I just picked up The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski and have just finished the first twenty pages, aka “The Hook.” As a writer I always marvel at reading a sharp hook, like a little leaguer might stare in amazement, mouth agape, as Ken Griffey Jr. hits a grand slam into the second deck. If you aren’t familiar with The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, it was the “hot” book of the summer of 2008, an Oprah selection and a NY Times bestseller. I don’t know yet what it is about though the story as described in the sleeve reminds me a bit of the timeless story of Hamlet with some multi-generational dog breeding thrown in. Everyone loves dogs, and just about everyone I know loves brooding and indecisive Danish princes. Imagine our hero walking the dog . . .
To scoop or not to scoop. That is the question.
Oh yeah, back to the hook. Edgar’s hook amazed me. The first few paragraphs seemed vaguely familiar. Had I read it before? Yes, of course I had and you may have also, though we are most intimate with only the first sentence. It is in fact another take on the famous purple prose hook “It was a dark and stormy night” by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. The scene as described is essentially identical, though one is set in the alleys of London while the other the dark and stormy streets of Pusan, South Korea.
Here they are side-by-side.
“It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. Through one of the obscurest quarters of London, and among haunts little loved by the gentlemen of the police, a man, evidently of the lowest orders, was wending his solitary way. He stopped twice or thrice at different shops and houses of a description correspondent with the appearance of the quartier in which they were situated, and tended inquiry for some article or another which did not seem easily to be met with.”
Paul Clifford
By Edward Bulwer-Lytton
“After dark the rain began to fall again, but he had already made up his mind to go and anyway it had been raining for weeks. He waved off the rickshaw coolies clustered near the dock and walked all the way from the naval base, following the scant directions he’d been given, through the crowds in the Kweng Li market square, past the vendors selling roosters in crude rattan crates and pigs’ heads and poisonous-looking fish lying blue and gutted and gaping on racks, past gray octopi in glass jars, past old women hawking kimchee and bulgoki, until he crossed the Tong Gang on the Bridge of Woes, the last landmark he knew.”
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
By David Wroblewski
I admit to being a superstitious writer in that I never start a story with a reference to weather. It is trite and “going through the motions” in my opinion. That was part of the reason I decided to call this writing blog “Dark and Stormy” because I refuse to have my own writing commence with a reference to either sun, wind, snow, sleet or rain. Now, I suppose if a character is in fact a weatherman or woman, I’ll lighten up and toss some weather references into that sharp end of the hook, but generally I’m attached to the rule like a moist tongue on a frozen flagpole.
Do I consider Wroblewski’s writing purple prose? Perhaps not the Bulwer-Lytton variety, but the hook is definitely violet-tinged. Does this mean the rest of the “hot” novel’s 500 pages will leave me cold? The forecast is unclear. I don’t know if I should dig out my galoshes or my flip-flops.