Friday, May 4, 2012

First Line Friday

If you review my previous First Line Friday posts, you may notice a pattern: I like short, zippy, poignant first lines.  So, in an effort to diversify my preferences, I'm going with a longer first line today:

"It was the summer of 1998 that my neighbor Coleman Silk - who, before retiring two years earlier, had been a classic professor at nearby Athena College for some twenty-odd years as well as serving for sixteen more as the dean of the faculty - confided to me that, at the age of seventy-one, he was having an affair with a thirty-four-year-old cleaning woman who worked down at the college."


That is what I would call an immense first line.  It provides a lot of information . . . a whole novel's worth in one sentence.  But, in spite of my preferences for short first lines, I have a certain appreciation for this first line. It seems to work.  It's somewhat burdensome, to be sure, but all in all, I can appreciate it.

Dost thou disagree?