Writer’s block

There is a theory that the first line of a novel is the most important. From the uber-classic ‘In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since’ of the The Great Gatsby, to the intriguing ‘Call me Ishmael’ of Moby Dick, getting off the line properly is, they say, very important.

So how’s this one for size: ‘The president of General Motors was in a foul mood.’

Not bad, is it? It’s short and punchy. It involves important folks – the big boss of a big car company – and it leaves us wondering why said president is so cranky. A pity, then, that it’s the opening salvo of an absolute stinker – a book called Wheels, by Arthur Hailey. Readers of a certain mileage might recognise the author’s name. Hailey was a best-selling writer of the 1970s and ’80s, penning doorstop-sized blockbusters with the kind of single-word ba-boom titles that look good in huge blocky fonts, plastered across the entire top half of the jacket of what used to be called ‘airport books’; the kind of mind-numbing pot boiler that people once picked up in departures, years before we all started to carry equally mind-numbing technology in our pockets instead.