Best beginning, best ending
Published my Favorite Books list of 2009 too early. Since posting the list I’ve read another four or five books that belong in it. But then I’d have to knock out entries from the previous list and I like them all. So let’s just say there was an early cutoff and leave it at that.
The best beginning of a novel I read in 2009 is that of No Tomorrow by Vivant Denon, a writer and artist who worked for Louis XV, survived the revolution, joined Napoleon and became his director-general of museums. That wing of the Louvre is named after him.
The first lines:
“I was desperately in love with the Comtesse de _____; I was twenty years old and I was naive. She deceived me, I got angry, she left me. I was naive, I missed her. I was twenty years old, she forgave me, and, because I was twenty years old, because I was naive—still deceived, but no longer abandoned—I thought myself to be the best-loved lover, and therefore the happiest of men.”
Yes, like Choderlos de Laclos, but very short.
The last line:
“I looked hard for the moral of this whole adventure. . .and found none.”
No Tomorrow is an NYRB Classics original with the English translation by Lydia Davis and the text in French. The effect is to make you feel like you know French. With an introduction by Peter Brooks. I found this copy at National in Rockwell, P545.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
December 22nd, 2009 at 10:30
I read a lot of books in 2009 but finished a few. Can’t get past The Part About Amalfitano in Bolanos’ 2666 because, I guess, there’s a part about Amalfitano that I don’t understand; Sun, Stone, and Shadows (20 Great Mexican Short Stories) are, contrary to the title, about lousy stories; Dave Eggers’ 2009 The Best American Nonrequired Reading, from the one story I read, tells me why reading it is not a requirement; and, David Wroblewski’s The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is shamelessly cheesy that will not admit, not even here, that I read its first 20 pages. But all is not lost. Aleksandar Hemon’s Love and Obstacles is a must read, and Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence should be a mass read.
BTW, it’s so apt that your best ending is from something called No Tomorrow.