Author Rivka Galchen on what makes those first pages magic...
Rivka Galchen is the recipient of a William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, among other honors. She writes regularly for The New Yorker, whose editors selected her for their list of “20 Under 40” American fiction writers in 2010. Her debut novel, Atmospheric Disturbances (2008), and her story collection, American Innovations (2014), were both New York Times Best Books of the Year. She received an MD from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Galchen divides her time between Montreal and New York City. Her latest novel, Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch, was released by FSG in June 2021.
“Usually I'm pulled in by the moment that it doesn't seem like my mind is correctly autofilling the next word or sentence—by the moment of deviation or surprise,”
In your own writing, what importance do the first few pages of a manuscript have? How do you find just the right tone and rhythm, how do you decide what goes first?
I go over openings again and again until they start to have those strange shiny parts that old sculptures have at the places where they've been touched the most, too much. Finally I move forward. Then, late in the process, I return to the opening and find it's now very clear how to fix it, and I don't know why I didn't see it before.
More generally, as a reader, what makes a captivating beginning for you? What makes you want to keep reading?
There are as many good openings as there are good books. Usually I'm pulled in by the moment that it doesn't seem like my mind is correctly autofilling the next word or sentence—by the moment of deviation or surprise.
What are some of your favorite first pages, books with the best beginnings that have stuck with you?
The opening of The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro goes on for pages in this way that teeters right between exhaustingly boring and rivetingly weird. Then it tips over into more steadily mesmerizing. It's a master class for setting up strangeness. It's also, basically, a long elevator ride.
photo credit: Sandy Tait