Gary Smith probably doesn't read you

boo who?

 

Agreed. She casts a long, beautiful and impeccably reported shadow. I just wish there were more pieces, more often.

 

Mark Singer, yes! That's one I was trying to think of.

Also love when I see Burkhard Bilger's byline in the New Yorker.

But I will pick this nit - when the hell does Susan Orlean ever write any more? Seriously, who does she think she is? Fleetwood Mac?

 

OK, do I like Gary Smith? Yes.

But my ultimate favs....
1.) Mark Bowden

2.) C.J. Chivers - His story in Esquire about the Beslan terror siege was jaw-dropping.

http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0606BESLAN_140

3.) Bill Zehme - I know I'm not the only one who liked his profile of Johnny Carson in Esquire. And he just did something on Chris Rock for Rolling Stone that was pretty good too.

 

I don't read a whole hell of a lot of sports journalism anymore. The market's gotten so oversaturated that 98 percent of it is same shit, different day. Little stands out.

 

Has anyone read Atul Gawande in the New Yorker? He's a surgeon and a fabulous writer. He's got a book out: "Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science."

 

Too funny. I saw that at Border's the other day. But with an impending surgery, I thought, you gotta be kidding

 

I have. He had a great story a few months ago - around Christmastime, I believe - about how the big medical breakthrough that was saving hundreds and thousands of lives was - get ready - checklists! They were literally eliminating all these inadvertent infections by making doctors follow checklists instead of just doing things off the cuff.

Doctors had a fit about it at first, because they like to believe that it's more art than science, etc., etc. It was a great, great, great read.

He's tremendous. I can't decide when I read his stuff if I want to be a write or a surgeon!

 

Sirs, Madames,

I thought it was a little rich, the line about not reading sportswriting (tho' as history would seem to show that he mines small-town papers for the occasional idea). Oh well, a self-loathing art-form needs an icon who loathes the lessers. I've read everything he has ever written -- over and over -- but I'm a Richard Ben Cramer guy.

YD&OHS, etc

 

I went to go see Gay Talese give a talk two years ago and I raised a hand and asked him who he liked to read, thinking he'd mention some of the people who've been mentioned here already. But he said that he "hasn't read magazines in years," including Esquire, The New Yorker, Harper's, etc. I found it sort of hard to believe that one of the fathers of "the literature of reality" and the magazine piece just sort of lost interest (or something) one day. I mean, I was actually shocked.

On that note, two of my favorite magazine writers are Andrew Corsello and Jeanne Marie Laskas, both at GQ, and both near the top of the class; her story on the Pa. mine last year that's nominated for an Ellie was just great.

 

Gary is a tremendous writer who happens to write about sports...I don't even think of him as a 'sportswriter.' He wishes he was writing fiction. Amazing to me that he hasn't made the leap.

 

I agree. Sports just happens to be what he does.

But man, everytime he brings it, it's like a student sitting down again to learn from one of the great teachers.