The Jones interview with Wright Thompson

It has zero to do with helping me feel better about myself. Zip. Zilch. I don't even know where you got that from anything I've said. I am perfectly satisfied with both my talent and potential.

It is purely a response to the argument that Thompson should not use first-person. Nothing more, nothing less. I don't even consider whether he pulls it off or not. I am purely addressing what seems to be his influences.

He doesn't make me feel inadequate. I have no idea where that came from. I am praising Thompson, not denigrating him.

 

My third party take: I don't think Shockey meant "you" as a direct comment directed toward you, nor do I think it was remotely as personal as you seem to have read it.

 

my bad for not being clearer, dick. poor job by me. i was simply leap-frogging from your point to what popped into my head from personal experience about this 'labeling' stuff. i gotta be more careful.

 

It occurs to me you may have missed this from Thompson in the interview: "And, by the way, using it all the time is just as dumb as never using it."

His comment about it being intellectually dishonest to write it another way was about a specific situation: "Barn 55 changed me. That change was the story’s motor. It felt intellectually dishonest to not write it first person."

Write "it" first person. Not write "everything" first person.

And your long take on his writing losing some sense of creative unpredictability might have some validity that is beyond my ability to grasp it, but I suspect you are talking about something that has significance for about 0.09 percent of Wright's readers -- many of whom probably don't notice bylines.

 

Alma,

You make some very interesting, respectful points. I wish that jgmacg were still around to play the Abe Lincoln to your Steven Douglass because, frankly, I don't possess the intellectual heft to offer, at the very least, a worthy rebuttal. But I guess I would ask you to bear in mind that we're also talking about someone who is all of 32 years old. (And no, I don't care in this instance that Scott Fitzgerald wrote Gatsby when he was 27. Let's at least be reasonable as far as comparisons go.) As fishwrapper said, Wright's work, especially when you factor in his productivity, is as good as anyone writing about sports right now. Anyone. And that should be acknowledged. That said, it's fair to judge him by those lofty Talese-like standards because he's attempting to write stories that hold up in that same manner. And figuring out how to do that is still a process, no matter how talented you are. Big swings -- even if they're ultimately judged as misses -- are something to be applauded, I think. And while I don't read your commentary as criticism, per say, I do think it's important to emphasize that there is still a lot of time for a young writer to figure out how to strike the perfect balance; how to harness his or her gifts.

The world has, obviously, changed since the time of Talese. The demands on the narrative writers of today are greater. Talese or Joseph Mitchell never had to blog from the British Open the way Wright did earlier this year after writing a story about St. Andrews. And so while we can acknowledge that stories written in 3PO may allow the reader to grapple with their own truth without being led down the path as much by the writer who pens the same story in 1st person, is it worth it to, say, an editor and employer, to hold one of those stories for several weeks or months until it can be reshaped? You make some good points about the prevalence of memoir-ish writing -- and its hit or miss nature -- but there is no denying its popularity.

Is the use of first person connecting with today's reader -- especially the type of reader who might be on ESPN.com reading Bill Simmons and then click over onto one of Wright's stories -- more than first person written by Joseph Mitchell or Bill Heinz might have 60 years ago? I would argue that it might. Your artistic concerns of 3PO vs 1st Person are probably the best thing I've seen written here in months as part of a craft discussion, but what of the commercial concerns? If I'm ESPN and I can get 18 pieces like Zenyatta or Ali or Cleveland from Wright in a year's time, many of them are written in the first person (a style the readers like, and seem to want more of) or I can get seven pieces that are wonderful reads, finely tuned pieces of narrative, and only one of them uses 1st person, which do I chose? As Charlie Brown pointed out, if you really do feel changed by the experience, a specific experience, then it's intellectual dishonest to not try that 1st person approach, in his opinion.

I think, as fishwrapper said, Wright tells beautiful stories, and he tells them often. The process of figuring out how to tell them even better is on-going, and I'm sure Wright would tell you that as well.

 

Yeah, and, just for the record, I wasn't trying to be pissy as much as I was trying to emphasize what my exact argument was. I probably should have left out some of the, "I have no idea how you got that from what I wrote ..." garbage and just re-emphasized.

 

This is a really good point that shouldn't get lost. We talk about Gary Smith a lot. He writes 3-4 times a year because his stories are very deeply reported. Use of first-person, memoir/travel-writing style, like Thompson uses, allows an excellent writer/story-teller to tell stories that are deeply reported in their own particular way without him having to track down 50 sources to interview. Therefore he can write more often. It is at least arguable that the return on investment for the time Thompson puts in well exceeds the ROI for the time Smith puts in.

I wonder, having worked with Posnanski at the KC Star, how much Thompson was influenced - if at all - by Poz's Buck O'Neill book.

 

Same here. In no way was I jabbing Dick Whitman.
And, I think it is fair, as an exercise to learn and dissect the art form. Especially long-form journalism, because of its scarcity these days.
But, Wright is a different cat. Anyone who has ever met him or worked with him will tell you. He's stylistic, at times formulaic, but damn it, he can tell a story cross platforms.
The earlier criticism of his 1P usage was out of place, too. Wright was addressing the Zenyatta piece in defending the tact, yet the "Ali column" was used to defeat Wright's premise. Two very different pieces.
What we do, as professionals, is to subjectively criticize. It is our trained, honed ability. Yet, this exercise is analogous to wondering why Ted Williams had a hitch in his swing.

 

From the interview:

<i>"The other reason to write first person—a recent Ali column, for example—is because, especially on deadline, it allows me to say most clearly what I am thinking and feeling. Again, it seems <b>cheap and dishonest</b> to not do it. It feels like I am putting an artificial construct—the idea of “the story”—in between the reader, who wants to know what something was like, and me, who just experienced that something. I feel silly not doing those first person."</i>

Thompson is revealing that "antennae of Babel" here, projecting the reader's desire into a stylistic choice before the act of creation. As if 1P is almost <i>egalitarian</i> for the reader. It's a bridge way too far. There is a chance the reader would say, "boy I just wish he'd insert himself into this column," but that doesn't that presume that said reader needs an paint-by-numbers emotional road map on how to feel?

That's not to say they couldn't use a road map. In movies, the best directors achieve this through camera placement, lens choice, movement, filter, etc. The influence is subtle but real; only the most savvy can see how the manipulation is occurring. But at least it's an invitation and not a declaration.

And 1P is very, very popular. Quite. Because it diminishes craft and "relativizes" truth, which creates accessibility. It flattens out the narrative. 1P is rarely confusing once overtly declared, or mysterious, or lingering. The writer is influenced by the style choice, encouraged to veer off and bang around in the extremities of the story. And while those trips can be lovely detours, Thompson's stories rarely match in form the emotions he declares for the stories.

 

Yes, you do.

Part of the criticism is that they do not seem like big swings creatively. 1P is the safer, smarter choice. Aside from being overstuffed - perhaps a byproduct of the 1P slant - Thompson's stories are never disasters. They're comfortable.

Agreed. It's popular because it's less rigorous emotionally and intellectually. People like having "true" defined at the outset so they don't have to work to place it for themselves. This has no positive bearing, of course, on the strength of the work. The inverse, most often.

That argument can be stretched in a lot of directions. One could argue that Thompson's pieces would be more commercial if they were shorter. One could also argue that ESPN's concerns are their own, and if that's driving the style, it's not talked about in the interview.

Aside from the opinion not being "wrong" - how can it be, really - the opinion still has its drawbacks, some of which have been noted.