I Love a Good Epigraph
a promise to the reader
Welcome to another installment of Linkpso, where I take a piece of content (article, essay, book, video… anything I can link to) and use it as a prompt for writing. I might be in conversation with the piece or use it as a springboard to go in a completely different direction. I also included a few more interesting links to inspire some Linkspo of your own.
Hello Friends,
Lately, I’m a little obsessed with the opening pages of a book —the epigraph, first sentence, the prologue, I dissect it all.
Today, I want to talk about the epigraph —not to be confused with an epitaph1, which is a whole other thing.
A while back, I took a workshop on reading with intention from Anne Bogel at Modern Mrs. Darcy. She opened my eyes to the epigraph's power in setting a book's mood. What does the author want us to feel going into this story?
To me, an epigraph feels like a promise, a way to tell the reader what they hope to accomplish in the following pages. After finishing a book, I like to return to the epigraph to see if the author fulfilled that promise.
Sometimes, the epigraph is trying too hard; it’s like the author wants to give more gravitas to their story than warranted or needed, but sometimes the author gets it so right that I want to know the whole backstory of how they came up with it. Also, I’m jealous.
R. Eric Tomas, in his new essay collection Congratulations, the Best is Over, is one of those authors.
Well, somone’s got to break the ice, and it might as well be me. I mean, I’m used to being hostes, it’s part of my husband’s work. And it’s always difficult when a group of new friends meet together for the first time, to get aquainted. So, I’m perfectly prepared to start the ball rolling… I mean, I… I have absolutely no idea what we’re doing here. Or what I’m doing here. Or what this place is about. But I’m determined to enjoy myself. —Mrs Peacock, Clue
Mrs. Peacock from Clue!!! How did he think of that?? Is he a huge fan of the movie? Does he have some affinity for the character?
and then this…
Andy Warhol: Why can’t it just be magic all the time?
Joan Diddion: What.
—published in Interview magazine
Is he a fan of Warhol, Diddion, or both? Also, I must find and read this interview. The “What.” with no question mark is confusing on the page at first, but in the audio version, Thomas reads Warhol like he’s this wistful dreamer and Diddion like an exasperated mother with her toddler.
More important than my questions about how the quotes were chosen is how relevant they are to setting a tone for the whole collection.
Thomas is exploring what it means to come home again. When he returns to his hometown of Baltimore, he has to reckon with his complicated feelings about where he is from2. Like Mrs. Peacock, he grits his teeth, “determined to enjoy himself,” but he has no idea what he is doing. Like Warhol, he always expects magic, but the world answers back, like Didion. It’s funny and unexpected and gently pulls you into the story.
My obsession for beginnings stems from the fact that I have written and re-written the first five pages of my own memoir about a million times. Am I starting in the right place? Do I give enough information so the reader isn’t lost but not so much that they feel bogged down? Is there too much backstory?
… is there any way I can change the ending?
Sadly, no, but that’s a story for another day. Until then, I will continue to study the opening pages of great writers.
This is where I am today. Thank you for listening.
Emily
P.S. Do you pay attention to an epigraph, or do you see it as just filler? Do you ever return to the epigraph after finishing a book?
Linkspo
If you want to nerd out a little more on the epigraph, check this out from
She calls it “a protector for the manuscript, like a literary godparent for its trajectory.”Give women more pockets! (Dylan Mahaney)
Take your mom on a trip (Jeddidiah Jenkins)
Thank you, thank you, thank you,
for sharing my essay about how cliches saved my life.If you only have time for one thing… We have completely moved out of our house and are settling into a rental for the foreseeable future! Keep an eye out for a new section of the newsletter called “But Where Will We Put the Christmas Tree?” It’s a real-time flash memoir documenting the process and exploring the idea of home. How we make a home, how we find a home in other people, and what is home when there is always someone missing from the dinner table?
I’m not totally sold on the title… let me know what you think in the comments.
In the first draft of this essay, I confused epigraph —a short quotation or saying at the beginning of a book or chapter intended to suggest its theme, with epitaph —a phrase or form of words written in memory of a person who has died, especially as an inscription on a tombstone. Fortunately, I caught my mistake before hitting publish, otherwise, this might have been a very different essay.
Where I Was From is the title of an essay collection by Joan Didion, and now my mind is blown… Am I slow to pick up these references? Do other people get them on the first try?
There was an epigraph that I liked rattling around in my brain and I retrieved.it.
From "A Visit From the Goon Squad."
“It is in ourselves that we should seek to find those fixed places, contemporaneous with different years.” Marcel Proust
robertsdavidn.substack.com/about
A simple “what.” is reason enough for me to love Didion even more!