too many Daves

Why do I so admire Susan Orlean’s writing? Plenty of reasons. One big one: the way she begins. Here, for example, are the first four sentences of a 2002 piece I’d missed until today:

Hervé Halfon, a French person who hates French people, owns a record store on the Rue des Plantes, in Montparnasse, just a few Métro stops from the Eiffel Tower but spiritually closer to Avenue Gambela, in Congo, or to the Mokolo district, in Yaoundé, Cameroon. The store is called Afric’ Music. It has a small sign and an unremarkable window display, and it’s about the size and shape of a Parisian parking space. Inside, Hervé has spared all expense on the décor.

In the space of those four sentences, I laughed twice. Out loud. Old-school out loud. Not LOL, as a figure of speech. Actual laughter that was actually audible. But forget the laughter, which is undeniably subjective. Just look at the economy of those four sentences, the amount of data and flavor that’s conveyed in fewer than 100 words. So damn cool.