Which do you prefer? A? B? Neither?

In The New York Times, Karan Manjahar presents two different openings for his new novel, one from the galley, one from the novel as published, and asks readers (gift link) which they prefer. The novel begins with a telephone call from a lawyer announcing that the narrator’s father is being released from prison.

What I see in both passages: too much overwriting. A sample from the galley:

I could distinguish individual squirrels shrieking on the balconies of the gulmohar tree outside my dusty window. I could hear brisk ropes of water being let down onto the bottoms of plastic buckets, the swell and the music and the chaos of the family complex in which I lived with 20 other relatives — relatives I rarely saw but whose dramas gave shape to my dreams.

The family, in its tentacular way, must have had its own connections to Tihar Jail because the news got around quickly, and my Nokia began to jump and glow with texts.

And from the novel as published:

I ended the call with the lawyer and sat back in my scaly-walled flat, blinking against the onrush of hot green mulberry leaves outside the window.

In the tall days of summer, family members began to ring my bell.

The Times asks its readers to choose between the two. In these tall days of summer, I’d choose neither. “Individual squirrels shrieking,” “brisk ropes of water,” a family’s “tentacular way,” a phone that jumps and glows, a “scaly-walled flat,” “the onrush of hot green mulberry leaves”? No, no thanks. Another way to begin: “The lawyer said my father was getting out of prison.”

The invitation to compare began with a question from an audience member at a reading. And then: “As my book tour progressed, the dueling readings of the openings became a shtick I repurposed for other events.” And now further repurposed in The New York Times — and, lo, gaining publicity! Shtick we must.

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My son Ben, inspired by a recent adaptation of an old poem, has a suggestion: “Dad’s coming home.” Ha!

[The paragraph breaks in the samples I’ve chosen are in the original texts. Telemachus, in Christopher Nolan’s film: “My dad is coming home.”]