Close to Best Writing Linked To - People & Events from Time Magazine

On the previously written on subject of best writing linked to in the past year, this post highlights the best Time Magazine pieces posted on.

Four different cover stories which fell in two main subject categories... people & important events (bad in the case of these two stories).

Profiles of people

Two "about people" stories from the last year of Time struck me as exceptional. Both written by Lev Grossman, each is a long feature providing insight into non-political public figures. From the Aug 12 issue issue was Jonathan Franzen: Great American Novelist. Originally posted on and linked to here, the piece does a really good job of explaining both Franzen and his process of writing.

From the Dec 15 issue (and posted on here) was the Time Person of the Year Profile on Mark Zuckerberg. About a guy fictionally portrayed on screen this year, it's one of those really nuanced and informative looks at who someone really is (of course that's in the eyes of the profile writer, but that's what the writer is tasked with).

Profiles of important events

Time does me thinks a really solid job of big picture reporting on huge events and two stories from this past year illustrated that.

The Jan 21 issue of Time featured multiple pieces on the cataclysmic Haiti earthquake... including this one looking to the future rebuilding process. It's excellent writing from Bryan Walsh, Jay Newton-Small and Tim Padgett and I originally posted on it here.

Also from Bryan Walsh (and no, my favorite Time pieces being from Grossman and Walsh wasn't by design), was this June 10 published report on the Gulf Oil Spill. As I noted in my original post linking to it, it was really solid writing that worked on multiple levels.

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Lots of different work I've seen in Time from the past 12 months, but the best work had shared characteristics that made each piece great... in depth, well organized, interesting.

In short, solid combined with compelling.

Esquire Magazine - Sept 2010 issue

Whole buncha stuff worth linking to from the Sept 2010 issue of Esquire... with an additional piece from the prior issue.



One of the feature stories from the latest issue is "Newt Gingrich: The Indispensable Republican." Written by John H. Richardson, the piece tells the story of a revived politician seemingly aspiring to high office.

In the category of really really excellent writing, Tom Junod contributed "Eleven Lives" about the men who lost their lives in the Deepwater Horizon drill rig fire. Very poignant stuff about people relegated to a postscript with the ensuring environmental calamity from the oil spill.

Two additional (and much smaller) pieces from Esquire worth linking to... but, more for the purpose of noting stuff to read or watch respectively.

"Jonathan Franzen Will Go Down Swinging" is from Esquire "Books Guy" Benjamin Alsup and about the soon to be released "Freedom"... either the "Next Great American Novel" or a 576 page small print paperweight. Me suspects it will be in the NGAM category, but will just have to try to find the time to set aside and find out.

From the Aug 2010 issue, "What They Did to Pat Tillman" is a short Mark Warren piece about the documentary "The Tillman Story". Following on the heels of the excellent Jon Krakauer book "Where Men Win Glory" (which I reviewed here) as well as the Mary Tillman (Pat's mom) book "Boots on the Ground by Dusk", the Amir Bar-Lev film hit theaters Aug 20th and examines the government cover-up and spin doctoring around Tillman's death in Afghanistan.

Nothing earth shattering in it's brilliance noted above, but some solid and interesting pieces about big topics.

Jonathan Franzen Cover Story from Time / Access to Time Content Online

Great cover story in the latest issue of Time Magazine... too bad it's not easy to access (more on that later, though).



Titled "Jonathan Franzen: Great American Novelist", the piece is an extremely well done profile by Lev Grossman. Franzen received enormous acclaim for his 2001 "The Corrections" and the upcoming publication of his 10 years in the waiting follow-up "Freedom" is what's put him on the cover of Time. Interestingly enough, it's the first time since Stephen King in 2000 that a living novelist has had a Time cover feature.

I was interested to see this story on Franzen both from the perspective of such attention being paid a writer and because after my having read "The Corrections" halfway through (it's quite the massive book), I find Franzen to be just a brilliant writer. As Grossman makes mention of, Franzen doesn't write of amazing topics or extraordinary abilities held by his subjects, but he just writes such great and authentic prose about what could be called "the human condition"... life as people live it.

Within the piece itself, what struck me the most was the work involved in Franzen's craft. After many initial false starts and abandoned roads travelled down, the author wrote "Freedom" over the course of 12 or so months filled with 6 or 7 day weeks starting early and going late. The physical writing of the book took place in a barren office on a notebook computer with it's Internet capability permanently and irrevocably broken off by Franzen to avoid distractions. Not messing around, this guy.

I also found intriguing Franzen's description of the social usefullness of reading and the focus and committment required for someone to immerse themselves in a book. Really it's a concept that I feel to be true in general with reading and writing, and a different kind of true with fiction reading and writing. I don't think fiction better than non-fiction or vice versa, but rather that both types of reading a worthwhile endevour that one doesn't get from easier to digest media like movies or television. I definitely lean towards non-fiction reading on maybe a 90-10 basis, but also think it important for any serious reader or writer to keep a place for both, and Franzen may well be carrying the torch right now in the field of fiction writing.

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Another piece from this issue of Time I found memorable was the last page essay by Joel Stein. "Bring On the Elites!" critiques (and makes fun of) the popular notion of "anyone is qualified for anything" as personified by the blogosphere (and I'd say current Presidential wanna-be from Alaska, but that's a different topic).

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As I alluded to early in this post, though... ability to read either the Stein column or Grossman profile might be a bit limited.

Should you go to the URL for most Time Magazine stories these days, you'll get a few paragraphs of the original piece followed by something to the effect of "This is an abridged version of an article that appears in the August 23, 2010, print and iPad editions of TIME magazine" and then an invitation to buy the hardcopy issue or the iPad pad.

So, it's not even a paywall that Time's instituting... instead it's an "invitation" for someone reading something in one media (online through whatever non-iPad vehicle) to stop everything and either (A) find a store where they can hope to find the hardcopy issue, (B) pay what I believe is the inflated price of $5/issue to read on the iPad or (C) drop $500 to buy an iPad... (since, apparently unbeknownst to the decision makers at Time, Inc., not everyone owns one now) and then the inflated $5/issue price.

Please... nice way to restrict readers from viewing your content.

Esquire Magazine - May issue

As part of the May 2009 issue, Esquire published multiple pieces around the topic of "How to Be a Man"... with two that stood out as particularly interesting.



The first was an extremely well written and compelling essay by Tom Chiarella titled "What is a Man?". I suppose some of the points he makes you could quibble with and I'm sure you could add others, but all in all... it's definitely worth the short read.

The second can't really qualify as being well written as it's more of a list with pictures. The slideshow titled "Things Every Man Should Own" has 30-some items that Esquire feels a man shouldn't be without. Similar to the Chiarella piece, there's probably other needed things not on the list, but... I don't know that someone would be the worse for it by having each of these things along with a competency of how to use.

Also from this issue of Esquire was mention of a few different books to read...

- "The Corrections" by Jonathan Franzen. Having begun and not yet finished (but, someday I will), I can say that it falls into that category of "writing so good it makes you feel you can't write".

- "Empire Falls" and "Bridge of Sighs" by Richard Russo. Similar to my above statement, I've had the change to read Russo's "Straight Man" and found Russo to be both an excellent writer and storyteller.

- "A Fraction of the Whole" by Steve Toltz. Whereas the books above by Franzen and Russo were recommended by Esquire readers, Toltz's book was actually highly trumpeted by Tom Chiarella in a Feb 2008 review. High praise indeed from Chiarella...

"Voice of this Generation" Piece on Writing from Time

It's not a recent piece, but an article titled "Who's the Voice of this Generation?" from a 2006 Time Magazine bears reading.

Written by Andrea Sachs, it looks at the current crop of writers out there and examines why none of them can without question lay claim to being the preeminent young writer of our times. As opposed to past generations where writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway plied their trade, today it's harder to say who speaks for whom. There are certainly great young writers like Jonathan Franzen (who wrote "The Corrections") and Curtis Sittenfeld (who had written "Prep" at the time of this story and has since published "American Wife", which I reviewed here), but not truly seminal authors.

It's an interesting topic that has to do with some very interesting and brilliant authors... none of whom have reached that proverbial "next level"... yet.