As I tell my students, when you complete a draft, go back and read your first and your final sentences. Given that, no wonder BernardĪlong with that first sentence, or what I call “the place of privilege” in the essay, I read the final sentence. Burls, he decides years later, perfectly combines boys and girls. Finally, the “curve of a word” works on two levels: first, Bernard’s encounter with gender-bending curves his perspective of sexual distinction, and second, Cooper struggles, as a young boy, to find a word for what he had seen. “Name” evokes the implications of what we call things, a central question of the essay. “I loved the restaurant’s name, a compact curve of a word.” Bernard Cooper’s first sentence in “Burl’s”1 introduces the restaurant, a location that creates Cooper’s oft-used bracketing structure, as the essay begins and ends at the restaurant. “Fallen in love” foreshadows not only the fascination with the “color” but also hints at the lover that’s been lost. It’s a sentence with a first word that foregrounds supposition and speculation as Nelson thinks throughout the text, beginning many segments with words such as “Imagine,” “Perhaps,” “Then Again,” or “On the other hand.” She also introduces the “you,” a haunting presence of absence in the text.
“Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color.” And when I finish reading that essay, I immediately flip back (or scroll up) and read that sentence again with what I have come to know. When I read an essay, I linger on the first sentence-sure that all I need to know is there.