Is the opening sentence of a book, especially a novel, the most consequential, or is it just dressing for the feast to come? I’d say the former judging from A Tale of Two Cities, Moby-Dick, Pride and Prejudice, and my favourite, The Death of Manolete, by Barnaby Conrad. ‘In August, 1947, in Linares, Spain, a multimillionaire and a bull killed each other and plunged a nation into mourning.’ But here’s one that’s bound to be the greatest of them all, Tan Lines, to be published by St Martin’s Press on 8 July: ‘There are 8,000 nerve endings in the clitoris, and this son of a bitch couldn’t find any of them.’
Nabokov, eat your heart out. The intellectual behemoth who wrote these immortal opening words is one J.J. Salem, perhaps unknown among the literati, but a giant to countless lonely onanists whose bedside tables are festooned with his works. My God, the culture is improving by the minute.
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