It's obviously a very personal thing, but I like the published version precisely because it disorients slightly, and doesn't start off with a plodding introduction through the characters' names, and then their descriptions, and then what they're doing, and then why...

But I also don't think it's actually unclear what's happening, just slightly disorienting -- and not, for me, in a tripping-over-cobblestones way (which I do find with more basic things like typos: more than three over two pages and I'm out of the mood entirely). I had to read vgqn's post several times earlier today in order to work out what about it she found unclear and/or jarring, but I didn't find the opening to the novel unclear when I first read it.