Charlie Pierce Leaves Globe For Esquire

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/romenesko/145737/pierce-leaves-boston-globe-for-esquire/

 

And doing a weekly Grantland column.

 

Looks like a fun mix of daily politics and doing the other thing he does best.

 

Charlie Pierce is legendary? I thought he was a real person. I must have missed it but what is the legend of Charlie Pierce. I know he's a good writer but I had no idea that there was a legend about him.

And what is he going to name his political column? Why I Hate Republicans by Charlie Pierce?

 

I thought Pierce was Republican.

 

Pierce is brilliant.

And he will be the first to tell you so.

 

Based on his book he thinks the rest of us are idiots.

He is a good writer. His work in Grantland is far beyond what anyone else has done.

 

He's a great writer. I don't want to pretend I know him, but I've been around him a bit and there is this "I'm better than everybody and I know it" vibe that I don't know that I've ever seen with another writer...

Feinstein is similar. Don't get me wrong, I like both guys, love their writing, and they're both friendly and nice, but I was out with Pierce in a very large group once and when he left, everybody at the table was laughing about it.

 

I never got that feeling. Course, I'm an unabashed fangirl. But he's always been supernice to me (in online dealings, mostly, but occasionally in person) despite me not even outranking the lint on his sock.

 

You saw him without his shoes on??

 

Piece is talented, of course. I loved a lot of the stories in his "Sports Guy" anthology a few years back. But a lot of his political stuff is way too off the deep end for me. For example, the story in "Esquire" about domestic terrorism could have been really good, but it ended up being larded up with all kinds of convoluted sidetracks about the role politics plays in our existence. That stuff belonged in a dorm room at 3 a.m. while bowl No. 6 was passed around, not the pages of "Esquire" magazine. There are so many brilliant political thinkers and philosophers and scientists out there - Piece's political mumbo-jumbo just seems slight in their universe, to me. A lot of times he's chugging along pretty well at just telling a story - like in "Idiot America." But then it just sputters out when he starts trying to tie everything together.

He's a terrific storyteller who could use a terrific editor.

 

I haven't seen any of Charlie Pierce's offerings on Grantland. I'll check them out with the hope some editor tosses in a bunch of footnotes to every esoteric reference. That would be awesome. A regular guy to translate Pierce for the masses.