Today's opening is from Flannery O'Conner's story "You Can't Be Any Poorer Than Dead." It is most easily available in The Complete Stories. I checked, and can't find a copy online. Even if you can't find the story, do yourself a favor and check out the opening sentence. It's a doozy.

Francis Marion Tarwater's uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up.

I missed a couple of these opening of the day things. I decided that no one is really reading them, and if they are, no one is clicking through to the stories. Call it a hunch. I was convinced that I should keep going anyway, and thus I will. Just for the hell of it. If someone actually does read this blog, and does read the stories, do me the favor of commenting. I'd like to know what I'm working with.

Anyway, today's opening of the day comes from Michael Chabon's short story "Werewolves in Their Youth" from the collection of the same name. It was, I believe, originally published in the New Yorker. You can read it for free if you are a New Yorker subscriber by clicking here. It's a good story, and the New Yorker is a great magazine. It would probably be worth your while to give it a go. If not, you can always pick up Chabon's collection. Also totally worth it.

I had known him as a bulldozer, as a samurai, as an android programmed to kill, as Plastic Man and Titanium Man and Matter-Eater Lad, as a Buick Electra, as a Peterbilt truck, and even, for a week, as the Mackinac Bridge, but it was as a werewolf that Timothy Stokes finally went too far.

Today's opening of the day is from "The Weather in the Streets" by Mary Robison. If you don't know of Robison, you probably should. She has a couple short story collections, and a couple of novels. Probably the better of those is titled Why Did I Ever. This story is pretty short, and was originally published in The New Yorker. It is available here.

For a time I lived in Hull, on Nantasket Beach, on Massachusetts’ south shore, where the winter storms sent the ocean booming up the streets and threw its lobsters onto the driveways and into the hedges; where the storms would melt your leather shoes and get you icy sopping wet and so cold that you wouldn’t turn your frozen face to speak to someone, and so cold that it didn’t matter anyway—you couldn’t hear.

Today's opening comes from "We Were Champions" by April Wilder. It was originally published earlier this year in Zoetrope. I don't know much about Ms. Wilder, or I'd direct you to some of her most noteworthy efforts. What I do know is this story is incredible. It gave me that feeling, at once wonderful and terrible, that I will never in my life write this well. You can read it all, for free, here.

A few days after Stephanie called and told me Bob had shot himself in the foot, then in the gut, Sammy Sosa got caught corking his bat. My feeling on that was, I didn't care if his bat was made of cotton candy, he had the sweetest skip-hop in baseball, and he couldn't stay in his shoes at the plate. As for Bob, that was more complicated. I guess I was surprised he'd used a shotgun, and that he took his foot off first, because I didn't see the need for that, unless he was trying to keep himself from getting away.

Everyday I will post a short story opening that I find exceptional. Could be a sentence or a paragraph. I will post a link to the story's full text if it is available online. If it is not online, I will tell you where the passage is from, and where you can track it down.

Today's opening of the day is from "Leopard" by Wells Tower. It is written in a unique second person voice, which makes it a bit different than most other things you've read. The story was originally published in The New Yorker, and is also available in Tower's collection Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned. The entire story can be read online, courtesy of The New Yorker, here.

Good morning.

You have not slept well. Don’t open your eyes. Stick out your tongue. Search for the little sore above your upper lip. Pray that it healed in the night.