Gold Medal OPENERS

Cream-of-the-crop opening paragraphs throughout literary history

The border is an incision, severing the streets, houses, and lives of Derby Line, Vermont, and Stanstead, Quebec, making one town two, bringing down the knife of nationality on the ties of family and history, but like the shapes of history, the border is neither geologic nor visible: it is the enforcement of an idea – the idea of place, which determines the human idea of self. Like all national borders, this one outlines the limits of perception, for beneath such temporal groundings of the moment, old urges and identities move with the drift of continents, and are shaped by them, and share their tectonics.

reviews by LEAH BIESACK

Sweat

Zora Neale Hurston

Another man trying to ruin everything.

The Dumb Man

Sherwood Anderson

A mind trip. Like life.

The Outing

Lydia Davis

Brief. Accurately encapsulates vacation fatigue.