I’ll tell you what I was thinking. I was thinking that probably in the twelfth century or earlier, before the mechanical clock had been invented, women preparing food would measure the time for cooking a dish by the number of psalms they read. I’d want someone reading my work to burn their beans to cinders.
Although I naturally enjoy disputing any sort of strict rule, it’s still clear to me that the first sentence of any text really is extremely important. It shouldn’t begin with a participle or a gerund, because instead of fine-tuning the fundamental action they only weaken it. It’s imperative to avoid too “poetic” a diction — no “halt”s or “nay”s, please. They make living language reek of the tomb; no matter how witty your metaphors, you can’t shake off that smell afterward. And while interjections might appear to be one of the most meaningless parts of speech at first glance, in reality they’re a powerful tool. One of an acquaintance’s school friends, who stayed behind in the country to raise four kids, wrote him a letter inviting him to come visit in the summer with his own family. She ended the letter intending to make humorous use of the interjection “ahem”—never used casually, and generally reserved, in print, for snide reviews. Her mind must have wandered, however, as it came out like this: “On the solstice, my brother will be coming too, with his kids; we’ll build a bonfire, and everyone can go have a dip in the lake. If you’re not coming — amen! — be sure to let me know.”
Despite everything, the publisher had sown a seed in my brain. He had thrown an offer at my feet like one of Dumas’s heroes might throw down his glove. Did I really not have it in me to write a book? A real one. Some three hundred pages. Two hundred fifty, at the very least. Pamela Anderson managed it. Madonna. Even her little daughter is writing now, I hear. (Mama’s editing it.) I’ve long since known that just about any nonsense, written down with some basic understanding of grammar, can become a book in most people’s eyes. It’s not the text that’s important; it’s the image. What a trap. As Camus said: “Any artist who goes in for being famous in our society must know that it is not he who will become famous, but someone else under his name, someone who will eventually escape him and perhaps someday will kill the true artist in him.”
In order for a writer to make herself an “image,” I think, one needs to begin with three things — a face, a name, and a lifestyle. When I mentioned to my neighbor that I wanted to get braces put on my teeth because I wanted to have my picture taken, and thought I should look up-to-date for the occasion, he asked me how much they would cost. And that was the right question. Money is my weak spot. For example, I only find rich men handsome. To me, their attractiveness is directly dependent on their bank accounts. Back when I used to see a psychiatrist, she said this was an instinct typical of both sexes (but more, perhaps, of women), and even as I got older and, let’s say, wiser, I would never really be able to entirely overcome that flaw. Supposedly, she added, when the economy is in an upswing, it helps suppress this instinct a bit. My neighbor advised me, in the end, against donating thousands to my dentist. Rather than braces, he said, just have your picture taken with the teeth of a zipper stuck under your upper lip.