Endings Prequel: Opening Sentences

Last week’s column featuring some memorable ending sentences I have “collected” while browsing bookstores brought numerous requests for a bookend prequel of opening lines that really knock me out, to paraphrase Holden Caulfield.

Speaking of Holden, J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” has this all-time great introductory line: “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

Speaking of “David Copperfield” by Charles Dickens: “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” Also, from his “A Christmas Carol”: “Marley was dead, to begin with.”

“The Satanic Verses” by Salman Rushdie: “ ‘To be born again,’ sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, ‘first you have to die.’ ”

Add death, from “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

From “Charlotte’s Web” by E.B. White: “ ‘Where’s Papa going with that axe?’ said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.”

Short but not so sweet. “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker: “You better not never tell nobody but God.” In “Beloved” by Toni Morrison: “124 was spiteful.” And “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury: “It was a pleasure to burn.”

Bookend numbers of note. “The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien: “When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.” And in “1984” by George Orwell: “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

Succinct trio. “I am an invisible man,” from “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison. “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut: “All this happened, more or less.” And “Catch-22” by Joseph Heller: “It was love at first sight.”

Poetically from “The Red Badge of Courage” by Stephen Crane: “The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.”

Speaking of fog, I love this darkly vivid opener from “Fog” by Venturan author Ken McAlpine: “They ran across the sloping deck like marionettes, arms and legs akimbo, and when the waves caught the sailors their arms jerked out, snatching at the night, before they disappeared without a sound.”

Also from the ocean. “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston: “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.” And from “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway: “He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.”

“Peter Pan” by J. M. Barrie: “All children, except one, grow up.”

Lastly, the first line of the first book I remember checking out long before I grew up, “Where The Wild Things Are” by Maurice Sendak: “The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another his mother called him ‘WILD THING!’ and Max said ‘I’LL EAT YOU UP!’ so he was sent to bed without eating anything.”

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Woody’s debut novel “The Butterfly Tree: An Extraordinary Saga of Seven Generations” will be published in late March.

Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Part 2: Twain and Muir’s Meeting

Part 2: Twain and Muir’s Meeting

Except for a story believed to be apocryphal, Mark Twain and John Muir, separated by only three years in age, never met. The two famous writers did, however, cross paths astrologically on April 21 – Muir born on the date in 1838 and Twain dying on it in 1910.

Following is Part 2 of how I imagine their conversation, using their own written words, might have gone had they shared a campfire in Yosemite.

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Muir: “A slight sprinkle of rain – large drops far apart, falling with hearty pat and plash on leaves and stones and into the mouths of the flowers.”

Twain: “A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.”

Muir, laughing: “Wash your spirit clean. Keep close to Nature’s heart – and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life.”

Twain: “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”

Muir: “As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but nature’s sources never fail.”

Twain: “Lord save us all from old age and broken health and a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms. I was young and foolish then; now I am old and foolisher.”

Muir: “Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away.”

Twain: “If all the fools in this world should die, lordly God how lonely I should be.”

Muir: “Most people are on the world, not in it. In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks.”

Twain: “There is no use in your walking five miles to fish when you can depend on being just as unsuccessful near home.”

Muir: “I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”

Twain: “Now, the true charm of pedestrianism does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking. The walking is good to time the movement of the tongue by, and to keep the blood and the brain stirred up and active; the scenery and the woodsy smells are good to bear in upon a man an unconscious and unobtrusive charm and solace to eye and soul and sense; but the supreme pleasure comes from the talk. It is no matter whether one talks wisdom or nonsense, the case is the same, the bulk of the enjoyment lies in the wagging of the gladsome jaw and the flapping of the sympathetic ear.”

Muir: “Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.”

Twain: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”

Muir: “Going to the mountains is going home.”

Twain: “There is nothing more satisfying than that sense of being completely ‘at home’ in your own skin.”

Muir: “The mountains are calling and I must go.”

Twain: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Muir: “The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.”

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   Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at woodywoodburn. His books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.

Check out my memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and my essay collection “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” …

Act I: Literary Walk Turns Serendipitous

STRAW_CoverWoody’s highly anticipated new book “STRAWBERRIES IN WINTERTIME: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” is NOW available! Order your signed copy HERE!

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Literary Walk Takes Serendipitous Turn

“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” said the great playwright Tennessee Williams, who died 34 years ago today – Feb. 25, 1983 – one month and a day shy of turning 72.

The kindness of a stranger, with serendipity at play as well, made Williams leap off the printed page to life for me a short while ago. It was an encounter worth sharing.

Act One:

While in New Orleans on vacation, my wife, son, daughter, son-in-law, and I visited William Faulkner’s house in the French Quarter. In the upstairs study, in 1925, the future Nobel Laureate wrote his first novel, “Soldiers’ Pay.”

Inside William Faulker's house turned bookstore and museum.

Inside William Faulker’s house turned bookstore.

Tucked away in an alley off famous Jackson Square, the home is now called “Faulkner House Books” and is a combination of charming bookstore and museum – with the emphasis on the former. While browsing books and memorabilia, we learned that another important 20th literary figure had once lived nearby: Tennessee Williams.

People collect many things, from postage stamps and baseball cards to fine wines and first-edition books. The later interest me, and greatly, but rare books are also generally beyond my bank account, and greatly.

As remedy, I have begun collecting visits to the homes of famous writers. My compilation includes John Steinbeck, Edgar Allen Poe, Thornton Burgess, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and my top-shelf hero, Jim Murray, to name a handful.

The opportunity to add two more icons to my archives in a single afternoon was not to be passed up.

A Google search for directions revealed there was no reason to desire a streetcar – or Uber ride – to get to Williams’ home from Faulkner’s house. Less than a mile away, we decided to walk.

“We” now consisted of my son, daughter, son-in-law and me, for my wife begged out to go shopping. It wasn’t long before she seemed to have made the wiser choice.

1TennHouse

Hoping for some literary osmosis from Tennessee Williams’ house in the French Quarter.

A right turn when we should have gone left turned us into lost wayfarers. Tempted to quit our quest, we decided “in for a dime, in for a dollar” and pressed on.

At long last we arrived at 1014 Dumaine Street. With green shutters and matching ornate ironwork railings on an iconic French Quarter-style balcony, the two-story yellow house is attractive.

It was also, to be honest, a little disappointing. The only thing marking it as special is a small bronze plaque out front proclaiming:

“Tennessee Williams owned this 19th-century townhouse from 1962 until his death in 1983. Here he worked on his autobiography, Memoirs, in which he wrote, ‘I hope to die in my sleep . . . in this beautiful big brass bed in my New Orleans apartment, the bed that is associated with so much love . . .’ He always considered New Orleans his spiritual home. This home is dedicated a Literary Landmark by Friends of Libraries U.S.A.”

Even the plaque is less than remarkable with its raised words weatherworn and hard to make out.

Unassuming as it all is, with no tours either, we reverently stood in the quiet street and studied the house as one might the Mona Lisa. Suddenly, a voice broke our reverie.

“Do you know what that is?” a man asked, his friendly tone made even more so by a Southern drawl. He was dressed business casual; tucked under one arm was a stack of papers, folders and an iPad; round-rimmed glasses and thinning gray hair added to his professorial look.

“Yes, it’s the Tennessee Williams’ house,” my son easily answered.

“Do you know who he is?” came a follow-up question that was little more difficult.

“Of course,” my daughter replied. “He was an author and playwright – a great one. He wrote, ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and ‘The Glass Menagerie.’ ”

The gentleman smiled, pleased.

“Not many people seem to know who he is anymore,” he said.

Tennessee Williams talked about “the kindness of strangers.” We were about to experience the kindness of one stranger. A stranger who, serendipitously for us, personally knew Tennessee Williams.

Intermission. Act Two next Saturday.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

Wooden&Me_cover_PRCheck out my new memoir WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece”

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