Sea Change: How Newspapers Remind Me That Nonfiction Is Not Doomed

It seems rather fitting that we end this course’s reading on newspaper writing. We began the semester with Paige’s promise that now is the best time to be a writer of nonfiction, and since that proclamation we’ve spent weeks traversing the modern genre, asking what makes good nonfiction, what formats it thrives in, and how it is changing. I think most will agree that we found many (and sometimes differing) answers to these questions. And so now we come to newspapers, those embattled, historic flagships of the nonfiction genre that just about every one of my parents’ friends point to as a reason for why I might just be better off securing a teaching gig and writing “on the side.” Newspapers have been in decline for decades for a multitude of reasons (alterations in ad revenue and direction, changes in media, etc.,) but I’ll go out on a limb here and say that writing and writers are not the primary reason—or even one of them. Sure, each publication battles (or should) with the caliber of its content, but it is rarely the words on the page that spell out this medium’s demise. On the contrary, newspapers provide room not only for excellent investigative journalism and other necessary works, but, as evidenced in this week’s reading, some truly artful, gripping, witty articles of nonfiction. Forget pyramid structuring or third-person removed—Paul Sahre, Amy Ellis Nutt, and Tom Wolfe remind me that while the newsprint word may be faltering, the craftsmanship within it certainly is not. For this reading response, I’ll focus upon “The Wreck of the Lady Mary.”

            I was a little surprised to see Amy Ellis Nutt’s Star-Ledger article on our reading list—not because of any preconceptions regarding the author, but rather because the Star-Ledger was always a staple in my house (as my parents were both NJ natives) but maintained a value amongst the adult readers somewhere above the Detroit News and Ann Arbor News (RIP) but certainly below the New York Times and the Detroit Free Press. I had it pegged as a bit of a rag, which has made my reading of “The Wreck of the Lady Mary” a happy, fulfilling experience. Since reading this article, I’ve explored NJ.com and found that, hey—the Ledger really does print some great work.

What struck me most about this article was its slowness, which stands as a distinct contrast to what I normally think of when I think of newspaper articles. It is careful yet smoothly flowing, detailed but not meticulous. Her characterizations of the men on the Lady Mary, as well as those intimately involved in the after-effects of its sinking, are often, for a lack of a better word, beautiful in its simplicity:

“Tim, still cradled in the basket is carefully lowered to the ground. The entire time, Downham continues CPR, even as Tim is lifted onto a gurney. Both bodies are put in the second ambulance, to be taken to the morgue at Shore Memorial Hospital, nine miles from Atlantic City. Finally Downham stops the compressions. ‘Is there anything else I could have done?’ he asks the EMT. ‘No,’ the man replies. ‘Nothing.’” (The conclusion of Part 2)

Here, I see Nutt using the inherent barriers of newspaper writing to her and to the story’s advantage. This excerpt is filled with fact, with information that helps move the story along—just as a good newspaper article “should” be. Through the display of these facts, however, and without editorializing, she determines for us mood, scene and character. Through the absence of certain stated facts (that Tim and Bobo are long-dead and that CPR was surely fruitless while putting a corpse in a body bag), having trust in the reader and in the thrust of her narrative, she emphasizes the emotional impact of the scene.

            Another element of this article that stood out to me was how seamlessly Nutt was able to build composite scenes, telling the whole story (or something close to it) through a cobbling together of what were surely many interviews. She is able to demonstrate (how, exactly, I don’t yet fully understand) to the reader that there are reputable sources of the information she relays, but she doesn’t muddy up her narrative by telling us directly when and where from which the information came. Take for example the very first part of Part 1. “Seesawing across the ocean, he cannot tell east from west, up from down. At the top of a wave the night sky spins open, then slides away. Buckets of stars spill to the sea.” She lets this image sit with us, the stunning description building immediately the scene, which Jose Arias surely described to her. But she doesn’t write, “As Arias told me.” No, she trusts in her research, narrative and her readers to infer the journalistic integrity behind these sentences.

            One critique of “The Wreck of the Lady Mary” that I can’t quite seem to reckon with is the general lack of answers it yields regarding the “mystery” of the boats’ sinking. To her and her editors’ credit, Nutt was very upfront in her article regarding the limitations she met in trying to uncover what really happened that morning in March 2009. The biggest problem was that they were unable to speak with Reederie Thomas Schulte, the owner of the Cap Beatrice—or anyone associated with him, apparently. It is great that Nutt is so forthcoming about these hurdles, along being explicit about the research she did on scallop boats and on dry suits, but honesty doesn’t make up for the fact that, to me, once the stories of the sinking, rescue and emotional aftermath were told, the article appears to be spinning its wheels. Nutt basically lays out for us the questions that remain amidst the wreck, but is unable to find any answers—which, to me signifies another area where honesty could have been applied. Why couldn’t Nutt have said, following Part 3 that no conclusive evidence was found in demystifying the wreck and, rather than stringing us on for the next 2 chapters, merely cut out the whole “clue” and “lead” thing? There is nothing wrong with exploring the mystery surrounding the wreck, but I ask that we don’t pretend that this article was able to do work that it wasn’t. I suspect that either Nutt or her editors were weary of packaging an article that was geared towards human interest-type story telling, and therefore concluded that the way to keep people readings for 5 separate chapters is to pose a conflict (why did the boat sink?) and a promise of a solution—which never comes. This bothers me because I feel that Nutt’s writing drives this article so solidly by itself that it seems as almost a disservice to her creative skill to frame this piece like some sort of investigation into Titanic’s sinking. However, this critique seems to me to be a writerly one, as I cannot see the average reader having problems with the lack of resolution within this article.

So, it is appropriate that, in a course which promised to change my mood and opinion surrounding the genre, we at last look to newspapers, the proverbial zombie of the nonfiction world and find on its pages living, breathing, excellent writing. I’m happy to report that Paige delivered on her promise—when even the most damned medium of our set is still yielding superior work and forming new places and spaces to share it, I know that now really is a great time to write nonfiction.

Notes on Authorial Presence in Encounters with the Archdruid

The Glen Canyon Dam. Source: wildnatureimages.com [Ed. note: Ironic website for this picture to come from.]

        

    I’ve never read a work of nonfiction with an authorial presence quite like the one John McPhee strikes in Encounters with the Archdruid. On the page, McPhee is unavoidably extant, but somehow manages to stay out of the fray, letting the subjects and the scene come alive around and without him. Though I wonder if others might disagree with me, I found the author’s presence to be remarkably without conflict—we know that he has deep ties with David Brower but he does not allow this fact to obscure the validity of his reporting. With the help of a certain narrative grace, McPhee is able balance between being a part of the story and the observer of it, all without ever truly letting on his own position on the politics at hand.

            Here are some points I think might be interesting to discuss in class:

McPhee’s mediator presence – I would argue that the author asserts himself as a mediator in that he is largely impartial, is the person who brings Brower together with his “adversaries,” and is sometimes the one asking the questions debated between his subjects. Is McPhee’s mediation the key to the success of his authorial presence in this book?

Allusions to relationships with characters off the page – How does McPhee include evidence of a relationship with Brower that goes beyond this book without allowing such information to compromise his credibility?

Overt presence vs covert presence – At times, McPhee sets a scene as though he is no part of it. [pg. 93: “Fraser is cruising through Sea Pines in an air-conditioned green dodge. . .”] At other times, he introduces a scene with his personal observations. [pg. 174: “Mile 130. The water is smooth here, and will be smooth for three hundred yards, and then we are going over another rapid.”] How does he do both in one volume—and pull it off? Is one technique better than the other? Would anyone in the class argue that he should have stayed with one technique for the entire book?

Notes on Character Profiles

There are few works that I enjoy reading more than character profiles—entire bodies of writing dedicated to parsing out the fascinating nuances of an individual. One of the reasons why I flipped literary sides from fiction to nonfiction was my reverence for authentic character. People and the quiet dramas that consume them enthrall me—so much so that I began to feel that neglecting this ready wealth of resources that sit beside me on the bus, pass me on the stairs, talk loudly into their cell phones ahead of me in line, was a tantamount to criminal. For a person like myself, who so easily becomes absorbed by the miniscule concerns of my little life, the idea that the personal worlds of others are just as complex and discouraging at mine is deeply comforting. I am drawn to the formulating depths of individual character, and therefore drawn to writing that dives in to such places.

It seems to me that a great profile is neither wholly complimentary, nor is it wholly damning. It should come close to both the truth of how that person is perceived by the public and the realities of how they perceive themselves. A great character profile should be human, and by that I mean multifaceted, vaguely self-contradictory, a little gritty and illuminating in the connections it builds (or does not build) between the individual and the masses. I would argue that all great nonfiction should have elements of an excellent character profile—even nonfiction that does not include humans, as character can be found far beyond the limits of flesh and blood.

Our readings this week is evidence not just of superior character profiles, but also of the different forms such profiles can successfully embody. We have a character built through pointed questions and a subject’s own words in “Janet Malcolm, The Art of Nonfiction No. 4.” Joan Schenkar briefly but concisely explores Theodora Keogh’s character through a double lens of her life and her writing. And, in John Jeremiah Sullivan’s work, we have an essay that analyzes Andrew Lytle’s character by evaluating its decline or adulteration in the Southern writer’s old age.  Three different subjects, three different authors, three different forms—but these pieces are the same in that they each offer unique and moving insight into the lives they profile.

Some note on each of these works:

Andrew Lytle. Source: thefsw.org

"Mister Lytle: An Essay." There are many admirable elements to this essay, not least of which is the smooth-flowing prose that both sets a scene and analyzes it. What I admire most about this piece, however, is that Sullivan resists the urge to go beyond the scope of his own knowledge concerning Lytle. He could have easily provided some summary of who Lytle was before he became so old, could have gone on about his publishing credits and reputation prior to his sad cabin days. Instead of going this easy, diplomatic route, Sullivan instead offers up a profile that hinges upon what old age did and did not take from Lytle. He doesn’t pussy-foot around Lytle’s decrepitude but lets it stand as an authentic representation of the author’s character and style.  Is this character profile a complete representation of the Lytle himself? Yes, in that it shows him as he was during the year Sullivan knew him, and no, because it shows him as he was during just that year. But who is to say that a character profile must be thorough, all encompassing? I appreciate that Sullivan threw out the notion that he needed to represent the author in all of his dimensions and instead focused in on one dimension to hint towards all of the many other elements of this fascinating character.

Ms. Keogh. Source: newyorksocialdiary.com

"The Late, Great Theodora Keogh." This is a rather cosmetic comment, but I must say that I truly appreciated the two photos included in this article. Because it was short in length, these visual aides added an extra element to Schenkar’s profile. The photos back up in an indescribable way the assertions made about Keogh’s character. It makes me think about the Devil in the White City and how changed the text may have been had Larson included photos of Holmes, the murderer.

Janet Malcolm. Source: www.jewishjournal.com

"Janet Malcolm, The Art of Nonfiction No. 4." What struck me most about this interview was how much one can learn about Malcolm’s character from the questions she chose not to answer from the interviewer. At first, my thought was that the candidness of a face-to-face interview would be lost in an email exchange, but I was happy to see that I was wrong. You can feel the tension between Malcolm and some of these questions, as well as some of her own answers, and these tensions reveal much about the author, especially in regards to how she sees herself and wants others to see her.

Of course, one must consider the venue in regards to the success of these profiles—and I look forward to reading what my brilliant classmates have to say on this subject. All three of these pieces are from The Paris Review—a magazine for writers, produced by writers. With it’s nearly 60 years of existence and masthead and TOC so continually weighted by the lustrous names of the literary elite, this publication has an aura and influence all its own. Such provenance and authority no doubt influences the work produced for its pages.

First—The Paris Review seems to know its audience. They don’t waste precious space detailing each author’s bibliography because they assume their readers will already know such information, or at least will possess the smarts and incentive to look it up. Furthermore, The Paris Review knows the lens through which its articles are read. This is writing for writers, meaning that inquiries into the nuances of the profession, of technique and philosophy are prioritized. These three pieces are not profiles that are concerned only with the subject as a writer, or with the subject as a layperson—these writings demonstrate the necessity of evaluating both sides—of evaluating a writer’s professional and personal life in order to obtain the most insightful profile. They seek to enlighten the reader not just to the useful bits of writerly advice the subject divulges or divulged, but also to the ways in which the subject lived, thought, struggled. In these areas the authors of these pieces seem to have mined the most value, for they are pointing us towards writerly lessons that the subject himself may not have known he could offer. In addition to gearing articles to its specific audience and creating space for three-dimensional artist profiles, the editors and writers of The Paris Review also ensure that the text printed is of a comparable caliber to the text they analyze. By this I mean only that the writing produced for the magazine is often rich, smart and beautiful, which of course seems only fitting given its topics and contributors. Such excellent prose translates into powerful profiles in these three instances, which then lends to the narrative authority of the authors.

I have questions regarding the reception that these sorts of works have/had outside of the writing community. Though I know no non-writers who read The Paris Review, I do know quite a few non-writers who read The New Yorker, which often publishes similar author profiles in its editions. My fellow book-nerds tend to love these long-form inquiries into the writers’ life, but those less enchanted by the literary world have voiced annoyance regarding such pieces. Some claim that profiles like these can be “boring” since they don’t really care about how many hours the author spends writing a day, or what kind of pen she can’t live without. Others find such profiles almost offensive—they claim that there is something lost when a writer pulls back the curtain to reveal the grimy inner-workings behind the production of a celebrated volume. Its as though the magic of literature is being stolen from them in these close looks into writers’ lives. These are individuals that maintain that a book should stand alone and that understanding it should be done without the consideration of its creator. Of course, I can’t fully sympathize with these complaints, but I can’t shake the need to question what might be lost in looking at a writer’s professional work through her personal life. Does doing so enlighten or narrow our view of the literature? For writers, the answer to this seems easy, since we gain so much from seeing the “big” picture surrounding a work of great writing—but what about the rest of us? 

The Effects of Zadie Smith's Changing Mind

            Previous to this week’s reading, what I knew of Zadie Smith extended no further than the knowledge that she inhabited the coveted world of the literary prodigy. She published her first book at 25—not only that, but the text was a critical success. Damn her, I’ve often thought. How many authors have what it takes to prove within their first published work that they are a writer of exceptional talent and insight?

            It was satisfying then, to actually read her writing and witness for myself her exceptional ability. She doesn’t merely have a way with words—she has considerable intelligence and has mastered its translation onto the page.  Though I haven’t yet read her fiction--her main medium—and am therefore unable to speak to her entire set of skills, I feel confident in writing that Smith has a special knack for exploring a topic with nuance and conviction while also employing fascinating elements of neutrality, confession and flexibility of opinion. NPR’s Heller McAlpin notes that “Whether writing about Foster Wallace, Forster or Zora Neale Hurston, Smith shows a deeply intellectual and continually evolving appreciation of literature,” while also reminding us that “a flexible mind is an open mind.” This emphasis on evolution and flexibility is the seed of Smith’s genius in Changing My Mind, I think.

            Typically, I have serious philosophical reservations about critical analysis or theory around a text. I feel this way for a variety of reasons but predominantly because I have a hard time buying the idea that any thinker is as sure of a theory or evaluation as authors tend to be in these types of writing. What is rarely evident is the process through which the thinker/writer had to muddle before reaching her or his conviction. There is a thesis, proof, and conclusion. As a compulsive muddler myself, I find this form difficult to understand and impossible to sympathize. I might be so bold as to say that Zadie Smith agrees with me here—and I find evidence for this in “Rereading Bathes and Nabokov.” She starts out this essay by unquestioningly agreeing with Nabokov’s theory (or belief) that “one cannot read a book: one can only reread it.” (42) From these first two pages, however, Smith doesn’t go on to haughtily espouse upon her own theories or beliefs about writing, reading and the different stances on the subjects held by these two famous authors. Instead, she turns her essay into a vague map of the journey she took through Nabokov and Barthe’s ideas, confessing without embarrassment her ideological missteps and naïve misreading. She does all of this without ever losing authority or conviction within her narrative voice, which is quite extraordinary as I assume that many authors avoid forms like the one Smith is taking for fear of losing authority and conviction in the minds of readers. Instead, the fact that Smith invites us into her own intellectual evolution through engaging, sometimes funny prose, makes her ultimate conclusions that much more firm and believable. There don’t seem to be any pretenses. She says to us relatively straight forwardly—hey, I once read Barthes “badly,” but from that experience I know have gained a better understanding of how to read him well.

            What do I mean when I write that Zadie Smith’s narrative is engaging? As the assigned reviews we read suggest, I am surely not the only one to assess the author in this way. I think that the engaging nature of her prose lies in its confessional nature. She doesn’t seem to be holding back, to be putting on any falsities or exaggerations of her skills and intelligence. Perhaps her ability to avoid such things is rooted in her early success. Or perhaps she is a writer who simply feels comfortable with herself on the page, not allowing hesitation over including some element of her personal self (her British sense of humor, for example) amidst more formal, intellectual evaluations. She thus mixes a warm conversation with a hot academic debate. She pits two literary greats against each other and then injects her own grappling with their work in a way that both proves her ability to critically exchange with such nuanced texts and entities while asserting herself as a thinker with evolving, sometimes incorrect understandings. Ricky Opaterny writes in reference to an interview Smith gave that “Smith critiques with a seriousness that is funny rather than earnest, engaging rather than alienating.” I agree with him that her critiques are serious, funny and engaging—but I think he is wrong in saying that she is not earnest. Smith is indeed earnest in her thoughts and theories—even when she later divulges that she has since changed her mind—and in this earnest approach is an important part of why she can be so engaging. She isn’t afraid to say in a way, this is what I believe NOW, and I believe it fully, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t soon change my mind. Such is an admission of her humanness—the ultimate engaging quality of an author.

            On a somewhat related note, I was intrigued by Smith’s stance on memoir. She told NPR: "I think maybe with the rest of my family, they're much larger than life. My father was a little bit more elusive," she says. But "it's also a betrayal once you write about someone who's died: What remains is what you've written. And it begins to replace your memories the way that photographs replace real things. So I think it's a dangerous act. I don't think I'd ever write a full memoir for that reason — it seems to over-slick reality with something else."

            For an author so fearless about being wrong in her critical writing, I find it surprising that she would be so apprehensive about getting it “wrong” in memoir. I sympathize with her worries that “what remains is what you’ve written” about a person now dead, but I am struck by the fact that she doesn’t see the similarities between muddling through the facts or perceptions around a person’s life and muddling through literary theories. As her beliefs about Nabokov and Barthes evolved over time and therefore created further nuance to her interpretations, her beliefs about her father surely evolved as well, therefore creating new insight regarding his life and its impact upon hers.

Where in Hell is the Devil? Thoughts on Plot and Research in The Devil in the White City

Mr. H.H. Homes himself. (Source: catkinsdiet.tumblr.com)

I have to admit that I was pretty excited to read Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City. The subtitle really snagged me: “Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair that Changed America.” I have a penchant for both historical nonfiction and factual crime writing. Call it a dark nerdiness. I was eager to explore a volume that juxtaposes a fleeting moment in history with one of human nature’s most constant, reoccurring elements: our ability to do gruesome harm to others. I was generally familiar with H.H. Holmes as a murderous entity. You don’t grow up in the Midwest with a fascination in the grim without hearing something about the serial killer doctor who made a name for himself in a hotel outfitted with homicidal secret rooms, levers, and corpse disposal devices. I was only a little aware of the marvels of the 1893 World’s Fair and was eager to learn more about the no-doubt fascinating elements that made it what it was. So, I sat down with Devil in the White City ready to dig in to a meaty piece of historical crime nonfiction that, like the reviews on the back outside cover promised, would be “engrossing,” “dazzling,” and “utterly fascinating.”

            Having completed the reading, I can’t say that this book lived up to even a fraction of the hype my own brain had generated. Yes, I expected something different than what the book truly is—and that is, in part, my own fault. After all, what published document ever included anything but glowing reviews on its covers? I have a certain angle to my interests and I made a mistake in expecting a book to conform to such particulars. However, beyond my own faulty expectations, I still must conclude that Larson’s work is quite inexcusably (and surely purposely) mis-titled. For a book marketed as a great work of fact crime writing, it sure concentrates its telling on a disproportionally small amount of writing about actual crime. Instead, this book details meticulously, at great length, nearly every aspect of putting together the World’s Fair of ’93. There are character profiles of the Chicago Gilded Age’s most influential men, meeting notes, dinner menus, pages detailing petty arguments between architects, paragraphs and paragraphs of narrative worry over whether or not the Fair will ever open its doors. (Spoiler Alert circa 1893: It does.)

            There is no doubt: Larson did an incredible amount of research for this book. His endnotes span to #390—one for each page written. His bibliography includes dozens upon dozens of books, periodicals, letters and diaries. There is no little value to the fact that he amassed so much information into the pages of one volume. Devil in the White City stands as an invaluable resource for anyone longing to know how, exactly, the Chicago World’s Fair was executed on the executive scale (we hear very little about the experience of the worker or employee). In general, he was able to translate these primary and secondary sources into the embodiment of several vivid characters—most notably Burnham and Olmstead—thus offering human softness to the pages of factual recollection. What Devil in the White City does not stand as, in my mind, is a great, or even all that good, work of crime writing.

(Source: broadwayworld.com)

According to my calculations, there are but 132 pages written on Holmes and his crimes—as opposed to the remaining 258 pages left to detail Burnham’s every move along with a seemingly inconsequential (for the means of this book, that is) foray into the assassin, Prendergast. The lopsidedness of these two narrative strains raises questions in my mind beyond the choice in titling—if I were to be very diplomatic, I could see the “Devil” in the title as a reference to the complications and tragedies experienced in making and maintaining the fairgrounds, rather than only an allusion to Holmes. Rather, it makes me question the way that research clearly dictated the drive of this book. One of the reasons why the Gilded Age is so vivid in the minds of modern society is that it was an exceedingly well-documented era, as Larson himself details. Literacy was on the rise, meaning that letters describing all parts of daily life were long and frequent. Newspapers were gaining speed and readers, so that civic and other events were recorded and interpreted for future generations. Still and moving pictures were becoming exceedingly common, marking the first time in history where we are able to judge and assess an era not only on words, documents and subjective art work, but actual, factual images. From this flurry of sources, Larson was able to craft a three-dimensional world around Burnham and his colleagues—other that digging up such elements, he just had to read, study and turn them out with his narrative flair into chapters. In many ways, the writing appearing in those 258 pages was already half finished for Larson before he even sat down at his computer. The facts, the quotes—they were there already. (I don’t mean to minimize his effort here—this no doubt demanded an extreme amount of work and thought.)

What seems to have been much less pre-packaged is information on Holmes. Until his arrest, he was a nobody (an identity deeply connected to his ability to commit such murders) and therefore had a much smaller paper trail than the rest of the book’s subjects. What Larson did have was witness testimony and Holmes’ own memoir—all produced after the murders had been discovered. Drawing an authentic character out of such slanted and colored sources was a huge challenge—one I think Larson met by simply overwhelming the reader with the research he WAS able to rely upon: all those meticulously detailed (and, in my opinion, really quite boring) Fair facts. In some places, Larson seemed to take liberties with Holmes’ story, offering conjecture or narrative interpretation, as evidenced in the scene describing Anna’s final thoughts as she suffocated in the vault. In other places, though, it seemed like Larson was wary of stepping outside of the information his sources offered, making the chapters on Holmes brief and mounted in foreshadowing that never truly developed into the excitement it promised.

Why was Larson so hesitant to expand upon Holmes’ personality and crimes at times and not at others? What consequences accrue when a writer forms structure and plot around research that is readily available? In the case of this book, I would say that the major consequence is a lopsided plot and a number of boring pages leading nowhere. I think the disparity in focus between the two subjects might have been easier for me to take had the two story strains been working together towards an insightful, revolutionary theme. However, when I reached the final pages, I found nothing of the sort. It seems to me that the juxtaposition between murderer and creators was merely meant to highlight the irony and fallacies inherent in building a city meant to epitomize progress, culture and beauty amongst a setting of increasing filth and depravity. Sure, this is an interesting idea to consider, but one I found to be apparent within the first 20 pages—meaning that I did not need another 370 pages to drill the point home. After all, isn’t evil behind the face of success kind of the well-known theme of the Gilded Age as a whole? What then, does Larson offer us in this juxtaposition that we don’t already know well enough? What was billed as “a wonderfully unexpected book” that balances “grisly details with the far-reaching implications of the World’s Fair” (from the back cover) is, in my opinion, not. It would be better classified as a book of historical documentation than a story of “Murder, Magic and Madness.”

The form and framing of this book did imbed in me some lingering questions, however: How does an author build suspense in the telling of a historical event, the ending of which many readers are already aware? Should suspense even be an attempted story-telling technique in historical nonfiction? I personally found Larson’s continued attempt to build suspense and speculation around whether or not the Fair would be completed or successful an annoying time waster. What made this device especially annoying was the uniformity in the way he attempted it: a line break and then a single, short sentence before a chapter or section’s end. Hey, Larson: the cover of your book is a picture of the Fair. We know it happened, so stop trying to make us worry that it might not. In my mind, Larson’s suspense attempts is tantamount to a writer crafting a book on the Titanic that works to get readers’ biting their nails over whether or not the ship really was “unsinkable.” On the other hand, the suspension elements did serve to show just how precarious the situation was, how contingent the Fair’s existence was on so many small factors. It highlighted the domino effect that dictates the failure or success of such massive undertakings. So then, when is it appropriate to use suspense in historical nonfiction, and how is it best used? I’ll try to consider this as I look back over other nonfiction works of history that I found more satisfying than Larson’s apparent masterpiece.

Hello, “Goodbye”: On the Relevancy of Joan Didion’s “Goodbye to All That”

New York in the 1960's. Source berlincheesecake.blogspot.com

          When I left New York after four years spent in the shadow of the city, I was unable to find the words to explain why I felt the urgent need to escape. At the time, all of my friends were moving into the hipster-haven of Williamsburg, Brooklyn and spoke about New York City as the only sensible place in the entire world in which to live. “Everything is here,” one of them told me, and I couldn’t disagree. After all, it wasn’t long ago that I had arrived in Yonkers from Michigan, where life seemed small and provincial in contrast to the big world of the Big Apple. I had refused to apply to college anywhere outside of New York City’s tri-state area, confident that the city was the best and only option for an aspiring writer looking to learn the world. Over those four years, I spent weekends on Canal Street, in SoHo, DUMBO and the museum district; I spent summers living on Christopher Street in the West Village. Everything seemed to be there, in New York. Yet, by May of my last year in college, I was packing my bags for Georgia, bound for a life that promised to be the exact opposite of what was there in the city. My friends acted like I had chosen to move to a third-world country. “What the hell are you going to do out there?” a friend worriedly asked me. “Become a peanut farmer?” The truth was that I had no idea what I was going to do in Georgia, but I knew I couldn’t stay in New York—I just didn’t know how to explain why. But, in 1967, Joan Didion did.

            Isn’t it thrilling to find a piece of writing that captures so perfectly an experience or emotion with which you are so familiar? Didion’s “Goodbye to All That” is that kind of essay for me, though her prose and analysis is surely more elegant than mine might ever be. What was surprising to me was that, while my experience emerged from the early years of the 21^st century, Didion wrote her essay in 1967, exactly 40 years before I made my exodus South. A lot of things happened in and around New York City in those 40 years—from a rise in population of over 280,000 people, to the substitution of the iconic if bulky medallion cabs for Crown Vics, to the rise and fall of the World Trade Center towers—yet still, Didion’s experience seemed to speak directly to my own with few obvious exceptions. In my mind, this connection illustrates how and why “Goodbye to All That” has such staying power. The author is writing not about a time in New York or in her own life, but rather she was defining the entity New York has become within the collective consciousness of young Americans growing up in small towns. It is about the emotion connected to a location—and, as far as I know, emotion does not expire with a new decade. 

Source: nnbd.com

In this piece, Didion doesn’t write about what New York was as a place, she writes about what the city felt like to her. She helps to open her experience to her readers by repeatedly using the pronouns “us” and “we”: “I suppose a lot of us who have been very young in New York have the same scenes in our home screens.” In doing so in 1967, she acknowledged and asserted the universality of her experience within her generation; now, two generations later, this tactic succeeds at the same goal. Yet, though accepting that she is not alone in her interpretations of New York, she concentrates most of her prose around her own personal sentiments and life events in a way that is so precise and so impassioned that it is easy for a reader to empathize with the humanity of her experience, rather than the mere specifics. Reading this essay, I am reminded of the importance of writing beyond just a time in history and instead turning nonfiction prose towards deeper, more universal concepts about meaning and emotion. After all, isn’t that precisely why Shakespeare remains so popular, because he was able to capture human emotions that remain as authentic today as they did first performed on the dirty stage of the Globe?

Didion’s “Goodbye to All That” was first published in The Saturday Evening Post under the title “Farewell to the Enchanted City.” It was published within her 1968 collection of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. I am a little ashamed to say that, despite that Slouching sits on my bookshelf while I write, and despite the fact I have read most of its essays, I have never before read “Goodbye to All That.” In reading the essay on its own through Byliner, it was removed from the context of Didion’s previous work and was allowed to stand on its own. It wasn’t bookended by other essays that are far more illustrative of the time in which the author wrote, nor influenced by other cultural or personal assessments she made throughout her volume. It made me feel like I was given an opportunity to read it as it was first published, in a magazine, stuck amidst nonrelated text, insisting to be taken on its own. Beyond the fact that Byliner and sites like it have the ability to turn the spotlight on classic though potentially forgotten works, it seems to permit and encourage the kind of reading experience that I had here, where the essay stands alone and for itself. But it isn’t as if we are reading such resurrected works within a vacuum. Once I finished “Goodbye to All That,” I returned to Byliner to peruse the other Didion works they had on file—works that spanned from the early ‘60s to 2008. Some of these pieces were hard-to-obtain magazine exclusives; others had been published within her many volumes of essays. Either way, viewing her work throughout the different stages of her career allowed me to explore “Goodbye” also as a cog in the workings of the author’s long and prolific career. In my mind, that is the greatest benefit Byliner and other sites maintaining classic works offer to modern readers: the ability to read a work both and separately as an isolated essay standing on its own, and as a piece that speaks to the larger assemblage of an author’s career.

Missing the Mark: Emily Bazelon’s “What Really Happened to Phoebe Prince?”

          The core insight in Emily Bazelon’s thought-provoking investigative article seems to be that, because “nobody, rightly, wants to blame the girl who died,” the community cast about for people to blame for Phoebe Prince’s suicide, finally resting on the hot button but retaliation-ready concept of school bullies. Bazelon points out that there is much more to the story than what was initially reported and then infers to the readers of Slate that she intends to get down to the truth of the matter. Her goal is ambitious, but one that I believe she fails to reach as a result of misleading and incomplete reporting, and a complete (and completely astounding) disregard for one of the most troubling aspects of this case: the media’s involvement.

            From the very first sentence of Bazelon’s three-part series, she positions the supposed bullies as the focus of her investigation. Rather than beginning with Phoebe Prince’s suicide or bullying experiences, as many other journalists have, the author seems to turn upside down readers’ preconceived notions about this highly discussed case by personalizing the defendants and calling into question the assumption that they are just bad eggs. This a bold and intriguing tactic, but I became less intrigued by this positioning and more troubled the more I read. What I first found dubious were the illustrations of the six accused, which appeared in the order in which the students were introduced in the article. For a news article, one that is supposedly based in fact rather than subjective interpretation, I find it concerning that primary sources such as photos were reinterpreted into illustrated portraits. With a caricature-like look to them, these illustrations are potentially deceiving: who knows what features the artist chose to soften, accentuate or alter in some way? Now, I’m not so conspiracy minded to think that Bazelon is purposefully trying to mislead us regarding these kids, but the presence of these illustrations certainly called to my attention that this article may indeed be slanted in a similar—though reversed—way that other articles concentrating solely on the victimhood of Prince are slanted. It made me question the motives behind the choice to include illustrations rather than the readily available photos and made me wonder what I could be missing from the photographic portraits themselves.

My concerns regarding the objectivity of this article continued as I read on to find that Bazelon chooses to include irrelevant, though humanizing information on the accused. I’m specifically thinking of sentences in Part 1 that detail the parental deaths experienced by some of Prince’s accused bullies. I really can’t help but wonder at the decision process behind including these bits of information that seem to be completely irrelevant to the matter at hand and the rest of Bazelon’s reporting. While reading this article, I couldn’t help but make many marginal notes along the lines of “Why are we being told this information?” I suspect that the author was attempting to humanize these students or inspire sympathy for them from her readers—but why couldn’t she do this by sticking to the facts of the case, which alone seem to offer strong enough humanizing factors? Why does she feel the need to fall back on these odd pieces of personal information that lead nowhere but beyond the subject at hand? These inclusions have me questioning the objectivity of this article and the reporting choices made by its author.

I’m not trying to argue that reporting should be—or even could be—fully objective. What I am arguing is that good reporting should be transparent—relayed in a way that allows readers to understand the purpose of that which is being reported and when reporting switches from fact gathering to subjective interpretation or appropriation of the facts. It seems to me that while Bazelon might not be purposefully attempting to obscure the facts of this case, some questionable choices on her part make this piece less than transparent.

            Speaking of questionable choices, I also find the author’s choice in sources to be troubling. I sympathize with Bazelon for the clearly difficult job she had obtaining reputable sources that would or could actually talk to her regarding this story. Yet, while I am aware that she had very limited interview outlets, I wonder how much credible information was offered by her continual use of “a source” or, much more concerning, “one adult at the school.” (Part 1) These inclusions bring up the oft-considered dilemma of many journalists—include a nameless source and hope that the article can survive with the questionable implications inherent in a context-less, consequence-less quote, or stick to the safety of designated sources. I believe that the “right” choice in this quandary is always dependent on the circumstances of the topic reported upon and the strength of the article itself, but in this case, I think that these anonymous sources offered more questions of credibility than valuable information. Here is an article about teenage politics—a world—as the author herself points out—that changes on an hourly basis and is shrouded in gossip and lies. With this in mind, what value can we find in the information about these teenage politics relayed by an “adult at the school”? How did these adults even receive information about these kids’ romantic relationships and what made Bazelon think that this info was reliable? It would be one thing if the author acknowledged the potential issues of the information she was relaying, but it seemed to me that Bazelon was so desperate for primary sources that she completely neglected these conflicts. In my mind, this neglect shows a serious lack of judgment in her reporting, therefore compromising the integrity of the article altogether.

            Finally, I arrive at what I believe to be the largest oversight in “What Happened to Phoebe Prince.” This is an article that supposedly evaluates the factors that caused a complicated situation to be simplified, misjudged and spun out of control. To explain this result, Bazelon looks at school district politics, problems of the justice system, conflicts of discipline in the digital age and improper counseling. She writes about how the case blew up overnight and how incorrect information began being taken as truth—yet she never turns her attention to what I believe to be one of the largest factors in the evolution of the Phoebe Prince controversy: media involvement. In part 3, Bazelon writes:

 The Prince family hasn’t spoke publically since Phoebe’s death. Nor, with the exception of Sharon’s mother, have the families of the kids who were charged. That left the field to the bullies’ accusers and to the school district, which was restricted by confidentiality laws and was ill-prepared to handle the press. The result was a spring of recrimination and stonewalling, not healing.”

Here, the author asserts that because people wouldn’t speak about the specifics of the case, the result was “recrimination and stonewalling” but she fails to look at where the connection lies between this result and the silence of those involved. Instead and without comment, she goes on to explain the back and forth between the accusers and the accused that occurred on the Today show with Matt Lauer, Anderson Copper and the Boston Globe.  How is it that Bazelon never turns her search inward, looking at what role the media (aka newspapers, magazines, news shows) had in turning the silence into speculation, which then turned into misinterpretation which then created “a spring of recrimination and stonewalling.” This case got a massive amount of media attention, and (as far as I know) until this piece all attention was put on Prince as the victim and the need to find those responsible. Furthermore, a DA who is potentially using the media attention she receives as a platform for reelection is perpetrating the legal cases against the accused. With these elements so obviously apparent, I am shocked that the author of this article never evaluates them in depth and instead localizes her inquiry, basically blaming the people in the town for letting the truth be swept under the rug. In my mind, this oversight is a damning one for the author. It stands to me as further evidence of incomplete or unreliable reporting and causes me to question the overall legitimacy of the article and its journalist.

            In a nutshell, it seems to me that “What Happened to Phoebe Prince” missed the mark. Yes, it exposed some of the nuances of the case that had previously been overlooked, but it failed to do so in a reputable, convincing manner and insufficiently evaluated why the case evolved as it did.

Reading Response: Interpretation and “My Mother’s Lover” by David Dobbs

Reading Response: Interpretation and “My Mother’s Lover” by David Dobbs

            For a work saddled with a seemingly sensationalist title and a tabloid synopsis (Deathbed revelation! Illicit affair!) I was surprised to find David Dobb’s “My Mother’s Lover” to be subtly complex and movingly honest. The author’s tone of kindness and meticulous approach to both the research and the subjects elevated this piece from the voyeuristic gossip-drama it could have been to a story that converges on real themes of love (both man/woman and parent/child), truth and lives lost. Yet, there are still some aspects of this story that I find troubling.

            In reaching the end of this piece, I was struck by its concluding sentiment of acceptance:

“Then I opened my mother’s crumbling photo album and slipped the pictures into the two remaining empty sets of corner mounts. I considered pulling those mounts off and pasting the photos closer to one another. But I though, No: My mom had glued those holders in that way, and I shouldn’t change it. This was as close I could get them.” (final page)

In this excerpt, Dobbs resists the urge to change his mother’s story, neither for his own satisfaction nor to save the lasting reputation of the subjects involved. It must have been difficult for the author to discover unflattering truths about his mother and the affect she had on a family many miles away, but for much of the text he does not attempt to justify or revise. Instead, he speckles the story with lines that allude to this resolve—most notably the line spoken by one of Angus’s children: “The past is approved and the future is open.” In leaving us with a sentimental scene of acceptance, and by excluding from his text any overt evidence of his own grappling with the truth, it seems to this reader that Dobbs is suggesting that the facts offer comfort enough. Learning the truth of his mother’s love affair and the truth about the man she loved seems to have brought the author closer to his deceased mother, simply because he feels that he knows her and the origin of her emotions a little better.

That truth can be a cure-all is a powerful notion for anyone—if not especially for a nonfiction writer—and would be a warming conclusion to this story, if Dobbs had really found the truth, which I don’t believe he did. I think he manufactured the truth for himself, and in doing so demonstrated one of the pitfalls of writing about family history, or anything close to the writer’s heart. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying that Dobbs invented this story or maliciously led his readers astray. This story is laden in facts. Lots of them. He discovered Angus’ dates of deployment, the dates his mother was in Hawaii, the contents of a footlocker. I don’t contest the truth of this information. But I’m troubled by the areas of this story where he strays from these facts and moves into subjective interpretation. I’m talking of course about the photographs. Dobbs takes those black and whites—otherwise objective sources—and attempts to bleed emotion and intention from them.

“But my mother turns an ashen face away from Angus and the camera. She looks distinctly as if she wishes she were somewhere else. Was she suddenly feeling ashamed? Had she and Angus been fighting? Had the regrets latent in the earlier photographs broken into the open?” (from 3. Hawaii)

From a base of facts, Dobbs builds the part of his story around how he infers his mother and her lover to feel and to think. Who is to say that the sun wasn’t simply in her eyes for this photo? Who is to say that this wasn’t one of the happiest days of their affair? Dobbs is inferring the shame and regret he perhaps hopes his mother felt—and he continues to infer the emotions of each subject of every photo he evaluates.

            Is it unethical or wrong that he is placing feelings upon still subjects in a crumpled old photo album? I would argue no—he clearly frames these interpretations around the premise of this photo album and even includes copies of some of the photos for the readers to interpret as they wish. No, I don’t think the author’s use of the photos is wrong, but I do think that it calls into question his concluding sentiment of acceptance and truth. The photo interpretations seem to prove that Dobbs did or does in fact grapple with the truth of his mother’s life and (whether conscious of it or not) is attempting to revise certain parts of it to better fit his own feelings about who she was and what she did.

            Dobb’s slide into personally based interpretation makes me wonder if this is not a problem encountered by all nonfiction writers. In interpreting the facts, do we not place our own expectations, wants or feels on the subjects at hand? Is this a curse of nonfiction or something that brings a further depth and artistry to the genre? I know that very few texts can ever be wholly objective, but where must one draw the line between evaluating the facts and interpreting them for oneself? I hope to delve into these questions throughout this semester.

 

Reading Response: Jon Krakauer’s Three Cups of Deceit and “Story Updates”

From start to finish, Jon Krakauer’s Three Cups of Deceit works to debunk the brand supposed philanthropist Greg Mortenson has skillfully, fraudulently crafted around himself and his organization, the Central Asia Institute. Though I had read newspaper articles about the allegations made against Mortenson and the CAI by Krakauer and many subsequent sources, I had previously been unaware of the depth of the fraud, and the depths to which Krakauer dug in order to expose the organization for the sham that it largely is. I found Three Cups of Deceit to be completely engrossing and fascinating, both in its content and form.

I was intrigued by the tone in which Krakauer begins his deeply researched expose. The first quarter of the piece smacks of sarcasm and apparent anger—which, not previously knowing Krakauer’s personal involvement in the CAI, stood out to me as a questionable stylistic tactic to employ in an investigative piece of writing. As he sets up the reader with necessary information about Mortenson and his alleged accomplishments, I found that the language, as well as the excerpts from Stones to Schools and Three Cups of Tea selected by Krakauer provided a tone to the piece that fell far from neutrality. Krakauer writes, “As Mortenson walked into the settlement, a throng of local youngsters, fascinated by the tall foreigner, gathered around him. ‘By the time he reached the village’s ceremonial entrance…he was leading a procession of fifty children.’” (Pg 4) In his summary of the passage, Krakauer asserts that Mortenson was followed by a “throng” of children and then follows this up by a quote from the book detailing “a procession of fifty children.” The contrast between Krakauer’s summary and Mortenson’s telling appears to me to immediately position Mortenson as self-important and an exaggerator.  Further on that same page, Krakauer’s annoyance with Mortenson’s role in the “creation myth” can be read through his choice of language. “Owing to his wrong turn, he’d blundered into a village called Korphe.” (Pg 4) The use of the word “blundered” creates yet another contrast between Mortenson’s telling (that finding Korphe was a happy accident) and Krakauer’s interpretation (that Mortenson’s supposed discovery was a result of his lack of knowledge and climbing skills). In these pages, as Krakauer works to slowly unraveling the layers of lies and misinformation surrounding the CAI, the tone is established—with the language and excerpt choices, the text guides the reader into a sense that the information Mortenson has put out is perhaps not what it appears to be.

It wasn’t until page 7, when Krakauer begins to divulge his personal and financial involvement in the CAI that I began to question the legitimacy of his choice to employ a critical tone from the get-go.  No wonder Krakauer’s language is laden with resentment, I thought. He personally feels duped and angry—meaning that his tone may be more of a reflection of his own emotions revolving around Mortenson’s deceptions than intellectual, fact-based outrage. Then I got to thinking—does a writer need to be completely personally disconnected from a subject in order to provide a “fair” critical evaluation? Is it even possible for a writer to extract their personal feelings, especially when it comes to a topic that needs to be so deeply researched and analyzed? What are the advantages to having a personal stake in or perspective on the story?

In thinking deeply about these questions in relation to Three Cups of Deceit, I found myself rising to Krakauer’s defense. Yes, he no doubt harbors resentments against Mortenson and the CAI, but why would this completely compromise his ability to critically analyze the subjects? His inside knowledge on Mortenson and the workings (or lack thereof) of his organization helped to embolden and substantiate his evaluations. He seems to prove his objectivity by showing the reader that he has been on both sides of the fence—for and against Mortenson—thus providing convincing context to the basis of his arguments. Most importantly, Krakauer’s work is built around meticulous, traceable research and only peppered by stories of his personal experiences. It is the research that carries Three Cups of Deceit, that makes it so frighteningly conclusive. This suggests to me that a writer’s personal involvement with a subject may be used without compromising the integrity of the piece as long as objective research builds the foundation and basis of the argument. Krakauer seems to have gotten it right—using tone and language to foreshadow his research-based bombshells and personal experience to demonstrate both inside knowledge and a full understanding of the nuances of the subject and stakes involved in blowing the lid off Mortenson and his organization.

            On a separate subject, I also wanted to make a note about the “Story Updates” Krakauer regularly publishes on byliner.com. There are apparent advantages to publishing Three Cups of Deceit online, including the fact that instantaneous, cheap access allows for a greater number of people to read the book. However, I had not previously realized that one of the greatest advantages to publishing in a digital medium such as this allows for—and even demands—continued investigation and dialogue, therefore keeping the story alive. That Krakauer can immediately respond to new claims, link readers to articles by other news sources and publish so-called responses from CAI allows for this story to emerge out from under the stagnant page and into the light of the everyday. From personal experience I know how difficult it is to send a story to press even as the subject it presents is still unfolding. Providing an online location for the author to continue the investigation and to respond to criticism or story development helps to keep a story or article alive beyond deadlines and print runs.