Great writing on the effects of violence

Some amazing writing I've seen recently detailed people dealing with the effects of violence, with three of the pieces around guns and one an incomprehensible act on a toddler.

For The New York Times Magazine, C.J. Chivers wrote "A Lone Bullet’s Long Toll" on Dustin (Doc) Kirby, a former Navy corpsman who was hit with a sniper bullet ten years ago in Iraq and Pamela Colloff for Texas Monthly provided "The Reckoning" on Claire Wilson, a victim of the University of Texas Tower shooting in 1966. The feature from Colloff was amazing and brought to mind her 2006 oral history of the shooting, "96 Minutes," also for Texas Monthly.

Two pieces done for GQ were also by great writers, with "Should We Get Used to Mass Shootings?" by Michael Paterniti and "A Positive Life: How a Son Survived Being Injected with HIV by His Father" by Justin Heckert. The Heckert story particularly stuck with me in being just bananas in it's subject, and also really well written.

Writing on different times & different places - by Colloff, Mogelson & Goldberg

There's been a few pieces of writing I've seen in the past few weeks that struck me as excellent and which felt to be about the themes of "different time" and "different place."

In terms of different time was the tremendously well done "96 Minutes" by Pamela Colloff for Texas Monthly in 2006. It was an oral history on a mass shooting on the University of Texas at Austin campus in 1966, when mass shootings were pretty much unheard of. Colloff wrote a riveting piece that made me think about the topic of gun control, as written about both in past posts I've done with it as a label and a Jan 2013 New York Times editorial by former Australia Prime Minister John Howard "I Went After Guns. Obama Can, Too." Also related to both the subjects of guns and a different time was the Time website piece "Symphony Learns President Kennedy Is Dead" from 1963 and which contains an embedded audio file that has a staggering first 40 seconds.

The other two pieces of great writing to mention here weren't about guns and events from 50 years past, but rather about places in the world that are horrifying in terms of how people there live, and just how different their lives are than for those in the developed world.

For the Nov 17 New York Times Magazine was "The Dream Boat" by Luke Mogelson and then the Nov 25-Dec 1 issue Businessweek cover story was "Drowning Kiribati" by Jeffrey Goldberg. The two pieces center on islands some 6,700 miles apart from each other (on opposite sides of New Guinea above Australia) and both portray worlds that people would never hope to be born into. The Mogelson feature is about refugees who attempt to take the treacherous boat trip from Southern Indonesia to the Australian territory of Christmas Island and Goldberg writes about the sinking into the ocean islands of Kiribati and its 103,000 residents. The Businessweek cover text notes how climate change causing the sinking, but really what struck me from the story was how the people there now live. The short lifespans, high infant mortality rates, severe malnutrition and infectious diseases noted by Mogelson are just staggering and it's incredible to read of how people live in some other places.

"The Innocent Man" feature by Pamela Colloff for Texas Monthly

The two-part magazine feature came out last fall, but I just this week finally read "The Innocent Man" (second part here) by Pamela Colloff.

Written for Texas Monthly, it's remarkably detailed journalism about Michael Morton, the Dallas area man wrongly convicted in 1987 of murdering his wife and who was exonerated and released from prison over two decades later in 2011.

The feature from Colloff won a National Magazine Award and in a Nieman Storyboard Annotation Series segment (split into two parts with the first here and second here), Colloff provides background on reporting and writing the story as well as commentary about certain sections of writing. One praise out of the Nieman segment by Paige Williams was just how understated the writing from Colloff was, with the story just laid out and events providing the drama.

The Texas Monthly page on Morton contains links to both halves of the 28,000 word story by Colloff along with a number of other related pieces, including stories about the eventual conviction of Mark Alan Norwood for the murder and criminal misconduct investigation into former District Attorney and now Texas Judge Ken Anderson.

It was a great feature from Colloff for Texas Monthly and Morton's story (including details about Norwood and Anderson) was also the subject of a recent a 60 Minutes feature...

Outside Magazine on Bill McKibben & Texas Monthly on Kermit Oliver

Two excellent pieces of profile writing to note here... one interesting in the work being done by someone and the other for both the work and manner it's being done.

In terms of a feature on someone doing something important towards a greater good, last month's Outside Magazine had "Boilover" on writer and climate-change activist Bill McKibben. Written by Rowan Jacobsen, it's a thorough look at someone perhaps tilting at windmills, but doing so because he believes the efforts of his organization 350.org are important.

The second in-depth profile to mention here doesn't center around as important a topic as climate change and C02 in the atmosphere, but was fascinating in the person featured. For Texas Monthly, "Portrait of the Artist as a Postman" was by Jason Sheeler on Kermit Oliver, the Waco, TX postal employee who also designs heavily in-demand scarves for French fashion brand Hermes. Absolutely remarkable piece on someone with amazing events in their life (particularly the horrifying story of his son being executed by the state of Texas) and who does his craft in a way that works for him.

Writing on Family: by Skip Hollandsworth, Don Waters & Karl Taro Greenfeld

Two pieces of writing I've seen lately struck me as profound work that both trafficked in the topic of family... and made me think of a third piece on family I first saw a few years ago.

Most recently read piece was by Don Waters for the June issue of Outside Magazine. "Chasing Family History on California's Surf Breaks" is about Waters learning about and forming a posthumous connection with a father, Robert Waters, who left when his son three years old. It's heartfelt writing that has a number of interesting elements to it, including the unpublished autobiography a dying Robert Waters left to his writer son as an intended bridge, a love of surfing held at different points by both men, and the younger Waters spending time with surfing legend Greg Noll (heavily featured in the excellent movie Riding Giants) to understand better the father that Noll knew some 50 years prior. Also interesting from the time Don Waters spends with Noll is his interactions with son Jed Noll, as a compare and contrast situation between the two sets of father and son.

The other piece of writing on family that struck me recently was actually one from 2009, but I hadn't seen until yesterday. Written for Texas Monthly by Skip Hollandsworth, "Still Life" is a long feature on high school football player John McClamrock and the life of he and his family after being paralyzed during a 1973 game. Very riveting piece which heavily shows the devotion of a mother and brings to mind for me a quote from the Mike Sager Esquire piece "Depression" (not posted online)... “how much can one man take? As much as need be."

Both stories are excellent work (with the Hollandsworth one particularly emotion-inducing) and the subject of family (particularly family devotion and sacrifice) made me think of a Karl Taro Greenfeld piece from Time Magazine. I posted briefly on it when in when I saw the story back in 2009 and "Growing Old with Autism" (excerpted from his book Boy Alone: a Brother's Memoir was powerful and very personal writing by Greenfeld.

Writers on Writing (it's Work) - Chris Jones on Robert Caro / Gary Cartwright / Mark Kram Jr.

I've seen a lot of interesting "about writing" content lately that warrants posting on so... here's the posting on.

Lengthiest piece was "The Big Book" for Esquire by Chris Jones on author Robert Caro. Written in advance of Caro's The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (his 4th of 5 planned volumes on the 36th President), the piece details Caro and his writing process. It's an excellent feature from Jones and the depiction of Caro is of someone who puts an almost obsessive amount of work into his reporting and seems to build a story brick by brick (with lots of outlining), rather than just "plopping down at the typewriter and letting magical prose flow". To this idea, a quote from Caro in the Jones piece is "you feel almost like a cabinetmaker, laying planks. There's a real feeling when you know you're getting it right. It's a physical feeling."

It was very cool stuff that emphasized for me the methodical labor involved in solid writing and Jones spoke of that and other thoughts on his piece in a Q&A with Jones for the blog TVFury. Also interesting from the profile on Caro was significant mention of the other people involved in the book process. From the publisher to the editor and book designer, there's a lot to it and Jones provides fascinating content around everything involved.

Two other writer pieces I've seen recently echo the same idea put forth by Jones on Caro about the efforts and steps needed write great content. Published by Texas Monthly, "A Lifetime of Achievement for Gary Cartwright" has a transcript of Cartwright accepting an award in his home state and features some solid words from the author. Of particular profundity was his statement that reminded me of that by Chris Ballard on the importance of writing things down immediately (from a Brandon Sneed interview)...

"Okay, say some thought or notion or wild dance of words pops into your head. If the moment makes you smile or in any way causes blood to rush to your brain, stop what you’re doing, take a shot of whisky, and write it down. Never mind that the odds of it being anything important are so staggeringly lopsided that only a crazy person would bother recording it. Having written it down, you will not be able to resist tinkering with the words, moving them about, standing them on their heads, turning them inside out until the combination seems satisfactory and maybe even pregnant with possibilities. At this point you will begin to wonder if it’s too early to make hotel and airline reservations to the National Book Awards. But first there is the problem of a second sentence. So you focus again on the task at hand and think of another batch of words. After a while, the process takes hold."

Final writer wisdom piece to mention here was "Bronx Banter Interview: Mark Kram Jr." It's a Q&A of Kram with Alex Belth and vividly shows the amount of work Kram put into reporting his recently published Like Any Normal Day: A Story of Devotion biography of now deceased Buddy Miley. Moral I took from this is there's not always a guarantee of the outcome whilst you're putting in the work, but if the work doesn't get put in, it's a guarantee to have nothing at the end.