A novel’s first paragraph bears a huge burden, and very few novels bear it as well as Muriel Spark’s final one, The Finishing School (2004). Spark is, I think, one of the greatest prose stylists of the 20th century and at least two of her novels–The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Girls of Slender Means–are about as perfect as I think a novel can be. The Finishing School is not in that category. But its opening paragraph is one for the ages:

“You begin,” he said, “by setting the scene. You have to see your scene, either in reality or in imagination. For instance, from here you can see across the lake. But on a day like this you can’t see across the lake, it’s too misty. You can see the other side.” Rowland took off his reading glasses to stare at his creative writing class whose parents’ money was being thus spent: two boys and three girls around sixteen to seventeen years of age, some more, some a little less. “So,” he said, “you must just write, when you set your scene, ‘the other side of the lake was hidden in mist.’ Or if you want to exercise imagination, on a day like today, you can write, ‘The other side of the lake was just visible.’ But as you are setting the scene, don’t make any emphasis as yet. It’s too soon, for instance, for you to write, ‘The other side of the lake was hidden in the fucking mist.’ That will come later. You are setting the scene. You don’t want to make a point as yet.”

Muriel Spark, The Finishing School, Doubleday, 2004, pp. 1-2

The meta- aspect of this opening is fun and clever, but that’s not what makes this paragraph so great. It’s the way it builds, with constant small repetitions that slow our progress, to that hilariously profane “emphasis” right by the end–where, by the way, the experienced reader of paragraphs expects to find their emphasis. It doesn’t hurt that Spark is not an author to throw around swear words lightly. As far as I remember, this is her only f-bomb. (I could be wrong.) Anyway, I have forgiven this rather weak novel of Spark’s solely on the thrill this opening paragraph gave and still gives me.