Some lives
are only seen
through windows
beyond which
the appearance
of laughter
and of screaming
is the same.….there are no beginnings, not even to stories.
Structurally, Findley is something of an experimental writer of prose. Not experimental in the sense of reducing the effect of narrative understanding, but rather in the sense of composition. The above quotation is the opening of the sentence, including the manner in which the epigraph resembles verse rather than prose. This is not replicated anywhere in the body of the story; the poetic opening leads naturally into the prose of fiction with the purpose of fostering a philosophical overview to what follows.
That’s my dad in the middle. We were just kids then, Bud on the right and me on the left. That was taken just before my dad went into the army.
On the other hand, the opening of “War” seems to thrust the reader right into the middle of a conversation taking place in real time. The effect here to create a sense of immediacy; there is no room or justification for philosophical staging. Dispensing with the conventional notion of setting up the entry point, the author here scraps all pretense to literary posing and instead asks the reader to become part of a personal conversation.
Perhaps the house was to blame.
The opening line of this story takes yet another different approach. A simple, declarative statement unburdened by unusual structure, but still slightly experimental because of its ambiguity. Take the same sentence and situate it as the conclusion of a paragraph and except under the most unusual of circumstances, it is relieved of at least some of that ambiguity. Placing it at the opening line of the story, however, changes the entire tenor and tone. What would be purely simple and declarative within the context of additional information remains declarative but is not nearly as simple. The additional layer of complexity is mystery and that element succeeds in drawing the reader in. It is an example of an opening line that coaxes and teases.
In the summer of 1960, on a Friday, Mrs. Lewis was brought down onto the sand by her daughter Elvira and by her nurse, Miss. Cunningham. She caught my image in the corner of her eye; turned to see me head-on; gave me a look of recognition and farewell; chose me to say good-bye to with her final glance—and died.
Without the title for assistance, this opening line would be another example of ambiguity. Nothing in the paragraph tells the reader exactly what is going and the odd phrasing of “brought down onto the sand” serves to intensity the lack of clarity. But because the title includes a connotation easily associated with a beach, the reader infer with fairly assured confidence that the scene being described here is taking place near the beach. The next three paragraphs are devoted almost exclusively to describing in detail the setting hinted at in the opening paragraph, thus strongly suggesting that the writer is not just aware of the inherent ambiguity with his story opens, but that it was purposely written to create that specific intent. The obviously question then becomes…why?
