Beyond The First Lines

Our society has reached a point where people are spoiled with a variety of entertainment particularly in literature. With variety always comes choice and extremes. Individuals can easily find the type of reading that is suitable for their taste, or they might be so blinded by variety that they will only cling to what they think appeals to them, based on a quick and very superficial judgment. Just like Slater Brown, those that judge on a superficial level are unwilling to look past the first sentence if they are unimpressed by it. Those that take part in such a quick, unfair and ineffective evaluation are the closed- minded individuals in society because it is almost impossible to grasp the authors intended meaning of the work of literature as well as the quality and depth of the author’s work .

Slater Brown’s personality is contradictory to an extent. He is a writer ready to write about anything that comes to him that is worthy to be written ,yet, he doesn’t take the time to go outside his comfort zone and continue to read a book that does not draw his interest after the first sentence. Slater believes that he could easily tell whether a book is good or not just by reading the book’s first sentence without further investigation. He claims that all good sentences have a kind of vibe and “sincerity,” and yet he’s not sure what kind (Fishburne ,2009). Inasmuch as this is plausible because we live in a world where first impressions are everything, Slater’s judgment is flawed because it is very superficial and lacks genuine, intellectual reasoning (Slater himself is not sure what type of sincerity he looks for in the first sentence). And of course there is no doubt that it is unfair. Slater’s judgment is unfair in that it doesn’t give the author a chance to prove him or herself to a reader whose taste does not appeal to the author’s style,