The first line. The hard lead. The lure. I’m an ornery reader. If the author doesn’t grab me with that first paragraph, I’m gone. Some writers do it with odd words, oddly used. Some set up a chant rhythm. Some throw a sharply defined character at you so fast that you’re trapped. Like an accident on the highway, you can’t look away. What will happen next.

The first line. The hard lead. The bait. The lure. I’m an ornery reader. If the author doesn’t grab me — and I mean grab me — with that first paragraph, I’m not going to stick around. Some writers do it with provocative vocabulary, words oddly used. Some set up a chant rhythm with the power of their voice. Some throw a character at you with such force, so completely revealed in a few lines, that you’re trapped. Like the accident on the highway, you can’t look away. What will the next lines reveal…

Why do journalists continue to childproof the news? Sometimes only a well-timed, well-seasoned expletive captures the passion of one’s meaning. Modern English as it’s spoken and felt is now the subject of debate at elite newspapers. Must journalist continue to run quoted material and their own commentary through a tattered veil of winks and nods?

Must journalists continue to childproof the news? Modern English as it’s spoken and felt is now the subject of debate at elite newspapers. Sometimes only a well-timed, highly seasoned expletive captures the passion of one’s meaning. Must journalist continue to run quoted material and their own commentary through a tattered veil of winks and nods?

Sometimes only a well-timed, highly seasoned expletive captures the force and passion of one’s meaning. Modern English as it’s spoken and felt is now the subject of debate at elite newspapers. Must journalist continue to childproof the news? Must they run quoted material and their own commentary through a tattered veil of winks and nods?

Movies have glamorized her. Women Studies have shed a tear for her. But as she appears on the page, Emma Bovary is a destructive second-rater. The genius of Flaubert is that he writes in a fascinating way about a not fascinating woman. Provincial, grasping, full of illusions from cheap romances. Yet for all that, she is still one of the greatest creations in literature

Movies have glamorized her. Women’s Studies classes have shed a tear for her. But as she appears on the page, Emma Bovary is a destructive second-rater. Provincial, grasping, full of illusions from cheap romances. The masterpiece of Flaubert’s novel is that he writes in a fascinating way about a not very fascinating woman. Self-deluded and self-involved Emma Bovary one of the greatest creations in literature and yet one of its most worthless anti-heroines.

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)
“Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing. At Oxford one was positively expected to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied.”