Call Me Ishmael

I have no idea where or when, but at some point I read the claim that all stories begin one of two ways: "A stranger came to town," or "I {he, she, they, etc.} set out on a journey." I couldn't fall asleep last night, so instead of counting sheep, or counting weeds in my yard, I lay there trying to figure out whether or not this is true. Does every story really begin one of those ways?

Set aside all memoir, biography, and autobiography - generic convention means all of these begin with the setting out on a journey. To narrow this down, I worked my way though a syllabus for a 20th Century American lit class I once taught. Here's what we have:

Sister Carrie: she set out on a journey
In Our Time: he set out on a journey
Their Eyes Were Watching God: a stranger came to town, then they set out on a journey
The Sound and the Fury: everyone avoided setting out on a journey, except Caddie, and her setting out ruined everything
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: strangers who had set out on a journey came to town
On the Road: I set out on a journey, then kept journeying trying to replicate the joys of that first journey

In terms of the fiction from that class, the journeys have it. But then I realized that's because I was teaching American literature, which is classically about journeys, movement, lighting out for the territory. The Europeans are much more the "stranger comes to town" types.

Here, though, is the question of the day: can you think of a story that doesn't begin either of these two ways?

Self-Inflicted Exhaustion

I read somewhere that something like 75% of dog owners let their pooch sleep in their bed. Of that group, close to 90% claim that they don't ever get a good night's sleep. Count me in that group. My household includes a cat as well as a dog. I wasn't going to let the dog sleep in the bed, but because the cat was already there, and you can't train a cat to do anything let alone sleep anywhere in particular, it only seemed fair to allow the dog up too. Everyone sleeps like a rock except for me, probably because I'm lying there pinned between two rocks.

Back in the day hunters and trappers would categorize night's coldness by the number of dogs it would take to keep warm. That's how the band got the name Three Dog Night; a real cold one would take three dogs to stay warm in an unheated cabin. In a heated house, "one dog one cat" nights feel like I've got a furnace in my bed. I don't just attempt to sleep between rocks, but between heated boulders, radiant and immovable.

All of this is to say that I've had three cups of coffee and am still too tired to think coherently about anything. I'll try to post later, after a cat nap or two and after my lying dog lets me sleep.