‘The idea really came to me the day I got my new false teeth.’

Getting to Know Someone by Their Teeth --- the first sentence of George Orwell’s 1939 novel, Coming Up for Air

First of all, this sentence makes me smile. It’s English slapstick. When I first typed it up, I left out the ‘really.’ It felt too casual. But then I read this sentence again. It’s all about placement and timing: ‘the idea’ at the beginning of the sentence turns into a pair of ‘new false teeth’. The teeth seem to topple off the end of the sentence. If you read the sentence out loud you fall more heavily on really came to me. Then the sentence starts again in the middle with the day, which echoes the idea, as they follow the same pattern. The day I got my new false teeth is a funny statement; it sounds like the title of a comic novel. You don’t mark or name a day after a set of false teeth – do you? I suppose you might. I haven’t quite reached the false teeth stage yet. I mark my days by how much writing I’ve done or not done. How many hours I’ve sat by myself tippety-tap-tapping away.  

I hear a person behind this sentence. Only a person would add ‘really’, which isn’t really needed. Orwell’s narrator is asking us to dismiss his character – what soon becomes the beleaguered husband and father, George Bowling – and his silly idea. George Bowling definitely sounds silly, and generally speaking, we are entertained by silly people. We smile, and we are encouraged to do so, by those teeth. In fact, you can’t move for teeth. The image rears up at the end of the sentence, oversized, absurd.  I read the sentence again. It is warm. Orwell likes his character. But does his character like himself, I wonder? I shall have to read on.