"You expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analogous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination"
About this Quote
McMurtry’s advice lands like a friendly slap at the workshop-table pieties that treat opening lines as literary Olympics. He’s pushing back against the modern cult of the “hook,” the idea that a first sentence must detonate, brand itself into your brain, and sell the entire book in a single, Instagrammable burst. His metaphor does the real work: a country breakfast isn’t fussy, it isn’t plated for applause, but it sustains you. The point isn’t to stun the palate; it’s to give you enough honest fuel to face what comes next.
Subtext: stop auditioning for greatness on line one. McMurtry is quietly defending the old novelistic contract, where the reader isn’t a skittish consumer to be trapped but a companion you invite in. “Nourishing to the imagination” is a lovely pivot: he’s not arguing for blandness. He’s arguing for sturdiness, for a sentence that opens a space rather than hogging it. The best beginnings don’t announce the author’s cleverness; they promise a world.
Context matters. McMurtry wrote from a tradition of big, inhabited storytelling - frontier myth, regional detail, long social weather. Those novels don’t need fireworks at the door because the payoff is cumulative: character accrues, landscape talks back, irony ripens. His breakfast analogy also carries a cultural stance: plainspoken craft over metropolitan performance. It’s a reminder that momentum beats ornament, and that a first sentence is less a thesis statement than a table being set.
Subtext: stop auditioning for greatness on line one. McMurtry is quietly defending the old novelistic contract, where the reader isn’t a skittish consumer to be trapped but a companion you invite in. “Nourishing to the imagination” is a lovely pivot: he’s not arguing for blandness. He’s arguing for sturdiness, for a sentence that opens a space rather than hogging it. The best beginnings don’t announce the author’s cleverness; they promise a world.
Context matters. McMurtry wrote from a tradition of big, inhabited storytelling - frontier myth, regional detail, long social weather. Those novels don’t need fireworks at the door because the payoff is cumulative: character accrues, landscape talks back, irony ripens. His breakfast analogy also carries a cultural stance: plainspoken craft over metropolitan performance. It’s a reminder that momentum beats ornament, and that a first sentence is less a thesis statement than a table being set.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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