Where to Begin?
E(i)ditorial — October 2015
It’s astounding how few people can write a good opening sentence. (Does that one measure up?)
When I was grading papers for a Greek mythology course at Princeton, I took to Facebook to vent my frustration and posted, “the next time I open a student paper that begins with a meaningless platitude like ‘in greek mythology, there are many gods’, I am going to start throwing things. stay away.” As I’d hoped, my friends responded with funny comments, including “That’s some high level stuff. I didn’t learn that until at least fourth grade,” “I heard there are also many gods in Roman mythology. They should hang out,” and “You know, at least it’s true. It could be worse.”
Only one of the commenters, a professor of mine, responded charitably toward my students. (Maybe he wasn’t teaching any large lecture classes that semester.) He pointed out that the first sentence of a paper is really just “throat-clearing” and that the second sentence is the crucial one. On the other hand, the same professor later shared Gawker’s list of the 50 best first lines in literature, so he might have been sending some mixed signals.
My professor may well have been right about first sentences in academic papers. An article about Euripides that I enjoyed very much, published in arguably the most prestigious classics journal, begins with the sentence “The mythic tradition of the Greeks is protean,” a statement not far removed from the one that sent me to Facebook to complain.
But for publishing online — especially when the first sentence of an article is usually the one that populates the embedded link on Facebook — beginnings can’t be used for throat-clearing. They need to set the tone for the whole piece. It is especially key to remember this when you’re trying to write something funny, because you need to let the reader know right away that what they’re about to encounter isn’t “serious” in the same way traditional scholarship is.
This month, Eidolon published seven articles of both comic and serious intent and with various degrees of throat-clearing:
John Byron Kuhner explained the appeal of a week-long Latin immersion program in The Latin Speakers of West Virginia
Simon Oswald asked why some atrocities horrify us while others are enshrined in historical monuments in Back From the Future
Ralph Rosen studied the essays of the Greek doctor Galen to show that STEM and humanities study are mutually beneficial, not exclusive in “The Best Doctor in Also a Philosopher”
Emily Shanahan utilized the medium of graphic art to give new life to Greek tragedy in Superhero Helen
Luke Madson brought together the concept of kleos aphthiton and the impulse to forget the names of mass shooters in “Never Utter His Name”
Spencer Lenfield reviewed the Latin translation of Diary of a Wimpy Kid and tried to determine its ideal audience in Diary of a Wimpy Latinist
Tara Mulder showed that abortion debates haven’t always revolved around whether a fetus counts as a human being in Ancient Medicine and Fetal Personhood
Spencer Lenfield’s review begins, “I once saw a copy of the Latin translation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in the “Novelties and Gifts” section of a bookstore, near Darth Vader and Son and Go the F**k to Sleep.” Already you can see that the review will be funny, and it will address issues around translating children’s books into Latin more broadly. John Byron Kuhner’s opening sentence tells you that his article will be narrative and heavily descriptive. Simon Oswald’s opening hints at his slightly irreverent attitude toward history and Tara Mulder’s identifies its article’s political content.
(On a slightly different note, if you agree with Lenfield that Latin can and should be fun, you may want to contribute to this contest. The writer of the best Latin tweet about the book will win a prize. And, as Father Gallagher has pointed out in the past, Latin is excellently suited to Twitter.)
So I ask you: attend to your opening sentence, and stop clearing your throat.
Happy reading!
Donna Zuckerberg received her PhD in Classics from Princeton in 2014. She is the founding editor of Eidolon and teaches Greek drama at Stanford Continuing Studies and online for the Paideia Institute. Read more of her work here.
