H o w t o R e a d L i t e r a t u r e8not necessarily in this particular combination. We can grasp the
meaning of these opening sentences only because we come to
them with a frame of cultural reference which allows us to do so.
We also approach them with some conception of what a literary
work is, what is meant by a beginning, and so on. In this sense, no
literary opening is ever really absolute. All reading involves a fair
amount of stage setting. A lot of things must already be in place
simply for a text to be intelligible. One of them is previous works
of literature. Every literary work harks back, if only unconsciously,
to other works. Yet the opening of a poem or novel also seems to
spring out of a kind of silence, since it inaugurates a fictional world
that did not exist before. Perhaps it is the closest thing we have to
the act of divine Creation, as some Romantic artists believed. The
difference is that we are stuck with the Creation, whereas we can
always discard our copy of Catherine Cookson.
Let us begin with the opening sentences of one of the most
celebrated of twentieth- century novels, E.M. Forster’s A Passage
to India:
Except for the Marabar Caves – and they are twenty miles
off – the city of Chandrapore presents nothing extraordinary.
Edged rather than washed by the river Ganges, it trails for
a couple of miles along the bank, scarcely distinguishable from
the rubbish it deposits so freely. There are no bathing- steps
on the river front, as the Ganges happens not to be holy here;
indeed there is no river front, and bazaars shut out the wide and
shifting panorama of the stream. The streets are mean, the
temples ineffective, and though a few fine houses exist they are
hidden away in gardens or down alleys whose filth deters all but
the invited guest...