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Wright Thompson: outta the park, through the uprights, slam dunk, et al

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by TheSportsPredictor, Dec 1, 2010.

  1. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    I can't believe people have such an issue with Thompson using first person. It comes up on every single thread about his stories, within the first five posts.

    I think Thompson fancies himself as a travel writer who is writing about sports, and thus writes that way. Also, he's essentially a magazine writer.

    I have no issue with it. It works. The inverted pyramid is dead.
     
  2. Webster

    Webster Well-Known Member

     
  3. BYH

    BYH Active Member

    As great as this line is--and it is on the very short list of funniest things ever posted here--it would also be true coming from any other poster.

    You've got to love the sheer cluelessness of a parochial, xenophobic, close-minded clown who thinks Jacksonville is the shit telling someone else to expand his mind a little. Everybody laughs at the R.A., even fellow Vince Young haters.
     
  4. Care Bear

    Care Bear Guest

    I have been waiting for this response for well over an hour.
     
  5. BYH

    BYH Active Member

    Do you want me to sit here and explain to you how chronic masturbation to 90210 reruns works?
     
  6. NoOneLikesUs

    NoOneLikesUs Active Member

    All right, I suppose. Nothing I haven't read before.
     
  7. imjustagirl

    imjustagirl Active Member

    There was no way I wasn't going to love this piece. But I did.

    And Thompson's first-person writing doesn't bother me. It actually helps it flow for me.
     
  8. holy bull

    holy bull Active Member

    Same here. I understand the beef about placing yourself in the story, but he does it in a way that doesn't make himself the story. It adds a humanizing element to it. The occasional interaction between the characters and the storyteller coaxes the narrative along without becoming an "all-about-me" act of self-indulgence.
     
  9. AD

    AD Active Member

    this isn't a matter of the inverted pyramid vs. mailer on steroids. the story -- already beaten to death for years -- began with a writer talking to another writer: the lowest-hanging fruit in journalism. next stop: what the taxi driver thinks. is wright excellent? absolutely. but i don't care about wright no matter how lovely the prose and i don't care about scott raab, no matter how much he whines. there's a line between being honest with the reader about the process and relying on whatever happens to you to get the story's engine to turn over. i think wright has crossed that line. WE AREN'T THAT INTERESTING. if we were, SportsJournalists.com would be the top rated website on earth. it ain't. there's a reason.
     
  10. imjustagirl

    imjustagirl Active Member

    Shhhhh. BYH can hear you.
     
  11. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    If Whitlock is accusing the guy of making stuff up he better have some proof.

    That's just not cool on any level. Accusing someone of fabricating or plagiarizing a story is just about the worst thing you can accuse another writer of doing.

    I guess those stories I'd heard about Whitlock hating Wright when they were in KC were true.
     
  12. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    I think this is fair. First-person doesn't necessarily work every time. But I don't think that indicts it as a device. Raab used it, for example, in his recent Philip Roth piece. Because the story was spending an afternoon with Philip Roth. It was the least artificial way to write it. Same way, I think, with visiting all the areas in Cleveland. Again, Thompson writes like a travel writer. It's a very honest way to present certain types of stories, and has little to do with the writer's ego.

    But that doesn't mean that your criticism of this particular usage isn't valid.
     
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