Sublime or overwritten?

I think the absolute worst thing for a young writer to stumble across would be a piece by MacGregor. I remember being 18, 19, 20, 22, etc., etc., and reading pretty sentences and thinking that this was how it was done. This is what I have to shoot for. In my mid-20s, I somehow started to come around to the importance of narrative and storytelling and reporting, and how pretty word pictures were largely a cop-out. Not saying that MacGregor is copping out. He is what he is, and clearly he has a devoted cult following on here, by some really talented people, and elsewhere. But I think that young writers - as I once was - will read his pieces and give themselves permission to skimp on reporting, researching, and structuring their stories, something that takes a lot of hard, unglamorous work.

People keep comparing this to a piece in The Atlantic or The New Yorker. Nothing could be further from the truth. Other than the poetry that is sprinkled throughout those magazines, the writing is really, really straight forward. The New Yorker and The Atlantic and their ilk are considered high-brow because of the subject matter they tackle, and the depth at which they do so, not because they empty the thesaurus.

 

perfectly put. mg. great post right after from mr. whitman, too. 8)

listen, it's all a matter of taste, but as many examples posted on these pages show, the writers i admire the most are those who don't call attention to themselves, who aren't obviously straining in search of something poetic, who show off their brilliance by keeping it simple. i mean, in the end, isn't it supposed to be about having as many readers as you can? i believe writers straining for that poetry drive away more readers than they attract, which seems to me to defeat the purpose... knowing and understanding your readership is important. this is about pleasuring them, not yourself.

we've often gone 'tound and 'round this very subject here and it's an important issue deserving of requent discussion. not many people are going to change their stance on whether 'big' or 'uncommon' words should show up in copy, whether readers should be 'written down to' or to risk writing over their heads, defeating the purpose of, you know, communicating.

but these discussions almost always entertain me and, when i'm lucky, enlighten me as well...

 

MacGregor's "Muddied But Unbowed" piece on Keyshawn Johnson was one of the pieces that inspired me to become a writer. I turned out ok. We don't write anything alike one another.

Not all of what you see as truisms are true for everyone, DW. Your experiences, while important to you (just as mine are to me) are not universal. Gary Smith has killed miles of forests with all the bad writing he's inspired, and yet rarely do we worry what his style has wrought. Any budding writer -- young or old -- who is worth a damn is not reading one author and holding on for dear life, boxing out all other influences. The idea that this piece could ruin someone by convincing them to skip the hard stuff gives far too much emphasis to the influence one writer might have over another. Anyone taking the time to read this who wants to make The Writing Life a career is also reading countless other writers.

If you're serious about this, you take a little piece of something from everything you read. Otherwise, you're just a mimic.

Michael, I could easily flip that around and say that paintings with messages are as hackey as they are tacky. It's OK if you like Hopper. So do I. And yet I also like Piscasso. That's why art is subjective.

 

Wright Thompson is the only columnist/features writer on ESPN.com who I think is a must-read.

Forde and Wojo are brilliant but are being misused as national columnists. Both are clearly not as confident or knowledgeable writing about something other than college sports. If they're writing about college football or college basketball, they're brilliant. Anything else? Not so much...

ESPN has plenty of great reporters, but as far as writers who I try to read on a regular basis, I'd much rather read the guys on Sportsline or Yahoo or SI.com and even Fox Sports and maybe even TSN.

 

Obviously, I'm projecting somewhat.

I think that I thought I was a MacGregor when really my strengths were as a storyteller. I blame Milton and Frost and Bob Dylan as much as I blame MacGregor or Thomas Wolfe.

Maybe majoring in English is the real land mine.

 

I think where you err is feeling like any path was the wrong one to go down. Learning how to write, and how to find your voice, is a process of discovery. And it's ongoing, as long as you care and want to get better. There is nothing wrong with majoring in English, just as there is nothing wrong with majoring in economics. Everyone's path is different. It takes some people longer to figure out where their strengths lie and what they feel comfortable attempting. Most of the time, early failures are a good thing, even if they embarrass you in retrospect.

 

Shockey, it's fine to feel this way. I'm not going to tell you that you're wrong, even though by saying this, you're suggesting that people who believe the opposite like myself and, presumably, MacGregor, are wrong. But the author who writes The Da Vinci Code (or The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo or The Bourne Identity) and the author who writes The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (or Catch-22, or Infinite Jest, or The Corrections) -- they're not attempting to clear the same bar.

Some of you roll your eyes and sneer when we talk about stuff like having a responsibility to the craft, or the art, and trying to balance that with your responsibility to the readership at large, but some of us believe deeply in that mission. I know this comes across as condescending -- even though it shouldn't -- but that's why some writers write. Not to be read by everyone, but to be read by enough people who feel like they were challenged or changed or illuminated by the piece that it makes it time well spent.

You think the comparison between something on ESPN.com and Kavalier and Clay is ridiculous, I'm sure. But both writers are striving for something beyond popularity. There is nothing wrong with popular writing. Frankly, it pays the bills for the other kind of writing. As I've grown older (and hopefully wiser) I've learned to accept that one style does not invalidate the other. It's just a reflection of your worldview. And they can politely coexist.

 

Since writing IS a matter of taste, and since ESPN.com is one of the largest producers of sportswriting content in the world if not the biggest, the organization is to be commended for presenting as many different styles of writing and writers' voices as it does -- even if I don't care for some and positively loathe others.

 

I have less problem with Mac's prose than I do with his always anarchical view of our world.

As Rhoden is a one trick pony when it comes to race MacGregor is a one trick pony when it come to raging against the man and the system that he created. It can't be all bad.

Every column is filled with some nugget of Mac's discontent:

"The NCAA tournament and the brackets and the broadcasts seem to me sometimes businesslike, a bottom-line reckoning of gray middle management. A good reason to get out of the house. Conference. RPI. The cult of the coach and the three-button suit. Institutional. Educational. Even the upsets aren't very upsetting. A uniformed land-grant game played straight on the downbeat and in the key of C"

Really hard to see this guy working for a place like ESPN.

 

I say overwritten and I've overwritten enough to know how it happens, which is you type something you didn't know you were going to type, and it sounds good, and you think let's see if I can take that anywhere, and soon enough you're deep into the poetry of it, the music, and you hear it so well, it's so sweet, that you keep at it until you're convinced you've done a jazz piece, jazz being the literati's definition of basketball, creative, five guys jamming, improvising, making nothing into something, until, wait a minute, you hear a clank, and another clank, and you think what's happened to the game I love, and maybe this is the way to do it, to write a piece that falls out of rhythm, becomes cacophony, the city game gone all to hell.

Oh, my point? Point is, as much as I loved Ax, I never bought into "The City Game" concept. City game? Yeah, if you're of the city. Try selling that in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois.

 

Dammit, I was just posting that when this post popped up. Damn the timing! Damn it!