How to pick up the reader

Fragment of the collection of the essay of Stephen King "Secret windows"

The instructive conversation of Stephen King with his thirteen -year -old son about the first phrases of the novels who catch the reader: Gorky publishes a fragment of King’s very non -insistent book “Secret Windows”, which has just published in AST Publishing House.

When I finally realized what my thirteen -year -old son was talking about, I said: without problems, I can easily pick you up a couple of excellent whores. Maybe even magnificent.

“Dad, why are you ...” said the son and fell silently. At first I did not understand that he was so embarrassed, and only then it dawned on me. I have not watched television series for a long time, but when I still watched, the prostitutes did not exist as a class: it was the gospel from the “untouchables”, “bonan” and “fugitive”. Sometimes, in completely frank series like “Peyton-play”, they could say about the girl of not the most strict behavior that she is a “spinning point”. Now whores are everywhere, and they are called so directly. That is, my son thought ...

“I'm sorry,” I said. “You misunderstood me.” This is all because you are still up to the mountain, and I seem to have already passed the pass.

- I still do not get it.

All three of my children write well, and all three like to compose stories. However, this is not surprising, given the increased number of evidence that talents are inherited. Although in our family there is nothing even close to the hereditary literary tradition of the Benchi and Chiver clans, the thread is still stretching ... And it seems that it always runs within the boundaries of mass literature.

Or, expressed extremely straight, within the boundaries of a boulevard's reading.

My father, a sailor of a trading fleet, regularly sent his stories to magazines like “Argosy”, and although they were never printed (in any case, while he lived with my mother; there was no divorce, he just once decided that he was tired of everything and simply left home), often he wrote him in the notifications with his refusals so that he continued his literary experiments, and possibly, perhaps, in the same time The next time his story will be accepted. This gives reason to assume that he was on the right track and could become a professional writer if he had a little more effort.

When I was fifteen (by that time I had been sending my own opuses from the magazines for three years now), I asked my mother if my father wrote well. I had to collect all my courage to ask this question; My brother and I did not talk about the dad that existed in some other universe. It was a delicate topic. Mom shrugged. “Bad Westerns,” she said. - He managed to write well about animals. Sea stories were especially good. So they could be published. I remember I really liked his story about how the ship sinks. ” She was silent and carefully added: "I think you are better, Stevie."

I hope this includes how I cope with the role of father and husband, but now we are talking about something else.

My wife writes beautiful verses, and she published three novels. They are not sold as successfully as mine, but it seems to me that they are damn good, especially her second novel “Warecents”: it is much best that I wrote and write. In fact, among other things, I was attracted in it by literary talent. And she also had (and is still) gorgeous legs, but it was personal.

I just want to say that it is not surprising that my children love to write. My daughter, the oldest of the three, reads a lot and randomly, but the fantasy in the style of Tanit Lee/Jane Yolen/Pierce Anthony is most fond of. My youngest son, who will be ten soon, writes stories about the war (the bodies are lying around like KEGLO, in the best traditions of the Casey Commander, but when the cat brings a crippled mouse to the veranda, he quickly turns away, all green with horror).

Joe, who writes with the same sparkling fervor and joyful ease that I myself showed at his age, is inclined to detectives. Last year, he discovered Reimond Chandler, and has since been in the seventh heaven with happiness. I still do not dare to give him my collection of Ross McDonald; I do not want his roof to finally tear off.

I suspect that of my three children, it is Joe that will most likely become a professional writer ... and, like his father, will be more inclined to barrier dancing under the Bango, rather than the virtuoso virtuoso passages of Isaac Stern. Tabita is closer to Stern.

In other words, Joe seduces the Boulevard Chistoro, seducing both his dad and the father of his dad.

That is why I used this very word when he asked his question. He asked about the first lines of literary works that immediately cling to the reader. The editors of the boulevard magazines call them "whores." Editors know their target audience well. Truckers. Chef in fast food establishments. Stylevara. The workers sat down. In other words, simple working guys who want to at least temporarily escape from their gray everyday life and plunge into another life: bright, colorful, complete adventure. If you do this task, if you hook the reader, he will want to continue his acquaintance, and the magazine will continue to print you. But you need to cling from the very first lines, because otherwise the reader will become bored, and he will quickly stick your story in order to move on to the next. When the journal in two hundred pages costs only ten cents, you can afford to be legible.

Hence the "whores".

Joe, who himself composed at least one brilliant “whore” (“God owed me a hundred bucks,” so his last story begins), asked him to help him choose the best first phrases from literary works. Hence our misunderstanding. As soon as we all clarified, I rushed to the bookcase ... But then my son asked if there were good first lines in my own books. I could not remember offhand (bad sign, friends and neighbors, a very bad sign), so I changed the direction and went to the closet in the farthest corner of the office, where I keep the copies of my books. I did not find anything from which my heart would freeze. Although readers - bless, God, their kindness and books in the covers - constantly write to me in letters that they could not tear themselves away from one or another of my book (in fact, I always achieved this; in my performance, a well -done work - this is when the reader ends your book with the feeling that he was put on the breath of a jacket under his breath), my first lines are always extremely inexpressing.

Take the "igniting." Of all my books, perhaps this one takes the fastest overclocking: from zero to seventy miles per hour literally nine pages. But the first phrase worries the heart no more than a couple of dirty socks. "" Papul, I'm tired. " In the voice of the girls in red trousers and a green blouse, discontent was heard ”[Translation by V. Weber]. Does this beginning catch you? I am not either. Or take an incredibly exciting first phrase from the Dead Zone. “By the end of the college, John Smith no longer remembered that in January 1953 he hit his head a lot and stretched out on the ice” [Translation of V. Antonov]. I think that if I had to choose my own first phrase from my own books - and still this is not the best “whore”, take my word for my word - I would choose the beginning of the “lot of Salem”. “Many took a man and a boy for his father with his son” [Translation of V. Antonov]. I know that she is a little better than anyone else, because I did not have to open a book to remember it.

As if something in me unconsciously understood that there were things that were not given to me, I often used amazing first phrases from the works of other writers as epigraphs. The first line “451 ° according to Fahrenheit” by Ray Bradbury became an epigraph to “igniting”. "To burn was a pleasure." This is the first paragraph “451 ° according to Fahrenheit”, clinging instantly. The epigraph to the first part of Salem’s lot, I took the famous first phrase from the “Ghost of the House on the Hill” Shirley Jackson. I will not quote it completely, but this is the one where "the house stood there for eighty years and could stand as much." As for the story “Fog”, I deliberately borrowed the first proposal from the “shootout” of Douglas Fairbern. "This is how it happened." This is my favorite first phrase, the greatest “whore” of all I know.

When Joe and I went through most of my creations, I said:

-Somehow not impressive, right?

“Yeah,” he agreed sadly. - With "whores", dad, you have trouble.

Yeah, children know how to offend parents.

Be that as it may, I felt curious, and I spent more than an hour, looking at my books (in the sense, books from my home library, but written not by me) in search of good “whores”. I have already called my loved ones above and will not repeat myself. But let me list ten more excellent initial phrases that I either found or remembered ... and let me add: I deliberately limited the presence of Elmore Leonard after two points, otherwise he would capture the entire list from the first to the last line. As for the “whores”, he is a real Karim Abdul-Jabbar from literature. But the rest is my list of excellent initial phrases - in random order - it turned out:

1. “I was thrown out of a truck with hay for noon” [Translated by A. Vasiliev]. James Kane "The postman always calls twice."

2. “Whenever a call came from the hospital for the lepers and it was necessary to go beyond the body, Jack Delaney certainly became ill-flu or something like this” [Transfer of L. Sums]. Elmore Leonard "Bandits".

3. "The guy caught under the stands, where he was engaged in something bad." Theodore Starjon "A little of your blood."

4. "I first heard Ortivil called the poisoning, from a red -haired rogue named Hiki Dewey, in the Bar Bar" Big Steamboat "in Butytta." Dashil Hammet "Red Harvest".

5. “Call me Izmail” [Translation by I. Bernstein]. German Melville "Moby Dick, or White Whale."

6. “Summer evening, twilight” [Translation by N. Gal, Z. Vershinina]. Theodore Dreizer "American Tragedy".

7. "They watched under the chirping of the projector as Ryan beats the foreman of the Mexican workers on the screen." Elmore Leonard "Great Theft".

8. "Last night I dreamed that I had returned to Masterli." [Translation of the city of Ostrovskaya]. Daphne Dumorye "Rebecca".

9. "What the worst did you do in life?" Peter Straub "History with Ghosts."

10. “I have never started writing an affair with such a feeling of uncertainty” [Translation by M. Lorie]. Somerset Moem "The tip of the razor".

I did not include a classic here - for example, the completely enchanting beginning of the “Finnegan Fools” James Joyce or the first line “Kagawa” Donald Westleyk (not to mention the stunning initial phrases of the thief of the Parker, published under the pseudonym Richard Stark), as well as the first lines that responding in me with a vague, but powerful feeling, but powerful feelings, but powerful feelings, but powerful feelings, but powerful feelings, but powerful feelings And, perhaps, only in me one thing: “Fetish, if you like; I only know that he always had to be with me ”(Robert Bloch's“ scarf ”) or“ primrose have faded ”, as Richard Adams informs us in the“ inhabitants of the hills ”with an artless (and deceptive) simplicity. And we will not forget the great -great -grandfather of all the ingenious initial lines: "In the beginning there was a word."

How important is the reader from the first phrase?

If we are talking about stories, then it is very important. Take my own stories: it is clear to me that their first lines, as a rule, are much more alive and more interesting than the first lines of my novels (the initial phrase of the “beach” from the collection “Skeleton team” is almost as beautiful as the phrase of Kane, which opens the “Postman”: “The spacecraft of the Federation-Es/29 federation fell from heaven and crashed” [Translation by N. Rhine). There are things that never change; If you work with short forms, you need to grab the reader by the throat and keep it with all his might so that he does not run away.

But stories in a sense are whores; A one -time date, love for one night. Roman is already a long -term relationship. Here, as it seems to me, the reader is toned not by one sentence or paragraph, but by the first few pages. How many pages we will give the novelist until we understand whether he is interesting to us or not?

I myself am a rather capricious reader. If the novel does not cling to fifty pages, usually I close the book and do not return to it anymore. Yes, in a long narrative you often need to enter, but at some point you have to touch the reader, then hug and finally seduce. Whores on the streets are cheap, and I absolutely do not want to replenish their ranks. It’s better I will be a call girl and will try to create a sense of luxury, splendor and pleasure in my books, which remains with you for a long time, but without special depth or half -tones. I would like to do better, but, I’m afraid that today a good wife will not come of me for the reader ... And this is a truly good literature: not a whore, not an expensive call girl, but a life partner who rewards the reader for his devotion and passion, giving ten times more than he receives. I do not want to marry every book or story that I read; Usually I have enough date for one night or a short love connection. But there are books like “inhabitants of the hills”, or “Raji Quartet”, or “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, which offer us more than a random connection. They remain with the reader forever, constant, true, as generous in memory as at the first acquaintance.

And yet…

"This is how it happened." This is not love, but yes, baby!

Translation. T. Otidaeva, 2018.