might fall in love with this kid.

Then, near the bottom of Page 2, Steve utters this throwaway line:

Well, a colored guy with a push broom.

But it is not a throwaway line at all. It’s a crashing discord, a G-minor eleventh. It is the first of countless occurrences of the word “colored” — a word rich with implications and resonances, a word that tells you everything about the time and the speaker. The rest of the line speaks volumes too. It suggests not only how “a colored guy” must earn a living in the period of the novel; but also that our protagonist, Steve, not even 10 years old, already is aware of the role a “colored guy” must play in this society.

The author of The First Five Pages, Noah Lukeman, might well have titled his book “The First Two Pages.” In our short-attention-span era, a book must grab you in the first two or three pages, or not at all.

The opening lines of To Love Mercy are meant to seem artless — the anxious musings of a young Jewish boy who has lingered too long getting a baseball player’s autograph, and now fears the anger of his father and grandfather. But artless they are not. By the time I deemed my novel “finished,” I had considered and reconsidered every word. I’d read it so many times, I’d half-committed the entire novel to memory. Which is why, when I’m lying half-awake half-asleep at night, phrases like A colored guy with a push broom still push their way into my consciousness.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Saturday night in Bethesda! Come to Barnes & Noble at 6 p.m Saturday, Aug. 19. B&N is at the corner of Bethesda and Woodmont Avenues, two blocks west of Wisconsin Avenue. If you missed me at Politics & Prose, this is a perfect opportunity.

P.P.S. I was in Chicago last Thursday to tape my Channel 7-ABC appearance on “Chicagoing” with Bill Campbell. It went REALLY well. The show will air Sunday, Oct. 1 (not Aug. 20 as I had been informed previously). If you are in the Channel 7 viewing area, I hope you’ll tune in Sunday, Oct. 1, at 11 a.m.