My very first post in this series featured a sentence that referred to fairy tales. This one does, too. The words "Once upon a time" start many of those stories. It's a curious phrase that we seldom use for anything but starting a fairy tale. Look at how the pieces of the phrase don't quite hold what the whole phrase does. "Once" means this was a unique happening. "Upon" means placed on top of something. "A time" means one point in the past. That makes the whole phrase add up to "A unique happening posed on top a particular past moment." That's not completely off-base from what we understand when someone says, "Once upon a time...." yet the four classic words in the phrase also bring with them associations from every other story we've heard that starts that way. Not in the meaning (denotation), but in the associations (connotation), we hear, "I'm about to tell you a story that happened sometime, in the world of stories."
Fairy tales take place in a mythic past. It's not a specific date – it's a time, that could have been recently or long ago. In that time, birds may talk or trolls guard bridges – "once upon a time" is not history, it is archetype.
Gilbert starts her non-fiction book with the opening of a fairy tale. She places a specific, named person into mythic time: "Once upon a time, there was a man named Jack Gilbert...." The fairy tale opening makes Jack Gilbert seem like a mythic figure – a hero – it burnishes him with the same respect we hold for storybook characters. Jack Gilbert lived specific dates. With this opening, he seems to live during every time and no time.
The next phrase is "who was not related to me." Here, the author Gilbert brings herself into the story as well. We need to remember her name and know that people with the same last name are often related for this phrase to make sense. If we remember her name, and if we know that people with the same name are often related, then we might have thought she was talking about a relative. The phrase "who was not related to me," clears up that misconception – and also draws our attention to the possibility that they could have been related.
How much of language relies on shared assumptions! If our experience shows that people with the same last name are often related, then we might have wondered if the author and Jack Gilbert were related. The author then parries that question. It's not a question that everyone would come to. A Chinese friend once asked me, "Why do only related people have the same last name in the United States?" There are a scattering of people with my last name, Paradox, and, as far as I know, none of them are second cousins or closer to me.
The final phrase is "unfortunately for me," a bit of humorous self-deprecation. Jack Gilbert is mythic – Elisabeth Gilbert is not related, unfortunately, implying she would have been better off if she had been related to him. She is less. She could have turned it around into a classic boast, "unfortunately for him," which would have suggested he would be better off if he were related to her, placing her higher than his mythic status. She went the humbler route.
The word in the strong, final position is "me." Humble or not, she takes the last word.
This sentence uses three techniques from the post-modern toolkit. The first is remixing – taking other works from the past and reusing them consciously. The second is self-reference: Elizabeth Gilbert calls out herself and her own work within the sentence. The third is humor, and I find post-modernism without humor almost unbearable. Remixes and self-reference without humor read arrogant and grabby to me. With humor, they take on a pleasant playfulness.
Other critics differ from that conclusion.
It's the playfulness in this first sentence that most leads me to want to read on. I like the punctuation very much. The commas and dash add lightness, emphasis, and places to breathe. I'm also curious about the mythic character, Jack Gilbert, and why the author wishes she were related to him – a minor mystery to solve.
All in all, it is a playful and intriguing first sentence.
Graphic elements by Ken Silbert