… I’ve been furiously writing essays–the hardest one on Hannah Arendt is to be last–I’ve also been furiously procrastinating. This morning, while procrastinating, I found a page of first lines from new novels.

So to amuse myself I dug up my recent acquisitions and here is a list of first lines:

“Here’s a memory.” How to be Alone by Jonathan Franzen. Essays. Harper Canada (2003).

“Powwow 1/2 mile.” Backwater Mystic Blues by Lloyd Ratzlaff. Thistledown Press (2006).

“In an upstairs room on Temperance Street, Amber dragged a box out of her closet and through her bedroom, bumped it over the edge of the carpet and pulled it across the kitchen tiles.” The Art of Salvage by Leona Theis. Coteau (2006).

“July 13, 1999” Between Mountains by Maggie Helwig. Knopf Canada (2004).

“Supposing truth to be a woman–what? is the suspicion not well founded that all philosophers, when they have been dogmatists, have had little understanding of women?” Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche Penguin (1973, 2003)