Michael Silver brings more self-deifying than all of Grantland

Silver and several other writers who landed at SI are like the proverbial joe who is born at third base and thinks he hit a triple to get there. These guys think because they walk the same hallways and breathe the same air as the likes of Frank Deford and Dan Jenkins that they are of the same ilk. They are not.

My main concern is that writers by trade, like many of us in here, can smell a rat when we see these first-person-tainted stories, but what about the "average reader". Do they care or even notice? Do they discern what is going on here, a la self-glorification?

 

Not that they're in any way comparable, but let's be mindful of throwing "first-person" out with the bathwater when we talk about nonfiction.

"Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu"

"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold"

"Roger Federer as Religious Experience"

are all first-person "tainted."


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html

http://www.boston.com/sports/redsox/williams/july_7/updike_essay.shtml

http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ1003-OCT_SINATRA_rev_



Edit: added links for the youngsters.

 

First rule of nonfiction writing: There are no rules.

Now, that is a vast oversimplification. There are certainly tried-and-true guidelines. The equivalent of three-act structure for screenwriting. But those guidelines come with many caveats and exceptions.

 

There's a very big difference between using first person and making yourself the focus of a story that shouldn't about you. First person has produced some of the best works in the nonfiction annals, and that doesn't just go for 8,000-word monoliths.