People interested in books are fascinated by first lines. Their favorites usually include the evocative “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly” and Orwell’s line about the clocks striking 13 and of course, “Happy families are all alike.” These are great first lines. Whether they fill less than an line (“Call me Ishmael”) or take the entire paragraph, first sentences grab the reader’s attention and set the tone of the book all at once and they make the next line seem inevitable. My favorite first line comes from a book few people know or love but for a rip-snorting, gut-grabbing sentence, it’s one of the best I’ve ever seen. Let me clear my throat, I’ll share it with you….
“Mister Deck, are you my stinkin’ Daddy?“
That, ladies and gentleman was the voice of T. R., the heroine of Larry McMurtry’s novel, Some Can Whistle. (You could tell the young lady was from Texas, right?) This furious young voice is directed at Danny Deck, a failed novelist, and retired sitcom writer who is spending his middle years retreating from the active life that made him rich and unhappy. Part of this retreat is fueled by overexposure to the Entertainment Industry but another part comes from Danny’s sad ablity to irritate women, any woman he’s known longer than a minute. So he answers the demand with true Danny Deck caution: “I don’t think I stink…” And the game is on.
T. R. is Tyler Rose, the enchanting, demanding, daughter Danny’s ex-wife carried away at birth and Mr. Deck’s second chance at real life. Instead of spouting monologues to his former girlfriends’ answering machines and marinating by the pool in a kaftan, Danny has to run to keep up with Tyler Rose, her children, and the entourage of friends and lovers that follow her every self-confident step. These two, who seem to have nothing in common but DNA, each need what the other can give. While T.R. puts her father in a traveling maelstrom of crises, it is the shock he needs to begin living again. And T.R. needs Danny’s help to broaden the life that has boiled down to waitressing at a Mr. Burger, raising two children by herself and avoiding the ex-boyfriend that’s threatening to kill her.
That’s just part of the book, Some Can Whistle. With the crises and the jokes come pop culture commentary and a novelist’s love song to the City of Houston. Like his creator, Danny Deck finished college at Rice University and there’s something that sounds like autobiography in those sentences of devotion.
“I had come to it at the right time, as a young man sometimes comes to his ideal city. In Houston I began to write, formed my first young sentences. Its energies awakened mine; the ramshackle laziness of some of its forgotten neighborhoods delighted me. I walked happily in it for years, smelling it’s lowland smells. It was my Paris, my Rome, my Alexandria – a generous city.”
Kind of makes you want to visit doesn’t it?
You know, the internet has given many of us the chance to emulate Danny Deck. With its electronic layer of detachment we can reconnect with friends while keeping them at arm’s length and visit anyplace on Google Earth without knowing what it’s really like to be there. That’s life once removed and while it’s better than nothing, it isn’t real, it isn’t true, it isn’t T. R. While you can, follow the brash young tunes that Some Can Whistle and be a part of real life. Those are memories I don’t think you’ll regret.
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