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Sublime or overwritten?

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Alma, Mar 24, 2011.

  1. Some Guy

    Some Guy Active Member

    I thought the fourth graf was fucking sublime. While reading it, I realized I've made that EXACT climb out of that exact subway tunnel before. And he described it perfectly.

    Sheesh. This isn't an AP gamer. Live a little.
     
  2. YGBFKM

    YGBFKM Guest

    It's also not ABOUT anything in particular. It's grammatical masturbation.
     
  3. Harry Doyle

    Harry Doyle Member

    This post brought to mind the inimitable DD's post in the Simmons vs. Jones thread:

    http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/posts/2947164/

    Look, I understand writing for yourself probably does equal some form of masturbation. But MacGregor's job has never been to be anything other than thought-provoking and, well, pretty. This column, if dense, is certainly pretty.
     
  4. 21

    21 Well-Known Member

    I would like to hear Alma's answer to the question he posed.
     
  5. Boom_70

    Boom_70 Well-Known Member

    I got dizzy trying to get through this paragraph:

    "Climb up from the F train, up and out of that teeming ground, into the light and rushing life and the blue of that sky, blinking, up and out of the subway dungeon at West 4th Street in Greenwich Village that first half-warm weekend, a kind of resurrection, and there it is, 20 feet high, The Cage."

    This is McGregor with his usual tired meme of how big monolithic organizations and the suits who run them have ruined the world. Again McGregor against the man. This time it's the NCAA.

    Still waiting for him to turn inward to the folks who sign his paycheck.
     
  6. YGBFKM

    YGBFKM Guest

    Again, though, doesn't a writer have some sort of obligation to write something that may be of interest to his readers? You can write pretty without being dense. He's writing for ESPN, not The Atlantic.
     
  7. <img src="http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/022005/bad-poetry.gif">
     
  8. PCLoadLetter

    PCLoadLetter Well-Known Member

    Strikes me as a case of a very good writer getting bored and deciding to write cute.

    Didn't work for me at all.
     
  9. JayFarrar

    JayFarrar Well-Known Member

    The answer to Alma's question to me is a little bit of both.

    Parts were beautiful. It sang. Others parts screeched.
     
  10. Some Guy

    Some Guy Active Member

    Sometimes it's just about the words on the page, or the screen, and how they fit together. The cadence, the flow.

    This piece, though hardly life altering, put me on the New York City blacktop on a mid-summer day. I could see it/feel it/hear it/taste it.

    That was the point. And, really, the only point.

    Sometimes, that's enough.
     
  11. tapintoamerica

    tapintoamerica Well-Known Member

    In many cases, the romanticism of NYC playground basketball is to hoops people what "Field of Dreams" is to seamheads: self-congratulatory, hyperbolic drivel in which the author seeks to prove his legitimacy as an auteur or an artiste who deftly executes the whole "sport as metaphor for life" thing.
    I normally like MacGregor's work, which has a higher batting average than mine ever had. Just don't think this was one of his stronger efforts.
     
  12. LWillhite

    LWillhite Member

    I liked "melancholy cellists."
    I enjoy seeing words working together that aren't usually buddies.
    I also liked the game turning out to be not particularly good.
    When it began, I thought it would segue into discovering the next Helicopter or Goat.
     
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