HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2006-12-21, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2006. PAGE 5.
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It was a dark and stormy night
W e were somewhere around Barstow
on the edge of the desert when the
drugs began to take hold.
I remember saying something like, "I feel a
bit lightheaded; maybe you should
drive. ,."and suddenly there was a terrible roar
all around us and the sky was full of what
looked like huge bats, all swooping and
screeching and diving around the car, which
was going about 100 miles an hour with the
top dosfn to Las Vegas.
Did I write that? I wish. Those are the first
two sentences in Hunter S. Thompson's classic
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
It's my all-time favourite literary opener.
Opening sentences are crucial for any writer.
They're like casting a dry fly into a school of
large-mouth bass. If the fly — or the sentence —
is attractive enough, you'll get a bite.
Hemingway was a master of the art of
hooking readers. Check the opening of The
Old Man and the Sea:
He was an old man who fished alone in a
skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone 84
days now without taking a fish.
Not a single unnecessary word. It would be
pretty hard not to want to know the rest of that
story. ,
Charles Dickens was no slouch at- opening
'sentences either, although more than a touch
windier than Hemingway. This is how Dickens
began his classic novel A Tale of Two Cities:
It was the best of times-, it was the worst of
times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age
of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it
was the epoch of incredulity, it was' the season
of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was
the spring of hope, it was the winter of
despair..
premier Dalton •McGuinty's Liberals are
indicating they will try to label
Progressive Conservative leader John
Tory as rich in the 2007 election, hoping this
will hurt him, but they should not bank on it.
Liberal strategists will revive a campaign
they started the day the Conservatives chose
Tory leader, when they distributed pamphlets
calling him "Richie Rich."
Tory is well-off by most standards. He ran a
giant cable TV company for nine years and
toward the end was earning around $1 million
a year.
The Liberals keep taunting he lives in
upscale Rosedale. He has a condo on one of
the city's busiest streets, the rear of which
overlooks that leafy enclave, which cost him
and his wife $1 million in 2003, so it still is
more than the vast majority can afford .
His father, John A. Tory, was for many years
right-hand man to Ken Thomson, the
communications tycoon who was the richest
Canadian when he died.
Liberal MPPs commonly shout across at the
son "did you fly here in your helicopter?" and
"shouldn't you be at your cottage?" which
might seem good-natured joshing, but
sometimes has a harder edge and suggests they
• are trying to get across a message.
When Tory recently accused McGuinty of
wasting money, the premier retorted sharply
he has a mortgage and three children in
university and knows first-hand how difficult it
is to pay taxes, which was taken as implying
Tory has never known what it is like to be
short of money.
Tory concedes he is wealthy compared to
most people and fortunate in having had
opportunities to work in responsible jobs in
business, but feels he contributed to making
them successful..
He said his parents helped him buy his first
house, but otherwise he bought everything he
That's not even the whole first sentence.
Dickens chanters on for another 60 words
before he throws in a full stop.
,Nevertheless "It was the best of times, it was
the worst of times..." is one of the most-
quoted openers in English literature.
And so is the opening of Anna Karenina by
Leo Tolstoy: All happy families are alike but
an unhappy family is unhappy after its own
fashion.
On the other hand, take a look at this opener:
In my younger and more vulnerable years
my father gave me some advice that I've been
turning over in my mind ever since.
"Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,"
he told me, "just remember that all the people
in this world haven't had the advantages that
you've had."
To my mind, that's flat-out boring. The odds
are very high that I would close the cover of
any novel that began like that without reading
another word.
My loss — those are the first few words of F
Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, which
some critics consider to be the greatest novel
of the 20th century.
Well, maybe. But personally, I prefer almost
anything written by the American writer
Elmore Leonard. Here's how he starts his
novel, Glitz:
has on his own or with the help of his wife,
who also works. -
Tory says that the Liberal attempt to label
him rich is curious, because many voters may
feel more enthused about what he can do for
Ontario when they hear he has a successful
record in business, but he does not know if it
will hurt him.
Yet most previous leaders have felt it was an
advantage not to be thought of as rich. Ernie
Eves, the Conservative premier who preceded
McGuinty, had left the legislature for a reputed
$1 million-a-year job in the financial world.
But when he returned, he wanted it known
he was "more comfortable on Main Street than
Bay Street" and his father had had a blue-
collar job.
Mike Harris, the preceding Conservative
premier, made it clear he, like his father,
operated a small business. His first words on
being elected were "I'm Mike, the guy next
door."
New Democrat premier Bob Rae came from
a patrician family, not rolling in money but
rich in education and contacts. His father was
a diplomat. But Rae, when premier also
Final Thought
Reason often makes mistakes, but
conscience never does.
— Josh Billings
The night Vincent was shot he saw it
coming. The guy approached out of the
streetlight on the corner of Meridian and
Sixteenth, South Beach, and reached Vincent
as he was walking from his car to his
apartment building. It was early, a few minutes
past nine.
Try putting that novel down without reading
more.
For sheer, rich imagery it's hard to beat
Canada's own Rohinton Mistry. Here's the
beginning of A Fine Balance describing a train
journey in India:
The morning express bloated with
passengers slowed to a crawl, then lurched
forward suddenly, as though to resume full
speed. The train's brief deception jolted its
riders. The bulge of humans hanging out the
doorway distended perilously, like a soap
bubble at its limit.
And if reading a fine writer like Mistry
makes you despair of ever starting your own
novel, take heai-t. There are openers and there
are openers. A few years back, this one took
the prize for being the worst conceivable
opening line for a novel:
She wasn't really my type, a hard-looking
but untalented reporter from the local cat box
liner, but the first second that the third-rate
representative of the fourth estate cracked
open a fifth of old Scotch, my sixth sense said
seventh heaven was as close as an eighth note
from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, so,
nervous as a tenth grader drowning in
eleventh-hour cramming for a physics exam, I
swept her into my arms, and, humming 'The
Twelfth of Never,' I got lucky on Friday the
thirteenth.
There now. Don't you feel better already?
wanted to let voters know he did not have
money to throw around and said he had to
struggle to pay a mortgage and put his children
through school, like everyone else.
Frank Miller, briefly -Conservative premier,
built businesses that included a car dealership
and three vacation resorts, but never looked as
if he had money. As a minister he sold cars to
friends at the legislature and knelt in their
driveways to screw on the plates.
Liberal David Peterson was probably the
wealthiest of the last half-dozen premiers,
because he inherited a share of a company
built by his father, and the only premier who
showed it.
Peterson went to every gala dinner and
theatre opening resplendent in tuxedo and
crimson cummerbund and opponents charged
he lived a "lifestyle of the rich and famous,"
the name of a popular TV show, and voters got
to resent it and it helped boot him from office.
But Tory does not flaunt his wealth and it
will be more difficult to make it an issue
against him in the election.
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12 weeks of Christmas
The trees are up, the holly and mistletoe
in place. Lights do a sparkling dance as
the music of the season fills the air.
Growing up, too long ago, the idea of
decorating for Christmas was pretty much
limited to a tree for most families. It was
brought in a week before ChristmaS and the
decorations were thrown on in an hour or so.
There were some, however, who did go a
little further, and their uniqueness was
appreciated by all. An annual family highlight
was the tour around the wealthy
neighbourhood a week before Christmas to see
all the beautifully-decorated houses.
Nowadays these places are the norm rather
than the exception.
And they're ready for viewing much earlier.
For many people, the festive season arrives
weeks before Christmas Day. The Halloween
decorations are tucked away for another year
to be replaced almost immediately by festive
red and green.
There are those who feel it's far too soon,
particularly some devout Christians who
believe that the time to mark the season is Dec.
24, the-12 days that follow, then Epiphany. As
an acquaintance once said to me, "We used to
celebrate Christ's birth. Now we are
celebrating Mary's final trimester."
Being someone who's always had my halls
decked the first weekend in December, I must
admit it's been a tiny bit disconcerting to be
beaten at my own game. When I first saw
lights adorning houses at the first of
November, trees twinkling from windows days
later, I felt not just a little pressured, but a tad
annoyed. Really, this was getting to be a little
too much.
I've relaxed since then, though. After all, in
our brutally cold (most years) winters, why not
get those outside lights and decorations in
place when you can still come indoors with all
your fingers intact? Many times in the past I
have watched some poor soul up a ladder in
mid-December, a bitter wind blowing a
maelstrom of snowflakes around him, while
with gloved hands he awkwardly attempts a
job that would have taken half the time on a
nicer day.
But there's more than weather behind my
change of heart. In the final days of the dark
and dreary fall, with only long days of a
Snowbelt winter before us, we find ourselves
smack dab in the middle of the most wondrous
season there is. The decorations for Christmas
are full of beauty and cheer. They can fulfill
every taste. They inspire coziness and warmth.
They are beauty and light. What's wrong with
bringing them into our world as soon as
possible?
And for those who feel it somehow
denigrates the true reason we celebrate
Christmas, might I suggest a degree of
separation. The trees, the bows, the lights, the
garlands aren't about the birth of Jesus Christ,
so let's festoon our homes in anticipation.
There can't be anything wrong in foci:Ming
our attention longer on something meant to be
joyous.
The nativity, however, is another story. It is
the one decoration in my home that remains up
after Christmas. It, not my Santas, not my
snowmen, is the one that relates to the true
reason for the season.
But; behind the reason is"a time of joy, love,
peace and goodwill. I see nothing wrong with
taking the earliest, and every, opportunity to
celebrate that.
Rich label no barrier for Tory