37/398 : Korridorium

The cover art shows four black-and-white portraits: James Joyce with a red eye patch, David Foster Wallace with a red tie, Franz Kafka with red jacket buttons, and a person covering their face with their hands.

♫ Si on n’a pas ce qu’on aime ♫

37/398

“I enter the corridor” simply isn’t a good first sentence, or so many of the rejection letters claim—even and especially those from publishers with a more artistic bent. I don’t quite see it. This sentence is a) simple and unambiguous, b) full of movement, c) evokes an image in the reader’s mind, and d) stirs expectations of events to come. Doesn’t it possess—or am I mistaken?—even more potential than, for example,

“riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs“—where one could certainly argue over a)—or

“I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies“—where b) is likely spread rather thin—or perhaps

“It was late evening when K. arrived“—an opening sentence that, in turn, is a bit too simple for c).

That leaves d), and with it the hope of maybe finding resonance somewhere after all…

Finnegans Wake:

Unendlicher Spaß:

The Castle: