You never get a second chance
The American Book Review collects their "100 best first lines from novels":
I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent.More correctly, this list is 100 famous first lines from novels. Is "Call me Ishmael" good? Or "I am an invisible man"?
—-Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March (1953)
Confusion between 'good' and 'well-known' is nothing new, but I don't understand why people (especially reviewers and critics, like my nemesis, David Denby) so often mix up different types of quality.
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