Paleo Retiree writes:
Take a look at the following first-lines-of-articles-from-The-New-Yorker and tell me if you’re as struck by certain patterns and similarities as I’ve been.
“In 2004, Carolina Izquierdo, an anthropologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, spent several months with the Matsigenka, a tribe of about twelve thousand people who live in the Peruvian Amazon.”
“Spoiled Rotten” by Elizabeth Kolbert“In 1926, Forrest Ackerman, a nine-year-old misfit in Los Angeles, visited a newsstand and bought a copy of Amazing Stories — a new magazine about aliens, monsters, and other oddities.”
“Show the Monster” by Daniel Zalewski“On a recent morning in the rain forest of northern Brazil, a wiry man in a faded T-shirt and shorts leaped from a marshy riverbank onto the trunk of a palm tree.”
“Strange Fruit” by John Colapinto“On Thanksgiving Day, 2008, shoppers began lining up outside the Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, Long Island, at 5:30 p.m., near a small, handwritten sign that read ‘Blitz Line Starts Here’.”
“Crush Point” by John Seabrook“One midwinter night in 2008, Senator John Ensign, of Nevada, the chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, was roused from bed when six men entered his room and ordered him to get up.”
“Frat House for Jesus” by Peter J. Boyer“On the evening of May 7, 2008, a twenty-three-year-old woman named Rachel Hoffman got into her silver Volvo sedan, put on calming jam-band music, and headed north to a public park in Tallahassee, Florida.”
“The Throwaways” by Sarah Stillman
House style much?
Here’s my attempt at distilling the art of kicking off a New Yorker article:
“On a date that’s peculiarly specific, and in a sentence that uses more commas than you’re accustomed to, someone you’ve never heard of did something, or had something done to him/her, of puzzlingly little apparent significance.”
Easy-peasy!
If The New Yorker contacts you about offering me a job, you know how to put them in touch with me.
Blowhard, Esq.
Callowman
Sherbrooke
Eddie Pensier
Enzo Nakamura
Epaminondas
Fabrizio del Wrongo
Fenster
Brundle Guy
Glynn Marshes
Paleo Retiree
Atypical Neurotic
Question Lady
Sax von Stroheim
Sir Barken Hyena
The Mistaken
Uncouth Reflections 
Nice catch.
BTW, I read the Stillman article (about police abuse of undercover confidential informants in drug stings) over lunch today and it’s infuriating and heartbreaking. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, but nowhere in the article does anyone raise the possibility of legalizing drugs or calling off the drug war as a solution to the problem.
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NO mention of legalizing drugs or calling off the drug war? WTF?!!!
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Nope. Just talk about how the parents of children who were exploited by police as undercover CIs — kids popped for having weed or pills and threatened with jail time as an incentive to get them to cooperate, after which they were eventually MURDERED IN BOTCHED STINGS — how the parents of these children are calling for national legislation that regulates the use of CIs. NOT A SINGLE parent, lawyer, or expert says, “Maybe we shouldn’t be arresting these kids for have a few ounces of pot at all. Maybe so long as the War on Drugs is being fought, and police cite arrest statistics as evidence they’re ‘keeping the public safe,’ they will always have an incentive to abuse CIs.”
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Jesus H. Christ.
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John Colapinto’s book “As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl” is really excellent, too: http://www.amazon.com/As-Nature-Made-Him-Raised/dp/0060192119
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Thanks. I’ve got that one on the shelf but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
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“On a date that’s peculiarly specific, and in a sentence that uses more commas than you’re accustomed to, someone you’ve never heard of did something, or had something done to him/her, of puzzlingly little apparent significance.”
That’s how every first sentence in every first draft I’ve ever written reads.
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It isn’t a bad option, god knows.
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Durn persnickety journalists.
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