MONITOR - August 2010
“Suddenly the cat went off fish...” This is the kind of wild shot some writers might make when attempting to start a new novel. It’s called a punchy opening line. True, it’s feeble but it might just make the reader (if he gets one) ask “why?” It is also more tasteful than: “So, I threw a handful of fivers on to the bed....” which, though it might have many connotations, only one springs immediately to mind.
I am sure cats or fish will have no connection with the possible future outcome of a potential author’s year-hard slog to produce an 85,000-word novel that will spend the next ten years crumbling to dust on the shelf of a dark corner cupboard, but opening lines and titles sometimes come out of nowhere. We hear them every day but seldom think of them in terms of punchy openings to a novel or indeed as a suitable title.
Some years ago I was the London agent for a particularly well-known American author and one of his novels I had to sell to an English publisher was entitled Why Are We in Vietnam? One theme of the book was about hunting bears in Alaska – so work that one out. As I recall the title was a metaphor for the Vietnam War and though I sold it to a publisher I cannot remember it ever appearing under a British imprint (yet it had at least four impressions in the USA).
In contrast (which has no relevance to writing a book) my line about the cat going off fish was inspired by the simple fact that my single-minded cat did go off fish in much the same way as he went off beef and poultry two weeks before. And now he is going through that irritating process where he licks up the gravy only and leaves the solid matter to dry up. This adds up to the equivalent of about five or six quid being thrown on to a rubbish heap (not his bed) every week until his taste buds have a sudden metabolic change and he starts to fancy beef and poultry again.
I am sure there must be many cat owners who have to deal with the same problem but they probably react differently to their pet than I do. For my part I chastise my cat in much the same way as my mother and father chastised me for failing to finish my cow-heel dinner or slab of tripe at tea-time (the latter was an expedient because my working mother sometimes had little time for serving anything else). Unfortunately telling my cat that: “There’s many a child in China who’d be grateful for a meal like that” or (from my father): “If you’re hungry you’ll eat that or do without!” doesn’t sink in very well. But, like my mum and dad, I can’t keep those threats up for long and so I break down and give in to the cat’s demands and end up sectioning off some of my own meal for him (he doesn’t necessarily like it but eats it because I’m eating it).
Last month I had to feed a friend’s cat for a week and he (the cat) welcomed me with gratitude each time I called. He ate every scrap of food I put before him and left a clean plate every time. I told my own cat that he should take a leaf out of my temporary friend’s book and stop being so choosy. It made no difference. I’d been giving him meat at the time so I went back to giving him fish but the fad didn’t last long and that’s when I made a note of that lack-lustre introduction to a new novel. Not surprisingly my enthusiasm for that punchy opening line quickly faded.
Still, that’s the way some novels find their unlikely inspiration so, for a moment or two, I suppose my cat could claim to have been useful. The last introduction I wrote for a novel (and clearly the cat had nothing to do with it) was: “What happened after I nearly met Jack Buchanan...” and it carried on for 120,000 words. Now there are signs that it’s just about ready to go into that corner cupboard I mentioned earlier...
But hold on! My cat’s sniffing his plate of fish... Now he really has ruined my opening line.