August 2011
11 posts
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Annotation Tuesday! Amy Ellis Nutt and "The Wreck...
In “The Wreck of the Lady Mary” the Newark Star-Ledger’s Amy Ellis Nutt told a deeply reported, literary story about a scallop-boat sinking that killed six of the seven fishermen aboard. By its very nature the story calls to mind The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger; from a policy standpoint it was important because it revealed...
Sunday Sermon! Jack Hart on what's in your...
“When writers come to me for coaching, I always spend the first couple of sessions learning how they operate. I quiz them about how the organize their material, find structures, and write drafts. One of the most revealing exercises is a look in their reporting notebooks. If they’re newsies, the chances are that I’ll find page after page of direct quotations.
“The...
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Muses: What Hemingway learned about writing by...
Lillian Ross’ New Yorker profile of Ernest Hemingway—“How Do You Like it Now, Gentleman?” (May 13, 1950)—contains a scene with Hemingway at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was visiting with his wife, Mary, and son, Patrick, whom he called Mouse. “I learned to write by looking at paintings in the Luxembourg Museum in Paris,” Hemingway told Ross. “I never went past high school. When you’ve got a...
WatchTop three takeaways from Gay Talese on writer’s block:
1. “I mean it isn’t blocks so much as you want to rise above the ordinary, the mediocre, the easy to do, the functionary.”
2. “Sometimes writers write too much.”
3. “Look, it is a very satisfying profession to be in something called book writing, very satisfying, but it has its downside and the downside...
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Annotation Tuesday! Michael Kruse &...
Welcome to the first of semi-regular installments of Annotation Tuesday!, in which a journalist takes us through his/her reporting/writing choices for a particular piece.
Michael Kruse starts us off with a look at his recent St. Petersburg Times piece on the disappearance and death of Kathryn Norris. I used this piece as a teaching tool in a recent Harvard Summer School class because it’s so...
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1st person yes or no?
Students often want to know whether it’s okay to write in the first person. My answer: It depends on the story, the subject matter, the writer, the publication. First-person reportage doesn’t automatically render a piece of work un-literary, as you can see here, below, from these excerpts. While you’re at it, take a wee quiz: Name the journalist who wrote each....
crowdsourcing a syllabus
This morning’s question: “What’s the ONE nonfiction book/work you’d assign to your graduate students above all? I know my answer*, am interested in yours.” This morning’s question, recast to correct for heinous grammar: “What’s the one book above all that you’d assign to your grad students?” Thanks, Tweeps and Facebook friends, for the...
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WatchJust stumbled upon this 20-min TED vid of the incredibly endearing Roger Ebert + wife + friends, on voice, identity and human connection. Filmed five months ago.
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Lines to Love: Ben Hecht
I occasionally teach out of 1001 Afternoons in Chicago, Hecht’s collection of 1921 Chicago Daily News columns, and every time I open that book I find something new to admire. Eight of my favorite sentences/passages:
“His heart was tired of tall buildings and the endless grimace of windows.” ~ “Vagabondia”
“When in the name of 750,000 gods of reason will...
