There's been a few pieces from ESPN (both online and The Magazine) that stood out to me recently, with topics ranging from Aaron Hernandez and Odin Lloyd to a rodeo bull and then paraplegic fly-rod maker.
Posted to the ESPN site on July 3rd was "The ties that bind Hernandez, Lloyd" By Elizabeth Merrill. It was a really thoroughly reported piece about the respective lives of the two men as well the events that left Hernandez in jail and Lloyd dead. Also about Lloyd was the back page essay from ESPN The Magazine's July 22 issue. By Chris Jones, "Death in the family" was a poignant short work with the subtitle "The Boston Bandits play on in memory of slain teammate Odin Lloyd".
The other two excellent stories to note here were both features by Wright Thompson. From the same July 22 "body issue" that contained the column by Jones was "Unridable: Bushwacker, an angry 1,700-pound bull, has the baddest body in sports" and then posted online last week was "Unity with the Universe" on Tom Morgan and his craftsmanship. The subtitle of this piece is "Can a fly rod really hold the secret of life? In the central Montana mountains, a paralyzed man and his wife are proving the answer just might be yes" and it's compelling writing on both a marriage partnership and great work being produced by Morgan and his wife, Gerri Carlson.
Monday, July 22, 2013
Writers on writing - Whedon, Chiarella & Hastings
There's been a few pieces on the subject of writing I've seen recently that contained some insight I thought worth holding onto.
The July 2013 issue of Indianapolis Monthly featured "Celebrity Profiler: Tom Chiarella, in His Own Words" and there was some tremendously interesting stuff from the Esquire writer.
On writing celebrity profiles, he wrote the maxim (which could apply to almost any type of worthwhile endeavor) "I keep myself moving forward. I step into the restaurant, climb into the car, ring the bell. This is Rule Three: Keep moving forward. Toward the subject and through the conversation."
On the actual physical act of writing, and output of his work for Esquire, there was "I return to Greencastle and sleep for two days before I sit down to stare—like any writer, anywhere—for days on end (but never more than 14, in truth) into the white, white guts of my computer, groping with leads, sussing out the transcript, figuring what is new copy and what’s shopworn, doping out a structure, one that hopefully provides an angle no one’s thought of yet, all in service to the peculiar charge I put upon myself: to craft a feature more like a literary short story than any piece of reliable reporting. And Esquire lets me do it, because the editors there still believe that a magazine is a luxury, a vaguely weightless indulgence, a beautiful thing, and they ask me to write a story as if it were a creative construction, one that might puzzle a reader with observations of the sunlight, rather than teasers from the Season 3 DVD screener. So, in that regard, I know: I’m fortunate. I have the only job in the world that demands the kind of work I do."
On interviewing and portraying story subjects, Chiarella wrote "I let people see him changing his mind. Readers like a little ambiguity, a little progression of thought in their profiles. They want to see a conversation in full, which never means a straight Q-and-A for me. It requires a little texture. And that usually extends beyond the experience of a single meal. That’s why I always ask for three meetings and only settle for two."
Finally, I found noteworthy from the piece by Chiarella a comment he made both because of his experience writing celebrity profiles and just a general notion with "All lives are interesting. The grand life and the small. It would be petty and presumptuous to assume otherwise. And that too is a rule: All lives are interesting."
For Fast Company Magazine that was a piece by Ari Karpel titled "How to be Profilic: Guidelines for geting it done from Joss Whedon". The acclaimed writer and director of The Avengers, the superhero blockbuster hit that I enjoyed quite a bit, had some interesting thoughts around creative work (including reference to the David Allen book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity) passed along by Karpel.
Finally, non-fiction writer Michael Hastings died at 33 last month from a car crash and written about him were "Missing Michael Hastings" by BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith and "On Michael Hastings" by Max Fisher for the Washington Post. Both interesting and very nice tributes and the Fisher piece included at the end advice Hastings gave last year to young journalists via Reddit:
1.) You basically have to be willing to devote your life to journalism if you want to break in. Treat it like it’s medical school or law school.
2.) When interviewing for a job, tell the editor how you love to report. How your passion is gathering information. Do not mention how you want to be a writer, use the word “prose,” or that deep down you have a sinking suspicion you are the next Norman Mailer.
3.) Be prepared to do a lot of things for free. This sucks, and it’s unfair, and it gives rich kids an edge. But it’s also the reality.
4.) When writing for a mass audience, put a fact in every sentence.
5.) Also, keep the stories simple and to the point, at least at first.
6.) You should have a blog and be following journalists you like on Twitter.
7.) If there’s a publication you want to work for or write for, cold call the editors and/or email them. This can work.
8) By the second sentence of a pitch, the entirety of the story should be explained. (In other words, if you can’t come up with a rough headline for your story idea, it’s going to be a challenge to get it published.)
9) Mainly you really have to love writing and reporting. Like it’s more important to you than anything else in your life–family, friends, social life, whatever.
10) Learn to embrace rejection as part of the gig. Keep writing/pitching/reading.
The July 2013 issue of Indianapolis Monthly featured "Celebrity Profiler: Tom Chiarella, in His Own Words" and there was some tremendously interesting stuff from the Esquire writer.
On writing celebrity profiles, he wrote the maxim (which could apply to almost any type of worthwhile endeavor) "I keep myself moving forward. I step into the restaurant, climb into the car, ring the bell. This is Rule Three: Keep moving forward. Toward the subject and through the conversation."
On the actual physical act of writing, and output of his work for Esquire, there was "I return to Greencastle and sleep for two days before I sit down to stare—like any writer, anywhere—for days on end (but never more than 14, in truth) into the white, white guts of my computer, groping with leads, sussing out the transcript, figuring what is new copy and what’s shopworn, doping out a structure, one that hopefully provides an angle no one’s thought of yet, all in service to the peculiar charge I put upon myself: to craft a feature more like a literary short story than any piece of reliable reporting. And Esquire lets me do it, because the editors there still believe that a magazine is a luxury, a vaguely weightless indulgence, a beautiful thing, and they ask me to write a story as if it were a creative construction, one that might puzzle a reader with observations of the sunlight, rather than teasers from the Season 3 DVD screener. So, in that regard, I know: I’m fortunate. I have the only job in the world that demands the kind of work I do."
On interviewing and portraying story subjects, Chiarella wrote "I let people see him changing his mind. Readers like a little ambiguity, a little progression of thought in their profiles. They want to see a conversation in full, which never means a straight Q-and-A for me. It requires a little texture. And that usually extends beyond the experience of a single meal. That’s why I always ask for three meetings and only settle for two."
Finally, I found noteworthy from the piece by Chiarella a comment he made both because of his experience writing celebrity profiles and just a general notion with "All lives are interesting. The grand life and the small. It would be petty and presumptuous to assume otherwise. And that too is a rule: All lives are interesting."
For Fast Company Magazine that was a piece by Ari Karpel titled "How to be Profilic: Guidelines for geting it done from Joss Whedon". The acclaimed writer and director of The Avengers, the superhero blockbuster hit that I enjoyed quite a bit, had some interesting thoughts around creative work (including reference to the David Allen book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity) passed along by Karpel.
Finally, non-fiction writer Michael Hastings died at 33 last month from a car crash and written about him were "Missing Michael Hastings" by BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith and "On Michael Hastings" by Max Fisher for the Washington Post. Both interesting and very nice tributes and the Fisher piece included at the end advice Hastings gave last year to young journalists via Reddit:
1.) You basically have to be willing to devote your life to journalism if you want to break in. Treat it like it’s medical school or law school.
2.) When interviewing for a job, tell the editor how you love to report. How your passion is gathering information. Do not mention how you want to be a writer, use the word “prose,” or that deep down you have a sinking suspicion you are the next Norman Mailer.
3.) Be prepared to do a lot of things for free. This sucks, and it’s unfair, and it gives rich kids an edge. But it’s also the reality.
4.) When writing for a mass audience, put a fact in every sentence.
5.) Also, keep the stories simple and to the point, at least at first.
6.) You should have a blog and be following journalists you like on Twitter.
7.) If there’s a publication you want to work for or write for, cold call the editors and/or email them. This can work.
8) By the second sentence of a pitch, the entirety of the story should be explained. (In other words, if you can’t come up with a rough headline for your story idea, it’s going to be a challenge to get it published.)
9) Mainly you really have to love writing and reporting. Like it’s more important to you than anything else in your life–family, friends, social life, whatever.
10) Learn to embrace rejection as part of the gig. Keep writing/pitching/reading.
Friday, July 19, 2013
Piece on donating to a children's hospital - and other Chris Jones essays for Esquire
There was a recent short piece by Chris Jones from the August 2013 issue of Esquire that both struck me as particularly great and made me think of some past writing by Jones.
The latest story was in a magazine section about money and titled "How to Give to Charity". It's about donating to the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa and is a remarkable little piece that touches on the lifesaving care provided for his infant son (who was written about in a 2010 Esquire blog post that I feel I keep linking to, it's just so great). In this piece about donating to the children's hospital, Jones seems to make each of the 605 words count and closes with "I wouldn't even call it money well spent. It's the reason money exists for me, so that I might do the single best thing I do with it, and it makes me feel lucky again, luckier than I've ever been."
In terms of this economy of words, the piece got me thinking about on other similarly excellent (while not necessarily on a topic of the same import) short essays by Jones for Esquire.
Two that seemed to almost intertwine in terms of subject were the 2009 pieces "Arrivals at the Airport: An Idea for Our Time" and "The Emptiest, Loneliest, Highway in America". Each just over 600 words, the pieces very quickly got into the importance of meaning and connections.
The other short piece from Jones that I've thought of at various times since reading it (also back in 2009) was "Garret Dillahunt: The Man Who Disappears". The subject perhaps not as profound as these others in that it doesn't traffic in life, death, or even relationships, but I found it to be a powerful work of admiration (perhaps leading to emulation) done in just 427 words.
The latest story was in a magazine section about money and titled "How to Give to Charity". It's about donating to the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa and is a remarkable little piece that touches on the lifesaving care provided for his infant son (who was written about in a 2010 Esquire blog post that I feel I keep linking to, it's just so great). In this piece about donating to the children's hospital, Jones seems to make each of the 605 words count and closes with "I wouldn't even call it money well spent. It's the reason money exists for me, so that I might do the single best thing I do with it, and it makes me feel lucky again, luckier than I've ever been."
In terms of this economy of words, the piece got me thinking about on other similarly excellent (while not necessarily on a topic of the same import) short essays by Jones for Esquire.
Two that seemed to almost intertwine in terms of subject were the 2009 pieces "Arrivals at the Airport: An Idea for Our Time" and "The Emptiest, Loneliest, Highway in America". Each just over 600 words, the pieces very quickly got into the importance of meaning and connections.
The other short piece from Jones that I've thought of at various times since reading it (also back in 2009) was "Garret Dillahunt: The Man Who Disappears". The subject perhaps not as profound as these others in that it doesn't traffic in life, death, or even relationships, but I found it to be a powerful work of admiration (perhaps leading to emulation) done in just 427 words.
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Fast Company Destination Design 2.0 event
While most of the posts on this blog are about great writing come across (the title after all is words written down), there's also been a few about events related to writing, with past posts being on the 2013 Cinequest Film Festival Writers Celebration and on a 2011 Inc. Magazine speaker event. In this event category, I recently attended Fast Company Destination Design 2.0, moderated by FC Executive Editor for Digital, Noah Robischon and with a two-person panel of Robert Brunner & Matt Rolandson, partners at the leading design firm Ammunition.
Brunner founded Ammunition after serving as Director of Industrial Design at Apple and then as a partner at Pentagram. Ammunition as a design company works with a number of clients, but is best known for work done with Beats Electronics, that makes Beats by Dr. Dre high-end headphones. In the Fast Company event, Brunner and Rolandson talked about how design has become strategic within many companies and industries and towards that end, Ammunition both become equity partners with some firms they do design work for and spun off product companies from work done at Ammunition.
Discussed at the event were some examples of these spin off companies with Fuego in the outdoor BBQ category, the short-lived Regen that made solar charging electronics and now Octovo that makes luggage and travel accessories like leather billfolds and tablet or phone cases. Octovo was interesting from the perspective that its product based in and marketed around old-style fashion and tactile craftsmanship, sort of a counterpoint to the idea of ubiquitous electronics. In this regard, Octovo as a brand and the products from it made me think of fashion designer Brunello Cucinelli and an excellent GQ Magazine piece "Un Uomo Nuovo: How I Learned to Look, Act, Eat, and Think Like an Italian Gentleman in Just Three Days" on him by Michael Paterniti.
Back to Octovo itself, "A Lush Line Of Travel Goods, Designed For The Attention Economy" was written for the Fast Company Digital site by the aforementioned event moderator / Digital Executive Editor Robischon and in a chat after the event he talked of writing as a field... and knowing someone that wanted to work at the New Yorker and towards that end would transcribe New Yorker pieces to become adept at the magazine's style.
All in all, it was a very cool event put on by Fast Company and just reinforced to me how there's so many interesting careers out there that people have created for themselves... and for that matter, interesting stories that could be done about them.
Brunner founded Ammunition after serving as Director of Industrial Design at Apple and then as a partner at Pentagram. Ammunition as a design company works with a number of clients, but is best known for work done with Beats Electronics, that makes Beats by Dr. Dre high-end headphones. In the Fast Company event, Brunner and Rolandson talked about how design has become strategic within many companies and industries and towards that end, Ammunition both become equity partners with some firms they do design work for and spun off product companies from work done at Ammunition.
Discussed at the event were some examples of these spin off companies with Fuego in the outdoor BBQ category, the short-lived Regen that made solar charging electronics and now Octovo that makes luggage and travel accessories like leather billfolds and tablet or phone cases. Octovo was interesting from the perspective that its product based in and marketed around old-style fashion and tactile craftsmanship, sort of a counterpoint to the idea of ubiquitous electronics. In this regard, Octovo as a brand and the products from it made me think of fashion designer Brunello Cucinelli and an excellent GQ Magazine piece "Un Uomo Nuovo: How I Learned to Look, Act, Eat, and Think Like an Italian Gentleman in Just Three Days" on him by Michael Paterniti.
Back to Octovo itself, "A Lush Line Of Travel Goods, Designed For The Attention Economy" was written for the Fast Company Digital site by the aforementioned event moderator / Digital Executive Editor Robischon and in a chat after the event he talked of writing as a field... and knowing someone that wanted to work at the New Yorker and towards that end would transcribe New Yorker pieces to become adept at the magazine's style.
All in all, it was a very cool event put on by Fast Company and just reinforced to me how there's so many interesting careers out there that people have created for themselves... and for that matter, interesting stories that could be done about them.
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Great Magazine writing - by Dan P. Lee, Tom Junod & Julian Rubinstein
As I a few days ago posted on recent great newspaper stories I've seen, it seemed fitting to move on to posting about some excellent magazine writing I've come across lately.
The oldest piece (from May, but which I just recently read) was "Welcome to the Real Space Age" by Dan P. Lee for New York Magazine and a look at the pending wave of commercial space travel. It's a fascinating story and included was one of the major players in the industry, Elon Musk... with this inclusion reminding me of the excellent Esquire profile "Triumph of His Will" on Musk by Tom Junod that I wrote about and linked to last year.
In the same area of writing about larger the life type people was another profile by Junod for Esquire, "A Life So Large" on Brad Pitt. The piece was the second in a sort of "celebrity actor cover story profile series" done in recent months by Junod, with the first on Leonardo DiCaprio and third on Matt Damon. While all three very well written, the one on Pitt struck me as particularly interesting with the actor constantly working the balance between the celebrity life he's chosen and the private life with his family. Additionally of interest to me around the profiles was a short Esquire essay by Junod in the latest issue (with the Damon profile). Titled "Assimilation! The Fame Trilogy" it's about writing the three pieces and includes the interesting note from Junod that "If I had to say anything about all three of them collectively, it would be that they are better than they have to be and quite relieved they are not worse."
Another great feature piece I've seen recently was well written to be sure, but initially fascinating to me just for who wrote it. "Operation Easter" was done for the New Yorker by Julian Rubinstein, author of The Whiskey Robber, a non-fiction account account of Attila Ambrus, an Eastern European bank-robbing folk-hero of sorts. I read the book in late 2005, enjoyed it quite a bit, and up until now hadn't seen anything else by Rubinstein. This recent New Yorker piece an excellent one about rare bird eggs in Great Britain, the collectors who try to illegally take them and inspectors tasked with preventing that. Definitely an obscure topic on animal obsessives that made me think of the recent Jon Moallem book Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America, which I reviewed here.
The oldest piece (from May, but which I just recently read) was "Welcome to the Real Space Age" by Dan P. Lee for New York Magazine and a look at the pending wave of commercial space travel. It's a fascinating story and included was one of the major players in the industry, Elon Musk... with this inclusion reminding me of the excellent Esquire profile "Triumph of His Will" on Musk by Tom Junod that I wrote about and linked to last year.
In the same area of writing about larger the life type people was another profile by Junod for Esquire, "A Life So Large" on Brad Pitt. The piece was the second in a sort of "celebrity actor cover story profile series" done in recent months by Junod, with the first on Leonardo DiCaprio and third on Matt Damon. While all three very well written, the one on Pitt struck me as particularly interesting with the actor constantly working the balance between the celebrity life he's chosen and the private life with his family. Additionally of interest to me around the profiles was a short Esquire essay by Junod in the latest issue (with the Damon profile). Titled "Assimilation! The Fame Trilogy" it's about writing the three pieces and includes the interesting note from Junod that "If I had to say anything about all three of them collectively, it would be that they are better than they have to be and quite relieved they are not worse."
Another great feature piece I've seen recently was well written to be sure, but initially fascinating to me just for who wrote it. "Operation Easter" was done for the New Yorker by Julian Rubinstein, author of The Whiskey Robber, a non-fiction account account of Attila Ambrus, an Eastern European bank-robbing folk-hero of sorts. I read the book in late 2005, enjoyed it quite a bit, and up until now hadn't seen anything else by Rubinstein. This recent New Yorker piece an excellent one about rare bird eggs in Great Britain, the collectors who try to illegally take them and inspectors tasked with preventing that. Definitely an obscure topic on animal obsessives that made me think of the recent Jon Moallem book Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America, which I reviewed here.
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Great Newspaper writing - by Eli Saslow, Clay Tarver, Wil Hylton & Courtney Queeny
There's been some excellent pieces I've seen from newspapers over the past few weeks with really solid work both in the New York Times and Washington Post.
The most recent story I've read was actually the oldest one with "Craig Venter’s Bugs Might Save the World" done for the Times in May 2012. Written by Wil Hylton, it's a fascinating look at the biologist noted by Hylton (and in Venter's Wikipedia page) as being one of two people who first sequenced the human genome. Venter as a scientist working on cutting-edge stuff makes for a fairly complicated profile and Hylton did a good job making the piece eminently readable. In this regard the story reminded me of another scientist profile I wrote about and linked to in 2011, one by Tom Junod on biologist Eric Schadt.
The other two Times pieces I've seen recently which struck me as memorable were by Courtney Queeny and Clay Tarver respectively. "The View From the Victim Room" is Queeny's first-person account of an abusive relationship and just tremendous and highly personal writing. The Tarver story is a profile of former Nirvana and then Soundgarden bassist turned Army Special Forces solider Jason Everman. Titled "The Rock ’n’ Roll Casualty Who Became a War Hero", it's a remarkable tale that's recounted very well in the piece.
From the Washington Post last week was another great piece by Eli Saslow on a subject that seems as if it must have been painful to report on and witness firsthand. "In rural Tennessee, a new way to help hungry children: A bus turned bread truck" reminded me a great deal of Saslow's March story "Food stamps put Rhode Island town on monthly boom-and-bust cycle". Both pieces were sad for what they portray, and this latest story also made me think of how it easy it would be for many of the kids written about to just keep the cycle of poverty going when they become adults.
The most recent story I've read was actually the oldest one with "Craig Venter’s Bugs Might Save the World" done for the Times in May 2012. Written by Wil Hylton, it's a fascinating look at the biologist noted by Hylton (and in Venter's Wikipedia page) as being one of two people who first sequenced the human genome. Venter as a scientist working on cutting-edge stuff makes for a fairly complicated profile and Hylton did a good job making the piece eminently readable. In this regard the story reminded me of another scientist profile I wrote about and linked to in 2011, one by Tom Junod on biologist Eric Schadt.
The other two Times pieces I've seen recently which struck me as memorable were by Courtney Queeny and Clay Tarver respectively. "The View From the Victim Room" is Queeny's first-person account of an abusive relationship and just tremendous and highly personal writing. The Tarver story is a profile of former Nirvana and then Soundgarden bassist turned Army Special Forces solider Jason Everman. Titled "The Rock ’n’ Roll Casualty Who Became a War Hero", it's a remarkable tale that's recounted very well in the piece.
From the Washington Post last week was another great piece by Eli Saslow on a subject that seems as if it must have been painful to report on and witness firsthand. "In rural Tennessee, a new way to help hungry children: A bus turned bread truck" reminded me a great deal of Saslow's March story "Food stamps put Rhode Island town on monthly boom-and-bust cycle". Both pieces were sad for what they portray, and this latest story also made me think of how it easy it would be for many of the kids written about to just keep the cycle of poverty going when they become adults.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
"Someone Could Get Hurt" by Drew Magary
Someone Could Get Hurt by Drew Magary was a riff on parenthood that had some interesting stuff in it and would likely ring true for anyone with young kids.
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Particularly compelling was Magary's writing about his third child and time spent in the NICU after being born seven weeks premature and requiring surgery for intestinal malrotation. Just gut-wrenching reading and Magary did a really solid job with this area of the book.
I've linked to quite a few pieces and works by Magary and found his second book to be a pretty good follow on to his interesting novel, The Postmortal.
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I've linked to quite a few pieces and works by Magary and found his second book to be a pretty good follow on to his interesting novel, The Postmortal.
"The Skies Belong to Us" by Brendan Koerner
The Skies Belong to Us by Brendan Koerner was an excellent book in which he did the trick of taking an interesting topic, finding particularly fascinating subjects within that topic and then crafting a great narrative out of it. Subtitle to the book is Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking and it's noted on the book jacket that "over a five year period starting in 1968, commercial jets were hijacked at a rate of nearly once a week."
Koerner writes in the book of how the majority of hijackers wanted to go to Cuba and his cover subjects Roger Holder and Cathy Kerkow went much further forcing 1972 L.A. to Seattle flight to eventually take them to Algiers. Theirs was a fascinating story with Holder a disillusioned and somewhat unstable Vietnam veteran and Kerkow seemingly a footloose party girl from Coos Bay, Oregon. In this regard, it was particularly fascinating reading towards the end of the book about what became of Kerkow through her experiences.
In relation to other adventure-related books I've read, The Skies Belong to Us is up there among my favorites, in the some company as Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, The Wave by Susan Casey and Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer.
Part of what made the book so good was the research that Koerner appeared to put into it, with 31 pages of notes and citations at end of book and one thought that I had while reading is it just felt very "cinematic" to me and brought to mind how the movie Argo came out of the Wired Magazine story "The Great Escape" by Joshuah Bearman.
Additionally, I've seen several interesting pieces with Koerner about his book including an interview by Alex Heard for Outside Magazine and saw just tonight that there was a 50-minute podcast with Koerner for Longform.
In relation to other adventure-related books I've read, The Skies Belong to Us is up there among my favorites, in the some company as Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, The Wave by Susan Casey and Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer.
Part of what made the book so good was the research that Koerner appeared to put into it, with 31 pages of notes and citations at end of book and one thought that I had while reading is it just felt very "cinematic" to me and brought to mind how the movie Argo came out of the Wired Magazine story "The Great Escape" by Joshuah Bearman.
Additionally, I've seen several interesting pieces with Koerner about his book including an interview by Alex Heard for Outside Magazine and saw just tonight that there was a 50-minute podcast with Koerner for Longform.
Saturday, July 06, 2013
Writing on the Boston Marathon bombing - by Sean Flynn & Eric Moskowitz
I've previously done three different posts linking to great writing about the Boston Marathon bombing and recently there's been two additional stories that I found excellent.
The July issue of GQ Magazine featured "The Finish Line" by Sean Flynn and for the Boston Globe two weeks ago was "Amid death and anguish of bombing, a gift of life" by Eric Moskowitz.
Flynn recounts the day of the bombing through the stories of AP photographer Charles Krupa, bombing victim (and man who provided a description of Tamerlan Tsarnaev) Jeff Bauman, Boston Police Superintendent of Field Services William Evans and experienced medical volunteers Michael Powers and Stephen Segatore. The piece jumps between the various people's stories in a rough chronological order and is a captivating telling of the events.
The Moskowitz feature is on couple Caroline Reinsch and Christian Williams and how as each recuperated from injuries suffered in the bombing, Reinsch discovered the pregnancy they'd hoped for was now a reality. Just a really great story done well by Moskowitz.
The July issue of GQ Magazine featured "The Finish Line" by Sean Flynn and for the Boston Globe two weeks ago was "Amid death and anguish of bombing, a gift of life" by Eric Moskowitz.
Flynn recounts the day of the bombing through the stories of AP photographer Charles Krupa, bombing victim (and man who provided a description of Tamerlan Tsarnaev) Jeff Bauman, Boston Police Superintendent of Field Services William Evans and experienced medical volunteers Michael Powers and Stephen Segatore. The piece jumps between the various people's stories in a rough chronological order and is a captivating telling of the events.
The Moskowitz feature is on couple Caroline Reinsch and Christian Williams and how as each recuperated from injuries suffered in the bombing, Reinsch discovered the pregnancy they'd hoped for was now a reality. Just a really great story done well by Moskowitz.
Thursday, July 04, 2013
Writing on Hotshot firefighters - by Kyle Dickman & Molly Hennessy-Fiske
There was a great story written for the July issue of Outside Magazine that I had already planned on linking to before it became so tragically timely. "In the line of Wildfire" was by Kyle Dickman and is an account of time he spent with the Tahoe Hotshots, who Dickman describes as an elite group of wilderness firefighters based in Camptonville, CA.
It's a gripping feature story on people with jobs completely different than most and the tragic timeliness of it came with the June 30th deaths of all but one of the Prescott, AZ based Granite Mountain Hotshots. The next day Dickman wrote "19 Hotshots die in Arizona" for Outside and then followed that up with "Examining the Arizona Wildfire Deaths".
There's I'm sure going to be other well-done and poignant stories written on the disaster and one I've seen already was "Widow of fallen Arizona firefighter recalls his last day" for the L.A. Times. Written by Molly Hennessy-Fiske, this story was on Juliann Ashcraft, whose husband Andrew Ashcraft one of the 19. It's a heartbreaking piece that notes the Ashcraft's 4 children, all under the age of 7.
In relation to all the men lost in the fire, among the various places online that provide biographical info was "Remembering the Granite Mountain Hotshots" in the Washington Post.
It's a gripping feature story on people with jobs completely different than most and the tragic timeliness of it came with the June 30th deaths of all but one of the Prescott, AZ based Granite Mountain Hotshots. The next day Dickman wrote "19 Hotshots die in Arizona" for Outside and then followed that up with "Examining the Arizona Wildfire Deaths".
There's I'm sure going to be other well-done and poignant stories written on the disaster and one I've seen already was "Widow of fallen Arizona firefighter recalls his last day" for the L.A. Times. Written by Molly Hennessy-Fiske, this story was on Juliann Ashcraft, whose husband Andrew Ashcraft one of the 19. It's a heartbreaking piece that notes the Ashcraft's 4 children, all under the age of 7.
In relation to all the men lost in the fire, among the various places online that provide biographical info was "Remembering the Granite Mountain Hotshots" in the Washington Post.
Tuesday, July 02, 2013
Businessweek writing - on Costco, BP, Daft Punk & David Stockman
There's been some well done and interesting pieces for Businessweek lately with three solid features from the latest issue and another excellent one from last month.
The oldest feature story to note here was "Costco CEO Craig Jelinek Leads the Cheapest, Happiest Company in the World". It's a excellent in-depth look by Brad Stone and gets at the idea I've long held of how a company becomes good in large from how it's employees treated.
More recently was the not terribly frequent situation of me finding compelling all three features from one issue. Cover story from the latest edition was "How BP Got Screwed on Gulf Oil Spill Claims" by Paul Barrett and it's about everyone lined up for their (earned or not really) chuck of BP money. Very interesting reading about the approach BP initially took in accepting liability and how that contrasted with the subject of a Paul Barrett BW story from two years ago, "Transocean: No Apologies Over Gulf Oil Spill".
The other two stories I found interesting from this issue were on extremely different subjects with "David Stockman Takes On the Fed's Easy-Money Policies—and the World" by William Cohen and "Daft Punk's 'Get Lucky': How to Build the Song of the Summer" by Eric Spitznagel. The feature on Stockman could be described as a doomsday picture of our economy (at least in Stockman's opinion) and the look at how a hit song was marketed is just plain interesting.
The oldest feature story to note here was "Costco CEO Craig Jelinek Leads the Cheapest, Happiest Company in the World". It's a excellent in-depth look by Brad Stone and gets at the idea I've long held of how a company becomes good in large from how it's employees treated.
More recently was the not terribly frequent situation of me finding compelling all three features from one issue. Cover story from the latest edition was "How BP Got Screwed on Gulf Oil Spill Claims" by Paul Barrett and it's about everyone lined up for their (earned or not really) chuck of BP money. Very interesting reading about the approach BP initially took in accepting liability and how that contrasted with the subject of a Paul Barrett BW story from two years ago, "Transocean: No Apologies Over Gulf Oil Spill".
The other two stories I found interesting from this issue were on extremely different subjects with "David Stockman Takes On the Fed's Easy-Money Policies—and the World" by William Cohen and "Daft Punk's 'Get Lucky': How to Build the Song of the Summer" by Eric Spitznagel. The feature on Stockman could be described as a doomsday picture of our economy (at least in Stockman's opinion) and the look at how a hit song was marketed is just plain interesting.
Friday, June 28, 2013
"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.
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...
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.
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...
Thursday, June 27, 2013
"Wild Ones" by Jon Mooallem
Wild Ones by Jon Mooallem was an interesting book with the equally interesting and long subtitle A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America.
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Mooallem wrote early on of his four year-old daughter who possesses untold numbers of animal themed items and apparel and how when she's an adult, her exposure to animals as an adult may be different than ours with many species on the road to extinction. Mooallem in the introduction described Wild Ones as being about "finding yourself straddling those two animal worlds- a little kid's and the actual one- and trying to understand both."
There were three main sections to the book with each focusing on efforts to save a particular species:
1. Bears - This was specific to polar bears, particularly the population of polar bears around Churchill, Manitoba and interesting from Mooallem was his description of how the polar bear became more of a symbol than anything else.
2. Butterflies - Also covered were conservation efforts around the Lange's metalmark butterfly which lives only in the Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge in California. It was fascinating reading here of the efforts to preserve the species and how cause and effect often has led to unintended consequences for the Lange's metalmark.
3. Birds - The last section was on the whooping crane and an annual human-led migration from Wisconsin to Florida. It's in this section that Mooallem provides the most hopeful writing, but it's not really because the whooping crane will likely thrive (whatever the definition of thrive is) in the future, it's because of the efforts that Mooallem saw put in towards saving the birds. Quoted in the section was Brooke Pennypacker, a trike pilot (with this being an interesting part of the story) who told Mooallem “you can’t take humanity out of the equation. Humanity caused the problem to begin with, and so it’s very hard for humanity to solve the problem. Because it’s humanity! You know what I mean? We bring to the table all the same crap that was brought to the table to create this nightmare in the first place!” Mooallem wrote of being reassured by seeing these “achingly imperfect people, working to achieve something more moral than they are” and then quoted Pennypacker again with his statement “it’s not a bird project. It’s a people project. The birds are an excuse for doing something good.”
Along these same lines of profiling efforts where many species are staying alive only due to our herculean efforts, Mooallem towards the end of the book told the story of Phil Pister, who in 1969 saved the Owen’s pupfish species from extinction (true, almost nobody has heard of the thing, but it was compelling reading on one guy saving a species from extinction).
The quotes from Pennypacker and story on Pister illustrate a point from the book about how it not a question of whether we're playing God in animal conservation efforts, but how far we want to go in playing God in relation to our intervention. Closely related to this is another key point (this the quasi-optimistic one) about how even if our efforts ultimately futile, there's something to be said for just doing something and trying to help.
Two additional things from Mooallem in the book that stood out to me as particularly interesting were around our perception of animal counts and young kids in relation to animals.
In relation to how many animals there should be of a particular species, Mooallem wrote about the concept of shifting baselines syndrome- basically creating a "new normal". In animal species count terms, you don't see many for a while, then you see a few so you feel that you've seen... a lot. His point is that especially when it's considered what things were like in the past, it's tough to say what the count of a species actually "should be."
Mooallem early on in the book wrote of his young daughter and makes the point that we as adults want to view kids as like animals, free and innocent, but one trait shared by kids and animals is that of self-interest. Referenced by Mooallem and quoted in the book was a social ecologist from Yale, Stephen Kellert, who wrote of how young kids aren't born with a relationship with the natural world and desire to preserve it. That mentality would have to develop over time and until it does, kids will see the natural world as simply something that provides, rather than has to be nurtured. It's a fairly brief and interesting part of the book that makes me think of how kids want what they want, we as parents don't have to give it to them, but we can't fault them for wanting or asking.
All in all, it's a solid book that Mooallem noted as coming out of his New York Times Magazine 2009 story "Rescue Flight" on the group featured in the whooping crane section, Operation Migration. Additionally, Mooallem wrote of first visiting Churchill, Manitoba in 2005 while at the UC Berkeley Journalism School and the back jacket of the book mentions him working with the tremendously interesting sounding San Francisco based Pop-Up Magazine, which has creative types putting together a 100-minute live magazine performance on stage for an audience.
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There were three main sections to the book with each focusing on efforts to save a particular species:
1. Bears - This was specific to polar bears, particularly the population of polar bears around Churchill, Manitoba and interesting from Mooallem was his description of how the polar bear became more of a symbol than anything else.
2. Butterflies - Also covered were conservation efforts around the Lange's metalmark butterfly which lives only in the Antioch Dunes National Wildlife Refuge in California. It was fascinating reading here of the efforts to preserve the species and how cause and effect often has led to unintended consequences for the Lange's metalmark.
3. Birds - The last section was on the whooping crane and an annual human-led migration from Wisconsin to Florida. It's in this section that Mooallem provides the most hopeful writing, but it's not really because the whooping crane will likely thrive (whatever the definition of thrive is) in the future, it's because of the efforts that Mooallem saw put in towards saving the birds. Quoted in the section was Brooke Pennypacker, a trike pilot (with this being an interesting part of the story) who told Mooallem “you can’t take humanity out of the equation. Humanity caused the problem to begin with, and so it’s very hard for humanity to solve the problem. Because it’s humanity! You know what I mean? We bring to the table all the same crap that was brought to the table to create this nightmare in the first place!” Mooallem wrote of being reassured by seeing these “achingly imperfect people, working to achieve something more moral than they are” and then quoted Pennypacker again with his statement “it’s not a bird project. It’s a people project. The birds are an excuse for doing something good.”
Along these same lines of profiling efforts where many species are staying alive only due to our herculean efforts, Mooallem towards the end of the book told the story of Phil Pister, who in 1969 saved the Owen’s pupfish species from extinction (true, almost nobody has heard of the thing, but it was compelling reading on one guy saving a species from extinction).
The quotes from Pennypacker and story on Pister illustrate a point from the book about how it not a question of whether we're playing God in animal conservation efforts, but how far we want to go in playing God in relation to our intervention. Closely related to this is another key point (this the quasi-optimistic one) about how even if our efforts ultimately futile, there's something to be said for just doing something and trying to help.
Two additional things from Mooallem in the book that stood out to me as particularly interesting were around our perception of animal counts and young kids in relation to animals.
In relation to how many animals there should be of a particular species, Mooallem wrote about the concept of shifting baselines syndrome- basically creating a "new normal". In animal species count terms, you don't see many for a while, then you see a few so you feel that you've seen... a lot. His point is that especially when it's considered what things were like in the past, it's tough to say what the count of a species actually "should be."
Mooallem early on in the book wrote of his young daughter and makes the point that we as adults want to view kids as like animals, free and innocent, but one trait shared by kids and animals is that of self-interest. Referenced by Mooallem and quoted in the book was a social ecologist from Yale, Stephen Kellert, who wrote of how young kids aren't born with a relationship with the natural world and desire to preserve it. That mentality would have to develop over time and until it does, kids will see the natural world as simply something that provides, rather than has to be nurtured. It's a fairly brief and interesting part of the book that makes me think of how kids want what they want, we as parents don't have to give it to them, but we can't fault them for wanting or asking.
All in all, it's a solid book that Mooallem noted as coming out of his New York Times Magazine 2009 story "Rescue Flight" on the group featured in the whooping crane section, Operation Migration. Additionally, Mooallem wrote of first visiting Churchill, Manitoba in 2005 while at the UC Berkeley Journalism School and the back jacket of the book mentions him working with the tremendously interesting sounding San Francisco based Pop-Up Magazine, which has creative types putting together a 100-minute live magazine performance on stage for an audience.
Monday, June 24, 2013
Well done and interesting sports stories - by Davis, Sneed, Knapp & Adelson
There's a few recent sports stories to mention here that struck me for different reasons.
From SB Nation Longform came two excellent features with "The Prospect" by Brandon Sneed and "She Is Gone" by David Davis.
The feature by Sneed was about Montaous Walton, a 29 year old from Milwaukee who has consistently over the past decade fabricated stories of his baseball career, seemingly for the purpose of hoping to wish it into becoming true. It's a tremendously interesting read that walks through the details of Walton's life and lies and the piece inspired more than anything else a sense of pity for Walton and his never given up on dream of playing baseball for a career. Also interesting to me about the piece was both Walton's appearance in the comments attached to it and the note from Sneed about how he happened across Walton while doing research for an intended story on obscure baseball prospects.
The Davis feature for SB Nation also stood as a lengthy and compelling one that's really about two different topics, Dodgers baseball and the author and his family. A fascinating story in and of itself is detailed with how the home run ball hit by Kirk Gibson to win game one of the 1988 World Series hasn't been conclusively found. Beyond this, Davis writes about living in Los Angeles as a Dodger fan and his sister's mental illness and suicide two years prior to Gibson's famous home run. It's highly personal writing that would seem to be unrelated to the game of baseball, but Davis puts together two stories into a really great narrative.
Two other pieces of sports writing I saw about a month ago, but haven't yet linked to here weren't as long as the SB Nation ones, but each interesting. "Baseball's most entertaining fans" was by Gwen Knapp for Sports On Earth and about Oakland A's fans in the rightfield bleachers section 149 of the stadium. It's just a very nice look that contains some memorable stuff about positive interactions with opposing players like Jeff Francoeur of the Kansas City Royals. The final story to mention here was an update by Eric Adelson titled "Devon Walker shows strength in face of paralysis" for Yahoo Sports. It's uplifting writing about Walker and support received since his injury suffered last September while playing football for Tulane University.
From SB Nation Longform came two excellent features with "The Prospect" by Brandon Sneed and "She Is Gone" by David Davis.
The feature by Sneed was about Montaous Walton, a 29 year old from Milwaukee who has consistently over the past decade fabricated stories of his baseball career, seemingly for the purpose of hoping to wish it into becoming true. It's a tremendously interesting read that walks through the details of Walton's life and lies and the piece inspired more than anything else a sense of pity for Walton and his never given up on dream of playing baseball for a career. Also interesting to me about the piece was both Walton's appearance in the comments attached to it and the note from Sneed about how he happened across Walton while doing research for an intended story on obscure baseball prospects.
The Davis feature for SB Nation also stood as a lengthy and compelling one that's really about two different topics, Dodgers baseball and the author and his family. A fascinating story in and of itself is detailed with how the home run ball hit by Kirk Gibson to win game one of the 1988 World Series hasn't been conclusively found. Beyond this, Davis writes about living in Los Angeles as a Dodger fan and his sister's mental illness and suicide two years prior to Gibson's famous home run. It's highly personal writing that would seem to be unrelated to the game of baseball, but Davis puts together two stories into a really great narrative.
Two other pieces of sports writing I saw about a month ago, but haven't yet linked to here weren't as long as the SB Nation ones, but each interesting. "Baseball's most entertaining fans" was by Gwen Knapp for Sports On Earth and about Oakland A's fans in the rightfield bleachers section 149 of the stadium. It's just a very nice look that contains some memorable stuff about positive interactions with opposing players like Jeff Francoeur of the Kansas City Royals. The final story to mention here was an update by Eric Adelson titled "Devon Walker shows strength in face of paralysis" for Yahoo Sports. It's uplifting writing about Walker and support received since his injury suffered last September while playing football for Tulane University.
Monday, June 17, 2013
Writing on fathers and fatherhood - by Mooney, Jones & others
I a few days ago came across a story on new fathers serving in the military and that got me thinking about some past great writing I've linked to that's at least somewhat related.
The piece I just saw for the first time was "On their first Father's Day" by Michael Mooney. He wrote it in 2007 as an intern for the Dallas Morning News and the story has the subtitle "On their first Father's Day, new dads serving in Iraq cling to sights, sounds of newborns, look forward to the day they'll meet face to face." It's an emotion-inducing piece that got me thinking about the story which more than any other started me regularly writing this blog some five years ago.
"The Things That Carried Him" was written by Chris Jones for the May 2008 issue of Esquire and in July 2008 I did a (very short) post on it and the book Too Far From Home also by Jones. As I noted back when, the Esquire feature is about the death of a U.S. serviceman (and father) Joe Montgomery and his return home and recently reading the piece again reminded me of how it's just incredibly well-done writing that leaves an impact.
On the more general subject of writing about fathers and fatherhood, there's certainly more excellent writing I've linked to than this, but what stands out in my memory are the books (both memoirs of sorts) and pieces noted below...
The Longest Trip Home by John Grogan - a book I wrote about here.
Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood by Michael Lewis - a book I wrote about here.
"The Wheels of Life" by Gary Smith for Sports Illustrated on Dick Hoyt and his son Rick Hoyt - a story I linked to and wrote about here.
"You Blow My Mind. Hey, Mickey!" by John Jeremiah Sullivan for the New York Times and "Buzz Bissinger on Raising a Special Needs Child" excerpted from his book Father's Day: A Journey into the Mind and Heart of My Extraordinary Son - both stories I linked to and wrote about here.
"Holy Ground" by Wright Thompson for ESPN and "Autistics" by Chris Jones for Esquire - both stories I linked to and wrote about here.
Definitely some great writing worth remembering in all of these works.
The piece I just saw for the first time was "On their first Father's Day" by Michael Mooney. He wrote it in 2007 as an intern for the Dallas Morning News and the story has the subtitle "On their first Father's Day, new dads serving in Iraq cling to sights, sounds of newborns, look forward to the day they'll meet face to face." It's an emotion-inducing piece that got me thinking about the story which more than any other started me regularly writing this blog some five years ago.
"The Things That Carried Him" was written by Chris Jones for the May 2008 issue of Esquire and in July 2008 I did a (very short) post on it and the book Too Far From Home also by Jones. As I noted back when, the Esquire feature is about the death of a U.S. serviceman (and father) Joe Montgomery and his return home and recently reading the piece again reminded me of how it's just incredibly well-done writing that leaves an impact.
On the more general subject of writing about fathers and fatherhood, there's certainly more excellent writing I've linked to than this, but what stands out in my memory are the books (both memoirs of sorts) and pieces noted below...
The Longest Trip Home by John Grogan - a book I wrote about here.
Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood by Michael Lewis - a book I wrote about here.
"The Wheels of Life" by Gary Smith for Sports Illustrated on Dick Hoyt and his son Rick Hoyt - a story I linked to and wrote about here.
"You Blow My Mind. Hey, Mickey!" by John Jeremiah Sullivan for the New York Times and "Buzz Bissinger on Raising a Special Needs Child" excerpted from his book Father's Day: A Journey into the Mind and Heart of My Extraordinary Son - both stories I linked to and wrote about here.
"Holy Ground" by Wright Thompson for ESPN and "Autistics" by Chris Jones for Esquire - both stories I linked to and wrote about here.
Definitely some great writing worth remembering in all of these works.
Sunday, June 16, 2013
Ruminations on creativity - by Sendak, Oswalt & others
A few different things I've seen recently that stood out to me around the creative process (which certainly includes, but is not limited to the writing process) included a post Patton Oswalt made to his website, an interview website I've come across recently and a Maurice Sendak video interview from 2011.
In addition to being a well know comedian and having a supporting role last season on probably my favorite TV show, Oswalt is an excellent writer and a few days ago posted "A closed letter to myself about thievery, heckling and rape jokes" to his website. It's pretty lengthy and contains I thought some very cool thoughts with one portion that stood out being how he's ok with turning off or upsetting some people... "As carefully as I've curated and cultivated my career, I’m now doing the same with my audience. Universality was never my goal as a comedian. Longevity and creativity are."
The interview website that I found recently is The Creators Call and it's a weekly podcast put together by Anthony Palmer, a Georgetown Law student, and Pete Barrett, a Gettysburg College student (who recently had posted to MLB.com a story he wrote on Cardinals closer Edward Mujica).
There's thus far been posted to The Creators Call audio from five different interviews with creative types. The lineup so far has been excellent (each person I've previously linked to content from has their name hyperlinked) with people featured to date being Chris Brogan, Jeff Pearlman, Glenn Stout, Jeffrey Toobin and Matthew Cerrone.
The Sendak interview was conducted a year before his death last May and included I thought some really profound and worthwhile thoughts from the acclaimed writer of Where the Wild Things Are...
"The question is why bother? and I don't mean why bother to die. Why bother to get bored?"
"It's sublime, To just go into another room and just make pictures. It's magic time. Where all your weaknesses of character and all the blemishes of personality, and whatever else torments you, fades away. Just doesn't matter. You're doing the one thing you want to do and you know you do it well. And you're happy. The whole promise is to do the work, sitting down at the drawing table, turning on the radio. And I think what a transcendent life this is that I'm doing everything I want to do. And that moment I feel like I'm a lucky man.
I'm trying very hard to concentrate on what is here, what I can see, what I can smell, what I can feel. making that the important business of life. Just looking out the window, the colors I see, reading Charles Dickens at night for an hour, little rituals I have, listening to Mozart. Learning how not to take myself so seriously.What I'm working on, what I'd like to work on, it's not earth-shakingly important. I'm not earth-shakingly important. I'm just clearing the decks for a simple death. You're done with your work, you're done with your life and your life was your work.
I think what I offered was different, but not because I drew better than anybody or wrote better than anybody, but because I was more honest than anybody. And in a discussion of children and the lives of children and the fantasies of children, and the language of children, I said anything I wanted. Because I don't believe in children, I don't believe in childhood. I don't believe there's a demarcation with 'you mustn't tell them that, or you mustn't tell them that. You can tell them anything you want. Just tell them if it's true, if it's true, you tell them. I have adult thoughts in my head, experiences, but I'm never going to talk about them. I'm never going to write about them. Why is my needle stuck in childhood? I don't know. I don't know. I guess that's where my heart is."
In addition to being a well know comedian and having a supporting role last season on probably my favorite TV show, Oswalt is an excellent writer and a few days ago posted "A closed letter to myself about thievery, heckling and rape jokes" to his website. It's pretty lengthy and contains I thought some very cool thoughts with one portion that stood out being how he's ok with turning off or upsetting some people... "As carefully as I've curated and cultivated my career, I’m now doing the same with my audience. Universality was never my goal as a comedian. Longevity and creativity are."
The interview website that I found recently is The Creators Call and it's a weekly podcast put together by Anthony Palmer, a Georgetown Law student, and Pete Barrett, a Gettysburg College student (who recently had posted to MLB.com a story he wrote on Cardinals closer Edward Mujica).
There's thus far been posted to The Creators Call audio from five different interviews with creative types. The lineup so far has been excellent (each person I've previously linked to content from has their name hyperlinked) with people featured to date being Chris Brogan, Jeff Pearlman, Glenn Stout, Jeffrey Toobin and Matthew Cerrone.
The Sendak interview was conducted a year before his death last May and included I thought some really profound and worthwhile thoughts from the acclaimed writer of Where the Wild Things Are...
"The question is why bother? and I don't mean why bother to die. Why bother to get bored?"
"It's sublime, To just go into another room and just make pictures. It's magic time. Where all your weaknesses of character and all the blemishes of personality, and whatever else torments you, fades away. Just doesn't matter. You're doing the one thing you want to do and you know you do it well. And you're happy. The whole promise is to do the work, sitting down at the drawing table, turning on the radio. And I think what a transcendent life this is that I'm doing everything I want to do. And that moment I feel like I'm a lucky man.
I'm trying very hard to concentrate on what is here, what I can see, what I can smell, what I can feel. making that the important business of life. Just looking out the window, the colors I see, reading Charles Dickens at night for an hour, little rituals I have, listening to Mozart. Learning how not to take myself so seriously.What I'm working on, what I'd like to work on, it's not earth-shakingly important. I'm not earth-shakingly important. I'm just clearing the decks for a simple death. You're done with your work, you're done with your life and your life was your work.
I think what I offered was different, but not because I drew better than anybody or wrote better than anybody, but because I was more honest than anybody. And in a discussion of children and the lives of children and the fantasies of children, and the language of children, I said anything I wanted. Because I don't believe in children, I don't believe in childhood. I don't believe there's a demarcation with 'you mustn't tell them that, or you mustn't tell them that. You can tell them anything you want. Just tell them if it's true, if it's true, you tell them. I have adult thoughts in my head, experiences, but I'm never going to talk about them. I'm never going to write about them. Why is my needle stuck in childhood? I don't know. I don't know. I guess that's where my heart is."
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Wisdom on working - by Sager, Magary, Chiarella & Goldman
They're not all terribly recent, but four pieces of solid writing to share here have the common theme of providing wisdom on working (which I've previously posted on as a topic).
The May 2013 issue of Esquire had two of the pieces with "How to be gracious, and why" by Tom Chiarella and "How to start a business" by bakery entrepreneur Duff Goldman. The Goldman essay stood out to me because of the work he describes putting in to get his business started and I found reminiscent of a post I did on John Gardner writing about "being interested" a great section from Chiarella's short essay...
"Stand when someone enters the room, especially if you are lowly and he is the boss, and even if the reverse is true. Look them in the eye. Ask yourself: Does anybody need an introduction? If so, before you say one word about business, introduce them to others with pleasure in your voice. If you can't muster enthusiasm for the people you happen upon in life, then you cannot be gracious. Remember, true graciousness demands that you have time for others.
So listen. Be attentive to what people say. Respond, without interruption. You always have time. You own the time in which you live. You grant it to others without obligation. That is the gift of being gracious."
The other two related pieces I thought excellent were essays written for those graduating from college (but which contained wisdom for those of all ages), with one for Esquire by Mike Sager and other for Deadspin by Drew Magary. The Magary essay definitely veers towards (nah... traffics in, nah... revels in) the profane and is extremely well-written advice that perhaps could be boiled down to telling grads to go out and have life experiences rather than simply plotting their career ascension.
The Sager essay is similarly great and also feels to pass on the wisdom of not getting too uptight about whether you're on the straight line to the top career path that you might have expected or might have been expected of you. Basically, just keep moving forward as best you can. In this regard the piece by Sager reminded me of a 2011 Esquire piece of his in which Sager wrote of dealing with adversity the terribly profound statement "how much can one man take? As much as need be."
The May 2013 issue of Esquire had two of the pieces with "How to be gracious, and why" by Tom Chiarella and "How to start a business" by bakery entrepreneur Duff Goldman. The Goldman essay stood out to me because of the work he describes putting in to get his business started and I found reminiscent of a post I did on John Gardner writing about "being interested" a great section from Chiarella's short essay...
"Stand when someone enters the room, especially if you are lowly and he is the boss, and even if the reverse is true. Look them in the eye. Ask yourself: Does anybody need an introduction? If so, before you say one word about business, introduce them to others with pleasure in your voice. If you can't muster enthusiasm for the people you happen upon in life, then you cannot be gracious. Remember, true graciousness demands that you have time for others.
So listen. Be attentive to what people say. Respond, without interruption. You always have time. You own the time in which you live. You grant it to others without obligation. That is the gift of being gracious."
The other two related pieces I thought excellent were essays written for those graduating from college (but which contained wisdom for those of all ages), with one for Esquire by Mike Sager and other for Deadspin by Drew Magary. The Magary essay definitely veers towards (nah... traffics in, nah... revels in) the profane and is extremely well-written advice that perhaps could be boiled down to telling grads to go out and have life experiences rather than simply plotting their career ascension.
The Sager essay is similarly great and also feels to pass on the wisdom of not getting too uptight about whether you're on the straight line to the top career path that you might have expected or might have been expected of you. Basically, just keep moving forward as best you can. In this regard the piece by Sager reminded me of a 2011 Esquire piece of his in which Sager wrote of dealing with adversity the terribly profound statement "how much can one man take? As much as need be."
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Eli Saslow on the family of a slain Newtown child
Such a great story by Eli Saslow for the Washington Post a few days ago. "After Newtown shooting, mourning parents enter into the lonely quiet" was about Mark and Jackie Barden, parents of three children until their youngest, Daniel Barden, killed in his classroom.
Like others (well, at the least like one other shown below), I find myself thinking of the story in relation to some areas other than the overwhelmingly horrible loss.
Other related writing - Two different post labels I've used on this blog are Newtown and Gabrielle Giffords and between them there's five posts that link to multiple pieces. The stories are by some great writers and run the gamut in terms of subjects and emotions. There's David Von Drehle on what happened in Tucson and why, Joe Posnanski on the loss of a young girl, Jim Dwyer on one family not knowing if their child safe, Gary Smith on how he envisions responsible gun legislation coming about from tragedy and, as a sort of counterpoint to Smith, Joe Klein, Charlie Pierce and Gabrielle Giffords on the prevention of said responsible gun legislation.
Efforts by the Bardens - It's remarkable reading in Saslow's piece of the strength that Mark and Jackie Barden show in campaigning for responsible legislation around guns. On one hand, it seems as if their efforts are futile in the face of both active opposition and passive ignoring of the problem, but on the other, the Bardens are working towards something important so perhaps the odds of their success don't matter as much as the end goal itself.
All in all, it was great work by Saslow that was both difficult to read and an important and revealing story.
Like others (well, at the least like one other shown below), I find myself thinking of the story in relation to some areas other than the overwhelmingly horrible loss.
I defend myself emotionally from stories like Eli's by thinking about the work. That is a perfectly written story. It's flawless.The writing itself - Saslow is a someone who I've previously posted on and linked to ESPN pieces he's written and I'm sure there will be additional great analysis done on his Washington Post story, but two I've seen thus far were from the website Gangrey and by Paige Williams with a "Why's This So Good?" for Nieman Storyboard that features a breakdown of the story along with short Q&A with Saslow. As was noted by Williams and others I've seen commenting on the story, it just felt so incredibly restrained and created for myself as a reader the feeling of sitting and watching a family's life lived.
— Chris Jones (@MySecondEmpire) June 9, 2013
Other related writing - Two different post labels I've used on this blog are Newtown and Gabrielle Giffords and between them there's five posts that link to multiple pieces. The stories are by some great writers and run the gamut in terms of subjects and emotions. There's David Von Drehle on what happened in Tucson and why, Joe Posnanski on the loss of a young girl, Jim Dwyer on one family not knowing if their child safe, Gary Smith on how he envisions responsible gun legislation coming about from tragedy and, as a sort of counterpoint to Smith, Joe Klein, Charlie Pierce and Gabrielle Giffords on the prevention of said responsible gun legislation.
Efforts by the Bardens - It's remarkable reading in Saslow's piece of the strength that Mark and Jackie Barden show in campaigning for responsible legislation around guns. On one hand, it seems as if their efforts are futile in the face of both active opposition and passive ignoring of the problem, but on the other, the Bardens are working towards something important so perhaps the odds of their success don't matter as much as the end goal itself.
All in all, it was great work by Saslow that was both difficult to read and an important and revealing story.
Monday, June 10, 2013
Racism in Italian Soccer Piece by Wright Thompson
Published last week for ESPN was a great feature by Wright Thompson with "When the Beautiful Game Turns Ugly". I've posted on and linked to a number of pieces by Thompson and he combines excellent writing with what appears to be a tremendous amount of reporting, with him noting on Twitter spending "34 days from leaving home until the story running" along with the below note and pic...
twitter.com/wrightthompson…
twitter.com/wrightthompson…
— Wright Thompson (@wrightthompson) June 8, 2013Subtitle to the piece is "A journey into the world of Italy's racist soccer thugs" and one of the things Thompson does is look at how the recent spike in ugliness from fans towards black players coincides with larger trends that are inspiring hatred and violence. From the story was "I got sent to write about racism, which I found in staggering amounts. But Italy isn't like America, and racism there is tied into a thousand years of feuds, and hatred of anyone different, even if they're from only a few miles away, and fascism, and the recent wave of immigration."
Along these lines, the story reminds me of both how I've heard about a recent increase in xenophobia throughout Europe and blog post I wrote two years ago which linked to some very well done writing around what could be labeled "politics of discontent" and how the causes of horrible events must be examined. A couple of sections from the pieces I linked to were as follows...
From UK-based writer Penny Red on a post to her personal blog about rioting in London... "The violence on the streets is being dismissed as ‘pure criminality,’ as the work of a ‘violent minority’, as ‘opportunism.’ This is madly insufficient. It is no way to talk about viral civil unrest. Angry young people with nothing to do and little to lose are turning on their own communities, and they cannot be stopped, and they know it."
From Charlie Pierce in his Esquire story "The Bomb That Didn't Go Off"... "'The radical Right,' cautions Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, 'is a response to real things that are happening to real people in the real world.' A political act of madness is still a political act. We use the madness to separate the events so that we don't have to recognize the politics they have in common. The madness of each individual act enables us to distance ourselves from the politics that burn under the polite society we've created like a fuse looking for tinder, like a bag in search of a bench.'
It was great writing by Thompson and one of the things that made it great was it wasn't just about racist soccer fans, but rather those fans, the athletes targeted by them and the causes (as twisted and varied as they may be) of the hatred.
From UK-based writer Penny Red on a post to her personal blog about rioting in London... "The violence on the streets is being dismissed as ‘pure criminality,’ as the work of a ‘violent minority’, as ‘opportunism.’ This is madly insufficient. It is no way to talk about viral civil unrest. Angry young people with nothing to do and little to lose are turning on their own communities, and they cannot be stopped, and they know it."
From Charlie Pierce in his Esquire story "The Bomb That Didn't Go Off"... "'The radical Right,' cautions Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, 'is a response to real things that are happening to real people in the real world.' A political act of madness is still a political act. We use the madness to separate the events so that we don't have to recognize the politics they have in common. The madness of each individual act enables us to distance ourselves from the politics that burn under the polite society we've created like a fuse looking for tinder, like a bag in search of a bench.'
It was great writing by Thompson and one of the things that made it great was it wasn't just about racist soccer fans, but rather those fans, the athletes targeted by them and the causes (as twisted and varied as they may be) of the hatred.
Thursday, June 06, 2013
Writing Wisdom - by Vonnegut, Tomlinson, Stout & Richmond on Hersey
Prattling on about writing and linking to established writers doing so is one of my favorite things to do on this blog and over the past few weeks I've seen (three of them via Tommy Tomlinson) a few different excellent pieces on writing.
From the Nieman Storyboard site was "Professor Hersey: one student, the iconic author of ‘Hiroshima,’ and 6 timeless takeaways" by Peter Richmond on his former professor John Hersey, acclaimed writer of the non-fiction story Hiroshima, published first as the entire contents of an August 1946 New Yorker issue and then in book form. There's a lot of remembrances from Richmond on writing wisdom passed down by Hersey and what stood out in particular to me were the dual ideas of the writer letting a story speak for itself and Hersey telling his students that writing more of a craft than art form.
The second and third pieces to note here on the subject of writing were both from the personal blog of current Sports on Earth and former Charlotte Observer writer Tommy Tomlinson. On May 23rd he posted "Everything you need to know about storytelling in five minutes" and then "Story shapes (and exercise tips?) from Kurt Vonnegut" on June 3rd.
The "storytelling in five minutes" piece was from a speech Tomlinson gave in Charlotte and has some very straightforward, logical and cool about what makes story good. To summarize, Tomlinson talks about a successful story featuring (1) a sympathetic character, (2) a hurdle to overcome and (3) the payoff delivered if hurdle overcome. Additionally, he notes the importance of a good story containing both initial and then deeper level meaning that can be taken from a story.
The "story shapes" post is comprised almost entirely of a YouTube video embedded that features Kurt Vonnegut giving an extremely short lecture on writing. Vonnegut talks about good stories containing universal story arcs and themes (i.e. main character has a good thing going, that thing becomes in jeopardy, then gets saved) that can actually be plotted out on an X/Y axis. Vonnegut gave an entertaining lecture on an interesting notion that seemed as if it could fall under this umbrella of story as craft and a writer as skilled tradesman.
The last piece to mention here was "On the line with Glenn Stout", a phone interview conducted by Anthony Palmer and Pete Barrett on The Creators Call, an audio series hosted on SoundCloud. The audio is 25 minutes long and while all of it interesting, below is what stood out the most to me...
Identifying good writing - Stout noted how he looks for stories where the writer is confident and committed from the beginning of the piece. The story just starts because the writer knows where they are and where they want to go. The reader should know the story, know the characters and know the voice of the writer.
The importance of reporting - Stout makes the point that the best writing comes from the best reporting and mentions how author David Halberstam would say that if someone doesn't know what to write in a piece, they haven't done enough reporting on it. Writers know when they're just going from point A to point B in a story because they have to get there, but don't have the details needed and that are provided thorough reporting.
Becoming a writer - Stout referenced his August 2012 personal blog post "How I became a writer: a true story" and how everyone he knew who wanted to be a writer and kept at it, is a writer. Just because it hasn't worked out yet is no reason to stop.
Writing a book - Covered in the interview by Stout was how great it is to immerse yourself into a subject over the course of a few years to write a book. Similar to the smaller process of reading something great, a writer can basically lose themselves in the reporting and writing process of a book.
From the Nieman Storyboard site was "Professor Hersey: one student, the iconic author of ‘Hiroshima,’ and 6 timeless takeaways" by Peter Richmond on his former professor John Hersey, acclaimed writer of the non-fiction story Hiroshima, published first as the entire contents of an August 1946 New Yorker issue and then in book form. There's a lot of remembrances from Richmond on writing wisdom passed down by Hersey and what stood out in particular to me were the dual ideas of the writer letting a story speak for itself and Hersey telling his students that writing more of a craft than art form.
The second and third pieces to note here on the subject of writing were both from the personal blog of current Sports on Earth and former Charlotte Observer writer Tommy Tomlinson. On May 23rd he posted "Everything you need to know about storytelling in five minutes" and then "Story shapes (and exercise tips?) from Kurt Vonnegut" on June 3rd.
The "storytelling in five minutes" piece was from a speech Tomlinson gave in Charlotte and has some very straightforward, logical and cool about what makes story good. To summarize, Tomlinson talks about a successful story featuring (1) a sympathetic character, (2) a hurdle to overcome and (3) the payoff delivered if hurdle overcome. Additionally, he notes the importance of a good story containing both initial and then deeper level meaning that can be taken from a story.
The "story shapes" post is comprised almost entirely of a YouTube video embedded that features Kurt Vonnegut giving an extremely short lecture on writing. Vonnegut talks about good stories containing universal story arcs and themes (i.e. main character has a good thing going, that thing becomes in jeopardy, then gets saved) that can actually be plotted out on an X/Y axis. Vonnegut gave an entertaining lecture on an interesting notion that seemed as if it could fall under this umbrella of story as craft and a writer as skilled tradesman.
The last piece to mention here was "On the line with Glenn Stout", a phone interview conducted by Anthony Palmer and Pete Barrett on The Creators Call, an audio series hosted on SoundCloud. The audio is 25 minutes long and while all of it interesting, below is what stood out the most to me...
Identifying good writing - Stout noted how he looks for stories where the writer is confident and committed from the beginning of the piece. The story just starts because the writer knows where they are and where they want to go. The reader should know the story, know the characters and know the voice of the writer.
The importance of reporting - Stout makes the point that the best writing comes from the best reporting and mentions how author David Halberstam would say that if someone doesn't know what to write in a piece, they haven't done enough reporting on it. Writers know when they're just going from point A to point B in a story because they have to get there, but don't have the details needed and that are provided thorough reporting.
Becoming a writer - Stout referenced his August 2012 personal blog post "How I became a writer: a true story" and how everyone he knew who wanted to be a writer and kept at it, is a writer. Just because it hasn't worked out yet is no reason to stop.
Writing a book - Covered in the interview by Stout was how great it is to immerse yourself into a subject over the course of a few years to write a book. Similar to the smaller process of reading something great, a writer can basically lose themselves in the reporting and writing process of a book.
Monday, June 03, 2013
Book writing wisdom from Jason Fagone
There was a series of tweets on the subject of writing which caught my eye a week or so back that I wanted to preserve in posterity (well, keep track of here).
Jason Fagone is a writer I came across around the time I started this blog and I then posted on and linked to his really solid 2008 Esquire story "The Video-Game Programmer Saving Our 21st-Century Souls". In Nov of this year, Fagone comes out with the book Ingenious: A True Story of Invention, Automotive Daring, and the Race to Revive America and for the past few months he's been tweeting both from his personal feed and from his IngeniousBook twitter feed.
Below was taken from posts made on May 26th to the IngeniousBook feed and contained I thought some very cool stuff on two writing-related topics...
Thoughts on writing a book
In response to someone asking if writing a book takes a lot of time - "Yes, it takes a shit-ton of time. For me, anyway. For some it takes less time, for some more. My first book took a year, start to finish. This one has taken 3. It's more complex, ambitious. It's just temperaments. Mine happens to be suited to ruminating on stuff."
In response to someone asking how to manage the time required to write a book - "You try to set up a series of targets, then give yourself a break after hitting each one. First time you finish a draft. First time you show the draft to a friend and the friend kicks the shit out of it. First time you revise the draft so it's better. Share it again. Step back, breathe. It's still there, is always there. You make time to step away so that when you come back each time, it's slightly alien to you, and you see it new."
Thoughts on writing a book proposal writing
"A proposal is kind of a weird document. It has a standard format, like a screenplay. Editors read a ton of them, all the time. 3 main sections: An overview, a sample chapter, & chapter summaries. You have to lay out the whole book. The paradox is that you have to describe the book before you've fully reported the book. This is the hard thing.
I think editors want to know 2 things: 1) Can this person lay out a plausible book that will sell? and 2) Can he/she write it? They want to know if you can think through a book. And the funny thing is, if you dedicate yourself to the proposal, by the time it's done, you really are ready to write the book.
The overview might begin with your best character or scene. The "sample chapter" can be a mixtape of the best of what remains. I get the sense that people get stuck on the formality of proposals. But just start writing your best scene. Go from there. The book's structure can change from what's laid out in the proposal. Again, the Q is: Can this person think in book structure? Often the book veers away from the proposal. Still, it's helpful. I have a friend who ran into trouble while writing a book. He meandered. He went back and read his proposal, and he's like, "What genius wrote this?" The whole structure was right there.
The harder thing, of course, is finding a great story. I have no advice there. The proposal you can do. It just takes time."
Jason Fagone is a writer I came across around the time I started this blog and I then posted on and linked to his really solid 2008 Esquire story "The Video-Game Programmer Saving Our 21st-Century Souls". In Nov of this year, Fagone comes out with the book Ingenious: A True Story of Invention, Automotive Daring, and the Race to Revive America and for the past few months he's been tweeting both from his personal feed and from his IngeniousBook twitter feed.
Below was taken from posts made on May 26th to the IngeniousBook feed and contained I thought some very cool stuff on two writing-related topics...
Thoughts on writing a book
In response to someone asking if writing a book takes a lot of time - "Yes, it takes a shit-ton of time. For me, anyway. For some it takes less time, for some more. My first book took a year, start to finish. This one has taken 3. It's more complex, ambitious. It's just temperaments. Mine happens to be suited to ruminating on stuff."
In response to someone asking how to manage the time required to write a book - "You try to set up a series of targets, then give yourself a break after hitting each one. First time you finish a draft. First time you show the draft to a friend and the friend kicks the shit out of it. First time you revise the draft so it's better. Share it again. Step back, breathe. It's still there, is always there. You make time to step away so that when you come back each time, it's slightly alien to you, and you see it new."
Thoughts on writing a book proposal writing
"A proposal is kind of a weird document. It has a standard format, like a screenplay. Editors read a ton of them, all the time. 3 main sections: An overview, a sample chapter, & chapter summaries. You have to lay out the whole book. The paradox is that you have to describe the book before you've fully reported the book. This is the hard thing.
I think editors want to know 2 things: 1) Can this person lay out a plausible book that will sell? and 2) Can he/she write it? They want to know if you can think through a book. And the funny thing is, if you dedicate yourself to the proposal, by the time it's done, you really are ready to write the book.
The overview might begin with your best character or scene. The "sample chapter" can be a mixtape of the best of what remains. I get the sense that people get stuck on the formality of proposals. But just start writing your best scene. Go from there. The book's structure can change from what's laid out in the proposal. Again, the Q is: Can this person think in book structure? Often the book veers away from the proposal. Still, it's helpful. I have a friend who ran into trouble while writing a book. He meandered. He went back and read his proposal, and he's like, "What genius wrote this?" The whole structure was right there.
The harder thing, of course, is finding a great story. I have no advice there. The proposal you can do. It just takes time."
"Driving Mr. Albert" by Michael Paterniti
Driving Mr. Albert by Michael Paterniti was a tremendously well written and interesting book that worked on multiple levels.
It's subtitled A Trip Across America with Einstein's Brain and is a first-person account of Paterniti travelling cross-country with Thomas Harvey, the man who performed the autopsy on Albert Einstein in 1955 and then kept his brain.
The book provides interesting detail on Einstein himself, but also serves as a road trip tale and most profoundly, feels to be an examination of people's lives and how the intersect with others and the meaning derived from that. This most specifically could refer to Harvey in relation to Einstein, but also Paterniti in relation to Harvey and both Paterniti and Harvey and their interactions with others.
Really just riveting content that Paterniti weaves together in a melodic fashion with very much the concept of writing about something specific (in this case, a road trip with Einstein's brain), but doing so in pursuit of a much larger idea (a look at the aforementioned relationships).
Paterniti definitely put his time into the book with his research taking him (in addition to simply the cross-country drive) to both England and Japan and in terms of how open (including about himself) Paterniti was in Driving Mr. Albert, it reminded me of both The Tender Bar (which I reviewed here) by J.R. Moehringer and Bird by Bird (which I reviewed here) by Anne Lamott.... with the Lamott phrase "warts and all" coming to mind.
I first came across Paterniti from his GQ story "The Man Who Sailed His House" and his next book is The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese. Releasing on July 30th, it's reviewed by Ryan D'Agostino in a brief Esquire piece that includes language which for me could also describe what made Driving Mr. Albert so great...
"Paterniti is a master of finding and telling great stories (the finding, for most writers, often being as difficult as the telling) that appear to be about something small, such as cheese, but are actually about something far larger — in this case, the whole of human existence."
The book provides interesting detail on Einstein himself, but also serves as a road trip tale and most profoundly, feels to be an examination of people's lives and how the intersect with others and the meaning derived from that. This most specifically could refer to Harvey in relation to Einstein, but also Paterniti in relation to Harvey and both Paterniti and Harvey and their interactions with others.
Really just riveting content that Paterniti weaves together in a melodic fashion with very much the concept of writing about something specific (in this case, a road trip with Einstein's brain), but doing so in pursuit of a much larger idea (a look at the aforementioned relationships).
Paterniti definitely put his time into the book with his research taking him (in addition to simply the cross-country drive) to both England and Japan and in terms of how open (including about himself) Paterniti was in Driving Mr. Albert, it reminded me of both The Tender Bar (which I reviewed here) by J.R. Moehringer and Bird by Bird (which I reviewed here) by Anne Lamott.... with the Lamott phrase "warts and all" coming to mind.
I first came across Paterniti from his GQ story "The Man Who Sailed His House" and his next book is The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese. Releasing on July 30th, it's reviewed by Ryan D'Agostino in a brief Esquire piece that includes language which for me could also describe what made Driving Mr. Albert so great...
"Paterniti is a master of finding and telling great stories (the finding, for most writers, often being as difficult as the telling) that appear to be about something small, such as cheese, but are actually about something far larger — in this case, the whole of human existence."
Friday, May 31, 2013
Businessweek writing - on Netflix, Google X, GoPro & Southern New Hampshire U
There's been a few pieces from Businessweek over the past few weeks that stood out as particularly interesting with two cover features and two smaller stories.
From the May 13-19 issue was the feature "Netflix, Reed Hastings Survive Missteps to Join Silicon Valley's Elite". Written by Ashlee Vance, it's a terribly interesting piece that starts off with the sentence from Vance that "on a normal weeknight, Netflix accounts for almost a third of all Internet traffic entering North American homes." Also, from this issue was "A Little College That's a Giant Online" on Southern New Hampshire University. As opposed to a company like Coursera, Southern New Hampshire is a traditional college that also has a significant online education offering.
From the May 27-Jun 2 issue was "Inside Google's Secret Lab" by Brad Stone and it's fascinating stuff on the Google X division within the company that's devoted to "moonshot" ideas or problems that Lab Director Astro Teller says about which "over some long but not unreasonable period of time we can make that problem go away." Additionally of interest from this Businessweek edition was the extremely short piece "Ask a Billionaire: GoPro CEO Nick Woodman".
From the May 13-19 issue was the feature "Netflix, Reed Hastings Survive Missteps to Join Silicon Valley's Elite". Written by Ashlee Vance, it's a terribly interesting piece that starts off with the sentence from Vance that "on a normal weeknight, Netflix accounts for almost a third of all Internet traffic entering North American homes." Also, from this issue was "A Little College That's a Giant Online" on Southern New Hampshire University. As opposed to a company like Coursera, Southern New Hampshire is a traditional college that also has a significant online education offering.
From the May 27-Jun 2 issue was "Inside Google's Secret Lab" by Brad Stone and it's fascinating stuff on the Google X division within the company that's devoted to "moonshot" ideas or problems that Lab Director Astro Teller says about which "over some long but not unreasonable period of time we can make that problem go away." Additionally of interest from this Businessweek edition was the extremely short piece "Ask a Billionaire: GoPro CEO Nick Woodman".
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Oklahoma tornado writing - by Layden, Montgomery, Von Drehle and Kluger
There's been a few great pieces of writing I've seen on the tornado that struck the town of Moore, Oklahoma. The Time Magazine cover story last week was by David Von Drehle and Jeffrey Kluger and titled "16 Minutes". The Editor's Note at the beginning of the issue mentions how Von Drehle two years ago wrote "Torn Asunder: How the Deadliest Twister in Decades Ripped Through Joplin, Mo." so this recent piece on the Moore tornado would have a focus on the time prior and life-saving tornado warning given. Both pieces require Time online accounts to read and each well written and extremely compelling.
For the Tampa Bay Times was "A family is calm, resilient amid devastation of Okla. tornado" by Ben Montgomery upon returning to the area where he grew up. It's a highly personal piece that's detailed and just really solid.
Last piece to mention here was by Tim Layden for the Sports Illustrated website. "At Southmoore High, football provides family, a refuge from devastation" was written based on the days immediately following the tornado that killed 24 and destroyed 1,200 homes, including those of 22 players from the 170 member Southmoore football program. Also included in this excellent piece by Layden was mention of Southmoore Junior Darius Joseph, brother of one of the subjects in a piece from The Okalahoman I posted on last week.
For the Tampa Bay Times was "A family is calm, resilient amid devastation of Okla. tornado" by Ben Montgomery upon returning to the area where he grew up. It's a highly personal piece that's detailed and just really solid.
Last piece to mention here was by Tim Layden for the Sports Illustrated website. "At Southmoore High, football provides family, a refuge from devastation" was written based on the days immediately following the tornado that killed 24 and destroyed 1,200 homes, including those of 22 players from the 170 member Southmoore football program. Also included in this excellent piece by Layden was mention of Southmoore Junior Darius Joseph, brother of one of the subjects in a piece from The Okalahoman I posted on last week.
Monday, May 27, 2013
"How Children Succeed" by Paul Tough
How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character was written by Paul Tough and a bit of a slow read at times, but which also contains some very interesting stories and information.
As part of his examination into what brings about success for children, Tough breaks the book up into the following sections: How to fail (and how not to), How to build character, How to think, How to succeed and A better path.
How to fail covers a number of compelling ideas with many around early childhood development and how success in school and beyond often predicated on what happens prior to starting. The impact of how many words a child hears from their parents early in life is noted along with the the import of a parent's nurturing and soothing a baby during the many situations of stress early in life (with this frequently described as "attachment parenting").
Following up on this idea of stress and it's potential negative impact was a significant amount of material from Tough on how childhood mental trauma often results in health problems later in life. He notes how this occurs because of the negative health effects of mental stress as triggered through the body's HPA axis system that manages our reaction to situations of stress. They're two slightly different flavors of stress management, but examples would be the stresses of living in poverty and of being in dangerous situations. What comes into play in this second scenario is the physiological fight or flight response where adrenaline builds up as our instinct is to avoid harm. While the adrenaline can be a good thing in helping deal with the immediate danger, it can also have a negative effect on the body if a common thing. It's a bit of a simple statement, but a definite point that could be taken from How to fail is that it's not just on the schools to teach children as their home environment has a big impact.
The How to build character chapter dealt heavily with the subtitle of the book, Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. The idea from Tough is that pure intelligence (as measured via I.Q.) often not as important as character traits or non-cognitive skills. He cites how important finishing high school is to success later, but not necessarily for knowledge learned there, rather for an example of how someone has the traits needed to follow-through. The basic idea is the value that can be derived from persisting at anything that can be at times boring and feel unrewarding.
They may all be just alternate for what Tough includes in his book subtitle, but some other important traits he notes are self-regulation, persistence, conscientiousness, self-confidence and optimism... with Tough's writing on the last of these making reference to the book Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman.
The latter parts of How to Succeed felt to bog down a bit for me, but there continued to be some interesting material including the chapter How to think that dealt heavily with children devoting time and energy to the game of chess. Featured was Elizabeth Spiegel, the chess coach at IS 318, a public middle school in Brooklyn.
All in all, Tough wrote an excellent book for anyone wanting to read about the topic of children and their paths to success. Additionally insight can also be found from the New York Times book review by Annie Murphy Paul.
How to fail covers a number of compelling ideas with many around early childhood development and how success in school and beyond often predicated on what happens prior to starting. The impact of how many words a child hears from their parents early in life is noted along with the the import of a parent's nurturing and soothing a baby during the many situations of stress early in life (with this frequently described as "attachment parenting").
Following up on this idea of stress and it's potential negative impact was a significant amount of material from Tough on how childhood mental trauma often results in health problems later in life. He notes how this occurs because of the negative health effects of mental stress as triggered through the body's HPA axis system that manages our reaction to situations of stress. They're two slightly different flavors of stress management, but examples would be the stresses of living in poverty and of being in dangerous situations. What comes into play in this second scenario is the physiological fight or flight response where adrenaline builds up as our instinct is to avoid harm. While the adrenaline can be a good thing in helping deal with the immediate danger, it can also have a negative effect on the body if a common thing. It's a bit of a simple statement, but a definite point that could be taken from How to fail is that it's not just on the schools to teach children as their home environment has a big impact.
The How to build character chapter dealt heavily with the subtitle of the book, Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character. The idea from Tough is that pure intelligence (as measured via I.Q.) often not as important as character traits or non-cognitive skills. He cites how important finishing high school is to success later, but not necessarily for knowledge learned there, rather for an example of how someone has the traits needed to follow-through. The basic idea is the value that can be derived from persisting at anything that can be at times boring and feel unrewarding.
They may all be just alternate for what Tough includes in his book subtitle, but some other important traits he notes are self-regulation, persistence, conscientiousness, self-confidence and optimism... with Tough's writing on the last of these making reference to the book Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman.
The latter parts of How to Succeed felt to bog down a bit for me, but there continued to be some interesting material including the chapter How to think that dealt heavily with children devoting time and energy to the game of chess. Featured was Elizabeth Spiegel, the chess coach at IS 318, a public middle school in Brooklyn.
All in all, Tough wrote an excellent book for anyone wanting to read about the topic of children and their paths to success. Additionally insight can also be found from the New York Times book review by Annie Murphy Paul.
Friday, May 24, 2013
Inspiring stories - on Oklahoma tornado survivors, astronaut Chris Hadfield & Ricochet the surf dog
There's a few stories I've seen recently on very different topics, but that all fall under the umbrella of being inspiring words and/or video.
The article was by Berry Tramel for The Oklahoman newspaper with the story behind an iconic photo taken in the aftermath of the deadly tornado that hit Moore, OK earlier this week.
"Oklahoma tornadoes: The 'Big Dog,' the little boy and the hug that triumphs over tragedy" was great reporting and writing from Tramel about friends Jim Routon and Hezekiah Darbon.
The first video to note here featured Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield with him in space singing "Space Oddity" by David Bowie.
The second video was a ESPN segment with Tom Rinaldi telling the story of a comfort dog named Ricochet that surfs with children in need of support.
It's a terribly heartwarming story that brings to mind for me two pieces of writing by Chris Jones I've previously posted on, the Esquire blog post "Autistics" on he and his son and an ESPN column "Watershed Moment" on surfer Garrett McNamara and volunteer work he's done with autistic kids and the ocean.
The article was by Berry Tramel for The Oklahoman newspaper with the story behind an iconic photo taken in the aftermath of the deadly tornado that hit Moore, OK earlier this week."Oklahoma tornadoes: The 'Big Dog,' the little boy and the hug that triumphs over tragedy" was great reporting and writing from Tramel about friends Jim Routon and Hezekiah Darbon.
The first video to note here featured Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield with him in space singing "Space Oddity" by David Bowie.
The second video was a ESPN segment with Tom Rinaldi telling the story of a comfort dog named Ricochet that surfs with children in need of support.
It's a terribly heartwarming story that brings to mind for me two pieces of writing by Chris Jones I've previously posted on, the Esquire blog post "Autistics" on he and his son and an ESPN column "Watershed Moment" on surfer Garrett McNamara and volunteer work he's done with autistic kids and the ocean.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Great sports stories - by Jones, Lake & Watson
There's three pieces of sports writing I've seen over the past few weeks that struck me as particularly solid and are available now to post online.
From the May 13 issue of ESPN The Magazine was the back page column "Boston Strong" by Chris Jones. Really compelling and short piece on Boston and what the 2014 Marathon could be like.
In the Sports Illustrated May 13 edition was a feature by Thomas Lake titled "Drinking and Driving and Dying". It's excellent writing about the long history of high profile DUI accidents caused by professional athletes with particular focus on the death last December of Dallas Cowboys player Jerry Brown with his teammate Josh Brent behind the wheel.
Finally, another piece that struck me was the heartwarming story "Athletic departments work together to save college football reporter’s life" by Graham Watson for Yahoo Sports. Recounted in the piece is how Wyoming assistant athletic director Tim Harkins during a phone interview with freelance journalist Natalie Meisler recognized that she might be having a stroke and tracked down her location so emergency personnel could respond.
From the May 13 issue of ESPN The Magazine was the back page column "Boston Strong" by Chris Jones. Really compelling and short piece on Boston and what the 2014 Marathon could be like.
In the Sports Illustrated May 13 edition was a feature by Thomas Lake titled "Drinking and Driving and Dying". It's excellent writing about the long history of high profile DUI accidents caused by professional athletes with particular focus on the death last December of Dallas Cowboys player Jerry Brown with his teammate Josh Brent behind the wheel.
Finally, another piece that struck me was the heartwarming story "Athletic departments work together to save college football reporter’s life" by Graham Watson for Yahoo Sports. Recounted in the piece is how Wyoming assistant athletic director Tim Harkins during a phone interview with freelance journalist Natalie Meisler recognized that she might be having a stroke and tracked down her location so emergency personnel could respond.
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Fast Company Writing
The past few issues of Fast Company Magazine had a number of features and short pieces that stood out far a variety of reasons.
Going furthest back, the Feb issue had both an interesting interview piece and really well-written feature story. The interview was by Charlie Rose with Biz Stone and Ev Williams who co-founded Twitter and begins with Stone and Williams making the extremely important point that Twitter not simply about 140-character expression of thought, but also the linking to content of all subjects and length around the web. Also noted in the interview was the blogging site Medium and the feature story from this issue was by Max Chafkin with "The Zen Master of Silicon Valley Chatter" on Kevin Rose. It was a detailed and interesting look at the Digg founder and internet investor who first backed early stage companies on his own and now as part of Google Ventures.
The March issue had "Working Beyond the Cube" by Greg Lindsay on co-working and Fast Company's annual "50 Most Innovative Companies" list.
The April issue had three different feature stories that stood out. Cover story was a lengthy piece by Nicole LaPorte title "The Rebels Saving Hollywood" and then Max Chafkin wrote "Why Kickstarter Won't Sell" on the crowdfunding website (with both features referencing Angel Investor Chris Sacca). Finally, Danielle Sacks contributed the feature "'Fifty Percent Of 'The Tipping Point' Is Wrong' Jonah Berger Shows You Which Half" on the author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On.
Finally, an interesting mention from the May issue was the short pieces "What's Hot in Alaska" on startup companies in the state.
Going furthest back, the Feb issue had both an interesting interview piece and really well-written feature story. The interview was by Charlie Rose with Biz Stone and Ev Williams who co-founded Twitter and begins with Stone and Williams making the extremely important point that Twitter not simply about 140-character expression of thought, but also the linking to content of all subjects and length around the web. Also noted in the interview was the blogging site Medium and the feature story from this issue was by Max Chafkin with "The Zen Master of Silicon Valley Chatter" on Kevin Rose. It was a detailed and interesting look at the Digg founder and internet investor who first backed early stage companies on his own and now as part of Google Ventures.
The March issue had "Working Beyond the Cube" by Greg Lindsay on co-working and Fast Company's annual "50 Most Innovative Companies" list.
The April issue had three different feature stories that stood out. Cover story was a lengthy piece by Nicole LaPorte title "The Rebels Saving Hollywood" and then Max Chafkin wrote "Why Kickstarter Won't Sell" on the crowdfunding website (with both features referencing Angel Investor Chris Sacca). Finally, Danielle Sacks contributed the feature "'Fifty Percent Of 'The Tipping Point' Is Wrong' Jonah Berger Shows You Which Half" on the author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On.
Finally, an interesting mention from the May issue was the short pieces "What's Hot in Alaska" on startup companies in the state.
Friday, May 10, 2013
Time Magazine writing - on U.S. manufacturing / Uniqlo / 3 of the Time 100 Most Influential People
There's been a few interesting things out of Time Magazine recently with three of them being short pieces on people in the Time 100 Most Influential People 2013 edition and two feature stories from other issues (and all of them requiring a Time account to be able to read online).
The people whose short profiles stood out were that on Jared Cohen (who founded Google Ideas and co-wrote The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business with Google Chairman Eric Schmidt), Perry Chen (CEO of the crowdfunding website Kickstarter) and the team of Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng (co-founders of the online learning site Coursera).
The feature stories of greatest note to me were "Made in the USA" by Rana Foroohar and Bill Saporito and "What They'll Wear to the Revolution" by Michael Schuman. The latter piece was on Japanese clothing retailer Uniqlo (which I've previously linked to a Fast Company article on as they make a major push into the U.S. market) and the feature story on increased US manufacturing. In terms of topic, it was very reminiscent of another piece I linked to previously, this one a September 2012 Outside Magazine piece by Tom Vanderbilt on the same trend.
The people whose short profiles stood out were that on Jared Cohen (who founded Google Ideas and co-wrote The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business with Google Chairman Eric Schmidt), Perry Chen (CEO of the crowdfunding website Kickstarter) and the team of Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng (co-founders of the online learning site Coursera).
The feature stories of greatest note to me were "Made in the USA" by Rana Foroohar and Bill Saporito and "What They'll Wear to the Revolution" by Michael Schuman. The latter piece was on Japanese clothing retailer Uniqlo (which I've previously linked to a Fast Company article on as they make a major push into the U.S. market) and the feature story on increased US manufacturing. In terms of topic, it was very reminiscent of another piece I linked to previously, this one a September 2012 Outside Magazine piece by Tom Vanderbilt on the same trend.
Thursday, May 09, 2013
Excellent feature writing - by Pressler, Paterniti & Mooallem
There's been three feature articles I've seen lately that struck me as outstanding, with two from GQ Magazine and one the New York Times Magazine.
From the April issue of GQ was "The King of Oontz Oontz Oontz" by Jessica Pressler and it's a well done profile on Electronic Dance Music DJ Tim Bergling, better know as Avicii. While Avicii not a well known name outside dance music circles, he's gotten probably the most acclaim for his song Levels and Pressler notes him commanding $100,000+ for some of his gigs. Within the profile there's some content not particularly flattering to Avicii (and which he took offense to as detailed in an LA Time story) but it seemed a probably pretty accurate look at a 23-year-old kid whose career is within the party scene.
The May edition of GQ had another excellent story with "The Luckiest Village in the World" by Michael Paterniti. It's written about the Spanish village of Sodeto and experiences of the townspeople with many of them splitting a lottery win one year ago. I've twice posted on GQ writing from Paterniti and both find him to be a really good writer and looking forward to his book The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese coming out July 30th.
In the same vein of a really good feature story by someone with a forthcoming book was the Jon Mooallem piece "Who Would Kill a Monk Seal?" for the New York Times Magazine. The story is about a endangered species that lives around the Hawaiian Islands and has a lot of great material around the conflicting viewpoints between people wanted to protect the seals and those whose lives are negatively impacted by protection efforts. Terribly interesting piece and makes me even more interested to read Mooallem's book coming out the 16th of this month, Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America.
From the April issue of GQ was "The King of Oontz Oontz Oontz" by Jessica Pressler and it's a well done profile on Electronic Dance Music DJ Tim Bergling, better know as Avicii. While Avicii not a well known name outside dance music circles, he's gotten probably the most acclaim for his song Levels and Pressler notes him commanding $100,000+ for some of his gigs. Within the profile there's some content not particularly flattering to Avicii (and which he took offense to as detailed in an LA Time story) but it seemed a probably pretty accurate look at a 23-year-old kid whose career is within the party scene.
The May edition of GQ had another excellent story with "The Luckiest Village in the World" by Michael Paterniti. It's written about the Spanish village of Sodeto and experiences of the townspeople with many of them splitting a lottery win one year ago. I've twice posted on GQ writing from Paterniti and both find him to be a really good writer and looking forward to his book The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese coming out July 30th.
In the same vein of a really good feature story by someone with a forthcoming book was the Jon Mooallem piece "Who Would Kill a Monk Seal?" for the New York Times Magazine. The story is about a endangered species that lives around the Hawaiian Islands and has a lot of great material around the conflicting viewpoints between people wanted to protect the seals and those whose lives are negatively impacted by protection efforts. Terribly interesting piece and makes me even more interested to read Mooallem's book coming out the 16th of this month, Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America.
Saturday, May 04, 2013
Writing on people with ALS - by Jeff Pearlman & Pete Thamel
I last Wednesday coincidentally came across two pieces of writing about people afflicted with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease). Each work was really well done and showed both the devastating effects of the disease and the support received by each person featured in the respective pieces.
For the Sports Illustrated website Pete Thamel wrote "Dick Kelley gave his heart to BC; now the school is giving back" and as part of an ongoing Q&A series (100 and counting) on his blog Jeff Pearlman wrote "The Quaz Q&A: Adrian Dessi".
Thamel notes in his piece that Kelly has worked in Boston College administration since a BC freshman in 1983 and Dessi is the father of two of Pearlman's childhood friends (with a Pearlman blog post about one of them, Chris Dessi, self-publishing a book being one of the sources of inspiration for me to self-publish).
Both the Q&A by Pearlman and more traditional profile by Thamel are excellent and accomplish well the dual tasks of showing how horrible ALS can be and how great the support received by Dessi and Kelly has been.
Thamel notes in his piece that Kelly has worked in Boston College administration since a BC freshman in 1983 and Dessi is the father of two of Pearlman's childhood friends (with a Pearlman blog post about one of them, Chris Dessi, self-publishing a book being one of the sources of inspiration for me to self-publish).
Both the Q&A by Pearlman and more traditional profile by Thamel are excellent and accomplish well the dual tasks of showing how horrible ALS can be and how great the support received by Dessi and Kelly has been.
Writing on economies in trouble - by Joel Stein & Stephan Faris
Two excellent pieces of writing from Businessweek recently shared the common theme of being about economies in trouble and what's being done in them. Published a little over a month ago in was "Screwed in Cyprus" by Stephan Faris and more recently, was the BW feature story "How Jerry Brown Scared California Straight" by Joel Stein.
Good writing in both and definitely interesting to read about how bad things have gotten in at least one area of Europe and what Brown working to avoid in California. Very reminiscent of the Michael Lewis book Boomerang which I noted in a Nov 2011 review as covering financial trouble for the cities of San Jose and Vallejo.
Good writing in both and definitely interesting to read about how bad things have gotten in at least one area of Europe and what Brown working to avoid in California. Very reminiscent of the Michael Lewis book Boomerang which I noted in a Nov 2011 review as covering financial trouble for the cities of San Jose and Vallejo.
Wednesday, May 01, 2013
Jason Collins SI cover story & writing on Collins
While none of it as singularly impactful as the first-person narrative "Why NBA center Jason Collins is coming out now" that Collins did with Sports Illustrated writer Franz Lidz, there were some other excellent pieces of writing done on the heels of the announcement Monday by Collins.
About the piece itself was SI Senior Editor Chris Stone who wrote "The story behind Jason Collins' story: How it happened" and Lidz a day later provided "Jason Collins overwhelmed by enormous support for his announcement".
In terms of pieces published placed other than Sports Illustrated, Bruce Arthur wrote for the National Post the excellent "Jason Collins coming out a new beginning for sports" and specifically about the #98 jersey homage to Matthew Shepard, Sam Gardner wrote for Fox Sports "Collins' act wows victim's parents".
Additionally, "The meaning of Jason Collins' coming out" was written by Cyd Zeigler for SB Nation Outsports and "Just the Beginning" by Chuck Culpepper for Sports on Earth and the last piece to mention here was "The Decision" by Charlie Pierce for Grantland. Like many pieces I've seen from Pierce, it's extremely thought-out and contains the interesting idea that people shouldn't get caught up in basically congratulating themselves and society as a whole for being so accepting of Jason Collins on the heels of his coming out publicly.
About the piece itself was SI Senior Editor Chris Stone who wrote "The story behind Jason Collins' story: How it happened" and Lidz a day later provided "Jason Collins overwhelmed by enormous support for his announcement".
In terms of pieces published placed other than Sports Illustrated, Bruce Arthur wrote for the National Post the excellent "Jason Collins coming out a new beginning for sports" and specifically about the #98 jersey homage to Matthew Shepard, Sam Gardner wrote for Fox Sports "Collins' act wows victim's parents".
Additionally, "The meaning of Jason Collins' coming out" was written by Cyd Zeigler for SB Nation Outsports and "Just the Beginning" by Chuck Culpepper for Sports on Earth and the last piece to mention here was "The Decision" by Charlie Pierce for Grantland. Like many pieces I've seen from Pierce, it's extremely thought-out and contains the interesting idea that people shouldn't get caught up in basically congratulating themselves and society as a whole for being so accepting of Jason Collins on the heels of his coming out publicly.
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