"Howard Roark laughed."

Blazing Reader,

In response to my post yesterday (about Charles Dickens winning the 1859 Gasper Award for Longest Opening Sentence) Robert Vaughan, of Just Right Media, sent me this follow-up email:

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"You had me thinking and so I consulted Grok as to the shortest inaugural sentence in a novel. I didn't think anyone could top...

"Call me, Ishmael." [Moby Dick by Herman Melville]

or... 

"Howard Roark laughed." [The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand]

(Yes. I have read both.) 

But Grok returned what I thought was a bit of a cheat... 

"The Swede." 

..from Philip Roth's American Pastoral. To me, this "nominal" sentence barely fits the bill and Grok turned itself into a silicon pretzel trying to justify it, calling it a nominal sentence where an existential verb was implied.

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I agree with Robert that "The Swede." should be eliminated from any fair competition for the shortest opening line in a novel.

In contrast, Moby Dick's "Call me, Ishmael." is not only fair, but also catchy and deeply symbolic — Ishmael being the first-born illegitimate son of Abraham in the Book of Genesis. Ishmael was rejected and sent into exile because his mother was an Egyptian servant. Adopted by Melville, this nickname launches the reader into a perennial story of a wild outsider on the cold, indifferent ocean.

For me, however, Ayn Rand's "Howard Roark laughed." wins the Best Ever Three-Word Opening Sentence Award. I remember that simple sentence hooked me immediately, making me muse:

What is he laughing at? And who is this Roark guy anyway? 

And from there, I couldn't stop flipping through all 700 pages (in 8pt font!) of The Fountainhead.

John C.A. Manley

P.S. For a detailed description of Herman Melville's daily writing routine from when he wrote Moby Dick, check out my previous post on this posthumous success story: D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the strangest and most wonderful books in the world"

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.