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Introduction
Back in middle school and though most of my time in high school, I didn't read much. In fact, I often pretended to read the books my teachers assigned our class. I'd dog-ear the pages and bend up the cover, like that book was going home and back with me on the bus I took to school every day. But it was really sitting in my desk, unread. I'd go so far as to place an oversized bookmark in its pages, hoping to fool my teachers. Then I'd show up to class and listen to the discussion about the story, and even add insights of my own, often putting myself in the main character's shoes.
I actually passed a lot of English classes that way. I was absolutely wrong and only cheating myself. It wasn't that I couldn't read. I just wasn't interested in the books I was being given at school. I spent a lot of my free time reading the sports section of the newspaper, watching TV, going to the movies, and memorizing the lyrics to songs that I liked. I was actually infatuated by the idea of how writers created stories. But somehow, that infatuation didn't transfer over to books.
One day, I had just arrived at English class and was telling a friend all about this great movie I had seen the night before. It was one of the James Bond 007 films. My English teacher overheard heard me and said, "Paul, I'd like to see you in the back of the classroom for a moment."
I figured that I was in trouble. This was English class and I was busy discussing a movie, not a book. To my surprise, the teacher reached up to a shelf where she kept a classroom library. She handed me a book from the James Bond series by author Ian Fleming. Then she said, "That movie you like so much is actually based on this book. And I think the book is even better."
Well, that was the first book I ever remember reading cover-to-cover. And it basically started me on the road to becoming an English teacher and an author.
Now about this book.
I envisioned its concept and wrote it because it's the type of book I would have wanted to read when I was in school. A book that discusses music, TV, movies and even superheroes in the same breath as novels, plays and poems. Why the emphasis on opening lines? Because writers of every genre have one goal in common -- to capture the audience's attention with their very first words. And we'd all prefer to be instantly engaged, whether we're reading, watching or listening.
So I hope you'll enjoy this book and share it with every pre-teen, teen and adult you know who loves the spoken word, but may not be a bookworm. The type of less-than-enthusiastic reader who is simply waiting for the right book to come along.
--Paul Volponi
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE: Setting, Mood and Tone
Dark and Stormy -- Charles M. Schulz and Snoopy (World Famous Author)
A Talking Raven -- Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven
Starry Night -- Don McLean, Vincent
CHAPTER TWO: Identity
Woman Powered -- Taylor Swift, Blank Space - Billie Eilish/Finneas O'Connell, What Was I Made For? - Olivia Rodrigo, Jealousy, Jealousy - Maya Angelou, Phenomenal Woman
What's In a Name, or Not -- Herman Melville, Moby-Dick Or, The Whale -
Have a Chocolate -- Eric Roth, Forrest Gump (film) - Winston Groom, Forrest Gump (novel)
Can You See Me? -- Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Nobody is Somebody -- Emily Dickinson, I'm Nobody! Who are You?
CHAPTER THREE: The Human Condition
Why Shakespeare?
Hamlet's Dilemma -- William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Songs of Social Change -- Marvin Gaye, What's Going On - Jay-Z, Some How, Some Way
Warning Signs -- Theodore Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss), The Butter Battle Book
Mob Mentality -- Shirley Jackson, The Lottery
You Can Do It Too -- Ordinary people making great literature
A Need to Communicate -- Anne Frank, Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl
The Plight of Addiction -- Pink, Sober - Selena Odom, My Master - Amy Winehouse, Rehab - Neil Young, The Needle and the Damage Done
CHAPTER FOUR: Self-Determination
Making Your Own Way -- Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton
Change by Example -- Michael Jackson/Glen Ballard/Siedah Garrett, Man in the Mirror - Michael Jackson/Lionel Richie We are the World
From Behind Bars -- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail
The Trap of Hatred -- Wendell Berry, Enemies
Double-Standard -- Gwen Stefani/Tom Dumont, I'm Just a Girl - Beyoncé, If I Were a Boy
CHAPTER FIVE: Time and Space
To Boldly Go -- Gene Roddenberry/William Shatner, Star Trek (intro)
From Science Fiction to Reality -- Neil Armstrong, One Small Step for Man
May the Force Be with You -- George Lucas, Star Wars
Space Parody -- Mel Brooks, Spaceballs
AI Gone Wrong -- Arthur C. Clarke/Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
Hitch-Hiking -- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Better Read, Or Else -- Damon Knight, To Serve Man
Warring Worlds -- H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds (novel)
Public Panic -- H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds (fake radio broadcast)
CHAPTER SIX: The Road, Streets and Other Travels
Nothing to Hide -- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
The Boss Voices Tom -- Bruce Springsteen, The Ghost of Tom Joad
Nobody Street -- Octavio Paz, The Street
You Decide -- Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
Changing Course -- Adele/ Greg Kurstin, I Drink Wine
They're Your Footsteps -- Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road
On the Wind You Say? -- Bob Dylan, Blowin' In the Wind
CHAPTER SEVEN: Sports
Attention Getting -- Jim McKay, Wide World of Sports (intro)
LaPoem James -- Sean Thomas Dougherty, Biography of LeBron as Ohio (poem)
Remember When? -- John Updike, Ex-Basketball Player
Surf's Up -- Susan Orlean, Life's Swell
Wide Shoulders -- Earnest Lawrence Thayer, Casey at the Bat
A Price to Pay -- Eva Holland, Why We Play
Fighter, defender, Advocate -- Muhammad Ali, I Am America (poem and other verse)
Right Field is for Heroes -- Noel Paul Stookey, Right Field
No-Nonsense Conscience -- Sherman Alexie, Victory
PIT STOP #1: Reflecting on what we've seen and what's to come, plus potential projects
CHAPTER EIGHT: Freedom and Captivity, Supers and Sleuths
Freedom and Captivity
A Jury of Your Peers? -- Reginald Rose, Twelve Angry Men (play)
Chains of the Mind -- Bob Marley, Redemption Song
Broken and Transformed -- Franz Kafka, In the Penal Colony
Bug-Off -- Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
Separate and Unequal -- Maya Angelou, Caged Bird
Life on the Inside -- Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption (novella) and Frank Darabont, The Shawshank redemption (film)
Proper Manners and Penance -- Langston Hughes, Thank You, Ma'am
Supers and Sleuths
Revised Steel -- Jerome Siegel/Joel Shuster, Super-Man.
A Dark Crusader -- Bill Finger/Bob Kane, Batman
Opening the Door Wider -- Dr. William Moulton Marston, Wonder Woman
Web Slinger -- Stan Lee/Steve Ditko, Spider-Man
Hey, Sherlock -- Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four
Encyclopedia B. -- Donald Sobel, Encyclopedia Brown Gets His Man
Teen Sleuths -- Edward Stratemeyer, The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew
CHAPTER NINE: True Love and Heartbreak
Feuding Families -- William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Streetlight Serenade -- Mark Knopfler, Romeo and Juliet (song)
Fairytale Romance -- Taylor Swift, I Knew You Were Trouble
Did He or Didn't He? -- Shakespeare/Once upon a Time
Love without Obligation -- John Hartford, Gentle on my Mind
Love and Marriage? -- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Can You Hear Me? -- Donika Ross Kelly, Love Poem: Mermaid
Hold Nothing Back -- Janis Ian, At Seventeen
Constantly Parodied -- Elizabeth Barrett Browning, How Do I Love Thee and Karen McCullah/Kristen Smith, Ten Things I Hate About You (film)
CHAPTER TEN: Orators and Famous Speeches
Galvanizing Words -- Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Liberty or Death -- Patrick Henry, Speech at Second Virginia Convention
A Declaration -- Thomas Jefferson et al., Declaration of Independence
The Voice of Youth -- Malala Yousafzai, Speech at United Nations Youth Assembly
I Have a Dream -- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I Have a Dream (speech)
No More, Forever -- Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, Surrender Speech
Heating Things Up -- Greta Thunberg, Speech at United Nations Climate Action Summit
Heartfelt Farewell -- Lou Gehrig, Retirement Speech at Yankee Stadium
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Perspective
Just Imagine -- John Lennon/Yoko Ono, Imagine
Scrambled Eggs? -- Paul McCartney/John Lennon, Yesterday
The Best and Worst -- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
A More Personal Perspective -- Billy Joel, Summer Highland Falls
Two for One, Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Scrub a Word? -- Removing original language from books
Blind Faith -- Amari Baraka, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note
Parallel Play -- Stephen Schwartz, What is this Feeling? (from Wicked)
Slipper Trivia -- Dorothy's changing shoe colors
Measure of a Year -- Jonathan Larson, Seasons of Love (from Rent)
CHAPTER TWELVE: Young Adults
Un-fortunately Intriguing -- Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket), A Series of Unfortunate Events
Almost Never -- J. B. Barrie, Peter and Wendy
Missing Parents -- Orphans in literature
Angst Personified -- J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Holden in South Park? -- South Park Elementary reads Salinger
The Anti-Holden (Save Ferris!) -- John Hughes, Ferris Beuller's Day Off
Modeled Upon -- Dan Pikey, Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie
Harry Is Still Harry -- J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Not So Wimpy -- Jeff Kinney, Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Always On-line -- T. M. Anderson, Feed
PIT STOP #2: Reflecting on what we've seen and what's to come, and more potential projects
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: The Senses/Unity and Discord
The Senses
Like Alphabet Soup? -- Mark Strand, Eating Poetry
Speaking Up -- Paul Simon, The Sound of Silence
Deep Breaths -- William Carlos Williams, Smell!
Beyond Us -- Judith Wright, Five Senses
You Fill Up My Senses -- John Denver, Annie's Song
Unity and Discord
Love Light -- Hafiz, Even After All This Time
The Price and Reward -- Rose Marie Juan-austin, Poetry is a Solitary Art
Sharing the Load -- Bill Withers, Lean on Me
Island or Continent? -- John Donne, No Man is an Island
Closing The Circle -- Seinfeld and the second button, again
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Fantasy
Sneak Peak -- Stephenie Meyer, Twilight
Toll Taker -- Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
Storm on the Horizon -- Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians)
Rabbit Hole -- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Allusions to Alice -- Grace Slick, White Rabbit
Buttercup and Westley -- William Goldman, The Princess Bride (film) and The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure, The "Good Parts" Version (novel)
Hobbits and Rings -- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: The Natural (Unnatural) World/Life and Death
Genesis -- Bible (In the Beginning)
The Lamb and Tyger -- William Blake, Little Lamb Who Made Thee? and Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright
The Creature -- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Or the Modern Prometheus
Digging Deep -- Ada Limon, Notes on the Below
Never-ending Summer -- William Shakespeare, Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?
Murdering Sleep -- William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Middle of the Night -- Dana Gioia, Insomnia
Clinging to Light -- Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night
Revisiting Emily -- Emily Dickinson, I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died
Graveyard Ballard -- Tom T. Hall, Ballard of Forty Dollars
Debating an Ending -- Robert Frost, Fire and Ice
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Society and Its Influences
Three the Easy Way/Hard Way -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby -- Lorde
Royals -- Frederick Douglass,
The Narrative life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
Privilege, a Plus or Handicap -- Jimmy Page/Robert Plant, Stairway to Heaven -- Langston Hughes, Mother to Son
The Burden of Fame? -- Elton John/Bernie Taupin, Candle in the Wind -- Eminem, Stan
That Book is Fire! -- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: War
Heavy Jacket -- Gustav Hasford/Michael Herr/Stanley Kubrick, Full Metal Jacket
War and Laughs? -- Larry Gelbart, M*A*S*H (TV show)
Anti-War Anthem -- Norman Whitfield/Barrett Strong, War
Different Paths, Same Destination -- Denise Levertov
Making Peace -- Brian Turner,
Hurt Locker
Deserving Better -- John Prine,
Sam Stone
War Hawk -- Francis Ford Coppola/Edmund North, Patton
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Dystopian Landscapes
Women and Unwomen -- Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
Feed the Hungry, But Just Some of Them -- Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
A Second Chance -- James Cameron/William Wisher, Terminator 2: Judgement Day
Opposite Land -- George Orwell, 1984
Your True Calling -- Veronica Roth, Divergent
CHAPTER ONE
Setting, Mood and Tone
No matter the genre, every artistic work establishes a mood and a tone, often through a description of the setting where the action occurs. It's just like when you naturally smile, frown or look annoyed–others can get quickly clued in to your mood. The voices and actions of the narrators and characters in a work also play a huge part in signaling the author's intended feeling to the audience. Let's see how that happens.
Dark and Stormy
Okay. We'll start with something completely non-threatening and fun. And who could fit that bill better than Charles M. Schulz's bookish beagle named Snoopy, a beloved character from the comic strip Peanuts with some very distinctive ties to literature.
You see, Snoopy is a writer, with one of his many personalities being that of "World Famous Author." His favorite place to write is sitting upon the roof of his doghouse, tapping away at the keys of a typewriter. (And yes, I do believe that Snoopy will one day move on to using a computer keyboard, perhaps even a wireless one.)
Snoopy's go-to opening line as a writer is, "It was a dark and stormy night." Kudos to Schulz for providing us with such a riveting opening, especially since it's almost all we ever see of the cartoon canine's stories. The line provides us with instant setting and tone. After all, it is "dark" and "stormy" outside, and our imaginations are certainly ready to fill in the blanks as to whatever might happen on such a "night." Nothing too scary please. This is Peanuts with Charlie Brown and Lucy Van Pelt, not the start of a teen horror flick.
From where did the line "It was a dark and stormy night" originate? Snoopy first typed it in 1965. But three years earlier, author Madeline L'Engle used it to begin her famed young adult fantasy book A Wrinkle in Time. Her narrator, a character named Mrs. Whatsit begins, "It was a dark and stormy night. In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind."
Nearly a century and a half earlier, English author Edward Bulwar-Lytton wrote a novel entitled Paul Clifford (1830). The novel's rather long and winding opening line? "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 housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."
Over the succeeding decades, the opening, "It was a dark and stormy night," despite its spot-on description of a time and place, became a phrase often criticized by reviewers, especially when many novice writers used it to begin their work. It was called an example of "Purple Prose," meaning something overly ornate in its use of language, taking undue attention away from the story.
Interestingly, the English Department at San Jose State University in California celebrates the line by holding an annual writing contest in which contestants use the phrase to write the best-worst sentence. And, of course, Schulz was happy to have Snoopy, a fledgling novelist of the first-degree, comically use the cliché phrase as his standard opening, no matter what he was writing about.
Our bookish beagle is also a fan of Russian author Leo Tolstoy, reading his masterpiece War and Peace at a rate of one word per day. Just so you know, it's an exceedingly long book–587,287 words to be exact. At that pace, it would take Snoopy, who turns 75 in 2025, more than 1,600 years (human, not dog years) to finish. So don't complain about the length of any reading assignment your teacher ever gives you.
Go ahead. Take a try at completing the opening line: "It was a dark and stormy night." What would your next sentence be to keep the appropriate imagery moving forward?
A Talking Raven
Now that you're getting your literary legs beneath you, let's look at another well-known opening that brilliantly establishes setting and tone. On this occasion, however, the author goes much deeper into detail, not only giving us time, place and mood, but also transferring those feelings over to the protagonist (that's a fancy way of saying main character) who in this case is our narrator. It's all brilliantly done in just a pair of sentences.
The author is Boston-native Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) and his narrative poem is entitled The Raven. You may already be familiar with its famed opening lines, "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, as of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door."
You can hear the alliteration grabbing the reader's attention with its silky string of p's, w's, q/c's, n's and p's again, all sounding off in rapid succession.
So it's a "dreary" midnight, and the "weak and weary" narrator seems to be alone, reading an old book and on the verge of falling asleep when there's suddenly a rapping at his chamber door. We're definitely setup for something ominous to happen. And Poe doesn't disappoint us.
The narrator's visitor is a supernatural raven that can actually speak. No, the raven doesn't say, Caw. Rather, this raven speaks English, and can say but one word. That word is a resolute "Nevermore," the answer to whether the narrator will ever reunite with his lost love named Lenore.
The poem is often celebrated at Halloween because of its darkened feel. It has been made into several sci-fi/horror movies and parodied many times, including by The Simpsons in their Treehouse of Horror episode. Troublemaking Bart Simpson plays the raven. Only Bart's version of the supernatural bird doesn't say, "Nevermore." Instead, it utters one of his popularized catchphrases, "Eat my shorts."
The popularity of Poe's poem is the reason that the NFL team playing in Baltimore calls itself the Ravens. You see Edgar Allan Poe died in the city of Baltimore and is buried there. His gravesite has become an important tourist attraction. What's the best time to visit a spooky mystery writer's grave to pay homage to his literary talents? Most likely at the stroke of midnight while holding a lit candle. It just seems appropriate.
Starry Night
While many, including The Simpsons, have parodied The Raven, songwriters often draw inspiration for their lyrics from either classic works of art or history. Singer/songwriter Don McLean did both with the painting The Starry Night by Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh. The painting is of a seemingly electrified night sky filled with swirling, star-like images in blue and gray, as the horizon is about to turn from darkness to dawn. Van Gogh painted the scene from his room in an asylum, where he was receiving care for a variety of ongoing mental health challenges after self-mutilating his left ear.
With just a handful of words, McLean, in his song entitled Vincent, beautifully pens an opening that reflects both the painting and Van Gogh's turbulent life, establishing essential tone and mood. "Starry, starry night, paint your pallet blue and grey. Look out on a summer's day with eyes that know the darkness in my soul."
McLean's use of personification gives us the instant impression of the sky as a living, breathing entity, perhaps even guiding Van Gogh's hand. It's a sky that perfectly portrays both the beauty in the world and the overwhelming storm raging inside of Van Gogh, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound approximately two years after painting The Starry Night.
Later in the lyrics, McLean speaks directly to the memory of the departed artist, as if the spirit of Van Gogh could somehow find comfort in his forthcoming words. "I could have told you, Vincent. This world was never meant for one a beautiful as you."
The song is a magnificent mix of art, history and passion, with an opening that instantly vaults the listener onto the perfect plain for the beautiful yet disturbing journey that lies ahead.
What color would you say best reflects your personality? Would it ever evolve into a different color over the course of a day, perhaps to reflect your changing mood–say from morning to afternoon, or afternoon to evening?
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