After Reading the First Line
Finding that first sentence, that entrance to what it is that you want to say, the beginning—the start of something that garners attention, the hook that begs for a reader to continue is an arduous pursuit. When Joanthan Lethem writes— "Here I am: in the subway but not on a train." I immediately think of subways and the reasons that someone might find themselves in that subterranean enclave.
Perhaps the narrator is simply waiting for a train, perhaps he is homeless , perhaps he will shortly take out his guitar and play. Perhaps he lives far away and returned to the place of his youth and this is a nostalgic visit. Perhaps it is something else, but in order to find out I must continue reading, following the string—being pulled along by the words.
John McPhee, in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, writes: "A lead is good not because it dances, fires cannons or whistles like a train, but because it is absolute to what follows." He also says that writing the lead is the most difficult part of a story. I like to think of it as a hook to pull me into the tale.
Before I move to the next line I remain in the subway, not any subway but the D line—the line that extends from the Bronx into Manhattan. My childhood line. This is where I discovered that stations all exhibit their own calligraphy. I learned a vernacular that didn't appear in any of my books. This is where I discovered radical causes, invitations to demonstrations, and advertisements for products not on my parent's bathroom shelf. I learned how to scan the crowd and avoid characters who looked suspicious although I did get jostled by someone who deftly lifted my wallet from a zippered pocket. Because I traveled to high school on the D line my education included how to maneuver myself on the platform so that when the train slowed down I stood close to the opening door.
At the age of twelve my parents let me travel down to the Art Student's League to take a Saturday morning still life class. I loved carrying my supplies in a fishing tackle box — the charcoal nesting in one of the small compartments usually reserved for hooks and the meticulous flies my Uncle Abe tied. I learned how to hang on to the pole in a subway car even when the train lurched. My mother made me promise that even under great duress I'd never use the subway bathroom. I kept that promise until my senior year in high school.
After going to the United Nations with a friend we went out to eat and then walked for blocks until we found a subway station. The cold , the walk, and a large glass of lemonade all made me forget that promise. We both went into the ladies room and confronted a world we didn't know existed in the subway. Two elderly bag ladies, stripped down to bras, stood in front of the sinks. One woman held a sliver of soap and washed under her arms, her neck and face. "I don't like," she said, "the soap in these dispensers. It's rough on my skin."
"You know I once found a bar of lavender scented soap. Someone left it on the sink. Imagine that."
The other woman, after washing, put on a sweater and then another sweater. "Sweetie," she said," it's cold outside and I'm not certain where I'm staying tonight."
The bathroom reeked of ammonia, body aroma and the aroma that clung to the toilet bowls. A sadness caught on the tile walls seeped out into the station where we watched a man being moved along by a transit policeman.
"Ah man, it's warm here. What's the harm?"
Lethem's sentence takes me back to the time I ran through the train—car after car. No one was chasing us. City kids need to find risks in an urban setting. We couldn't explore caves or mountains, swaths of land, or run through fields. Going from one end of the train to the other end entailed opening up the doors, getting your footing as you passed into the next car—sprinting and making believe that you were Butch Cassidy defying the law.
"...In the subway, but not on a train." —maybe leaving everything above ground and taking a vacation from the ties that keep one tethered to the surface. Maybe standing in the subway, but not on a train is really an existential conundrum—an inability to take that step, to stand inert, to fear where the train travels.
Perhaps the narrator is simply waiting for a train, perhaps he is homeless , perhaps he will shortly take out his guitar and play. Perhaps he lives far away and returned to the place of his youth and this is a nostalgic visit. Perhaps it is something else, but in order to find out I must continue reading, following the string—being pulled along by the words.
John McPhee, in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, writes: "A lead is good not because it dances, fires cannons or whistles like a train, but because it is absolute to what follows." He also says that writing the lead is the most difficult part of a story. I like to think of it as a hook to pull me into the tale.
Before I move to the next line I remain in the subway, not any subway but the D line—the line that extends from the Bronx into Manhattan. My childhood line. This is where I discovered that stations all exhibit their own calligraphy. I learned a vernacular that didn't appear in any of my books. This is where I discovered radical causes, invitations to demonstrations, and advertisements for products not on my parent's bathroom shelf. I learned how to scan the crowd and avoid characters who looked suspicious although I did get jostled by someone who deftly lifted my wallet from a zippered pocket. Because I traveled to high school on the D line my education included how to maneuver myself on the platform so that when the train slowed down I stood close to the opening door.
At the age of twelve my parents let me travel down to the Art Student's League to take a Saturday morning still life class. I loved carrying my supplies in a fishing tackle box — the charcoal nesting in one of the small compartments usually reserved for hooks and the meticulous flies my Uncle Abe tied. I learned how to hang on to the pole in a subway car even when the train lurched. My mother made me promise that even under great duress I'd never use the subway bathroom. I kept that promise until my senior year in high school.
After going to the United Nations with a friend we went out to eat and then walked for blocks until we found a subway station. The cold , the walk, and a large glass of lemonade all made me forget that promise. We both went into the ladies room and confronted a world we didn't know existed in the subway. Two elderly bag ladies, stripped down to bras, stood in front of the sinks. One woman held a sliver of soap and washed under her arms, her neck and face. "I don't like," she said, "the soap in these dispensers. It's rough on my skin."
"You know I once found a bar of lavender scented soap. Someone left it on the sink. Imagine that."
The other woman, after washing, put on a sweater and then another sweater. "Sweetie," she said," it's cold outside and I'm not certain where I'm staying tonight."
The bathroom reeked of ammonia, body aroma and the aroma that clung to the toilet bowls. A sadness caught on the tile walls seeped out into the station where we watched a man being moved along by a transit policeman.
"Ah man, it's warm here. What's the harm?"
Lethem's sentence takes me back to the time I ran through the train—car after car. No one was chasing us. City kids need to find risks in an urban setting. We couldn't explore caves or mountains, swaths of land, or run through fields. Going from one end of the train to the other end entailed opening up the doors, getting your footing as you passed into the next car—sprinting and making believe that you were Butch Cassidy defying the law.
"...In the subway, but not on a train." —maybe leaving everything above ground and taking a vacation from the ties that keep one tethered to the surface. Maybe standing in the subway, but not on a train is really an existential conundrum—an inability to take that step, to stand inert, to fear where the train travels.
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