Five things you wish you'd written

[STLIrish]

From a Jones challenge off the Books thread...
Here, in no particular order, are five things I wish I'd written.

1: Invisible City, by Pete Hamill. This gorgeous collection of sketches of people and their sadness.
2: The Corner, by David Simon. Gave birth to The Wire. Brilliant in its own right, and brilliantly-reported.
3: Racing in the Streets, by Bruce Springsteen. Hope, loss and a stab at redemption, all in four minutes.
4: A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving. More people I know say this is their favorite book than any other. There's good reason for that.
5: "'E was there when 'E was Needed," Jimmy Breslin in London, for the death of Winston Churchill (or any one of a number of other transcendant columns from The World of Jimmy Breslin). He was at his peak here, and at his peak, no one told a story like Breslin.

What are yours?

 

[pallister]

Cat in the Hat
Pokey Little Puppy
Harold and the Purple Crayon
The Bible
How to Eat Fried Worms

 

[John]

The Right Stuff
Semi-Tough
Blood Meridian
All The Pretty Horses
As I Lay Dying

 

[forever_town]

Not in any particular order.

1. Shirley Povich's story about Don Larsen's perfect game.
2. Double Down's post about frustrated writers who think they're terrible when they're not.
3. The Stevie Nicks song "Stand Back."
4. "Date of Infamy" speech.
5. 2001: A Space Odyssey

 

[slappy4428]

It Can;t Happen Here
The Naked and Dead
The Glory and The Dream
Green Eggs and Ham
A deposit slip for a $275M powerball winner

 

[huntsie]

"I Have A Dream"...
All Over But The Shoutin' by Rick Bragg.
"There's A Wocket In My Pocket" Dr. Seuss.
Jim Murray's Column about the loss of his eyesight (The title escapes me right now).
"Death of a President" William Manchester.

 

[GBNF]

Threads like these make me cry because of stories like these...

1) Gay Talese - Frank Sinatra Has A Cold
http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ1003-OCT_SINATRA_rev_
2) Wright Thompson - Holy Ground
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=fathersday
3) Jim Murray - If You're Expecting One-Liners
http://www.alydar.com/03/jim-eye.html
4) Rick Reilly - Funny You Should Ask
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/inside_game/magazine/lifeofreilly/1999/0412/
5) Jimmy Breslin - Digging JFK's Grave Was His Honor
http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/digging-grave-an-honor.htm

 

[Steak Snabler]

For purely financial reasons:

1. The Da Vinci Code
2. The Client
3. Gone With the Wind
4. the first Harry Potter book
5. a check for 100 shares of Google stock at $20 per share, circa 2001 (and sold it for $500/share in late 2006)

For artistic reasons:

1. The Catcher in the Rye
2. To Kill a Mockingbird
3. the original Baseball Encyclopedia
4. pretty much anything George Orwell ever wrote
5. the pilot for The Sopranos

 

[jlee]

Jim Murray's Column about the loss of his eyesight (The title escapes me right now).

"If you're expecting one-liners," which does not make my list but is one of my favorites.

1) A Tale of Two Cities
2) "The Day Bobby Blew It"
3) Less than Zero
4) Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
5) The "Firefly" pilot or "Serenity"

 

[jgmacg]

Ulysses

The Recognitions

Dispatches

The Great Gatsby

Huckleberry Finn

 

[buckweaver]

In no particular order:

1. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
2. Gettysburg Address (Lincoln)
3. Miracle at Coogan's Bluff (Smith)
4. Casey At The Bat (Thayer)
5. All The President's Men (Woodstein)

 

[In Exile]

On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Moby **** - Melville
Leaves of Grass - Whitman
Straw for the Fire - Theodore Roethke
Walden - Thoreau

 

[friend of the friendless]

Sirs, Madames,

The Sweet Science
Joe Gould's Secret
Light in August
Blood Meridian
The Game (because if I had written it there'd at least be a scintilla of humour)

YD&OHS, etc

 

[Joe Williams]

1) A really good screenplay for Elvis.
2) An episode of "The Rockford Files."
3) That damn story that's due in 20 minutes.
4) The beneficiaries page of Warren Buffet's will.
5) A thank-you note to my parents.

 

[Jones]

At risk of sounding like an arrogant ass, I'm going to pick things I think I actually could have written. For Whom The Bell Tolls is my favorite novel, but I don't have that in me. These are things that I regret having not gotten to first -- I like to think that, if given only the right mix of drugs, circumstance, starlight, experience, and good fortune, I might have pushed out something like them.

1) The Things They Carried: I think I should have gone to war at some point in my life. I think every writer worth a nut writes about war.

2) Into the Wild: A short, perfect book, written with great restraint. But it's the idea that I regret not having stolen. One of those ideas that was hanging out there on the vine.

3) The screenplay for Capote: I think I have a script in me. I would have liked it to have been this one.

4) The Executioner's Song: Mammoth reporting, but pretty straight-forward writing, which is it's secret. This book was there for anyone willing to do the work and willing to think big enough.

5) The Devil in the White City: I studied urban planning, and the killer lived in one of my hometowns. I knew both of them well before the book came out. I just never made the connection. Sometimes the secret to writing something great is just seeing something everybody else sees, only differently.


And one thing that I couldn't have written in a million years:

6) "First Breath After Coma" by Explosions in the Sky. I wish I had music like that just running in my head.

 

[BillyT]

Threads like these make me cry because of stories like these...

1) Gay Talese - Frank Sinatra Has A Cold
http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ1003-OCT_SINATRA_rev_
2) Wright Thompson - Holy Ground
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=fathersday
3) Jim Murray - If You're Expecting One-Liners
http://www.alydar.com/03/jim-eye.html
4) Rick Reilly - Funny You Should Ask
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/inside_game/magazine/lifeofreilly/1999/0412/
5) Jimmy Breslin - Digging JFK's Grave Was His Honor
http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/digging-grave-an-honor.htm

No. 5 shows Breslin's brilliance at its best.

Way to find the angle.

Those are five all-timers. Thanks.

 

[GBNF]

Threads like these make me cry because of stories like these...

1) Gay Talese - Frank Sinatra Has A Cold
http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ1003-OCT_SINATRA_rev_
2) Wright Thompson - Holy Ground
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=fathersday
3) Jim Murray - If You're Expecting One-Liners
http://www.alydar.com/03/jim-eye.html
4) Rick Reilly - Funny You Should Ask
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/inside_game/magazine/lifeofreilly/1999/0412/
5) Jimmy Breslin - Digging JFK's Grave Was His Honor
http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/digging-grave-an-honor.htm

No. 5 shows Breslin's brilliance at its best.

Way to find the angle.

Those are five all-timers. Thanks.

You're welcome.

Breslin writing about JFK's grave-digger is just a remarkable job all around — Breslin, for the idea and the words, the editor, for allowing him to write about it, and the grave-digger, for being incredibly open. I love that column.

Reminds me of Don Larsen's perfect game. Murray Kempton of the New York Post ignored conventional wisdom and walked into the visitor's dugout and talked about the OTHER pitcher. That takes some stones.

I found a beautiful obit about Kempton by Lupica —
http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/sports/1997/05/06/1997-05-06_his_words_never_failed.html

 

[Rumpleforeskin]

A good story.

 

[The Big Ragu]

The Bible
The Ikea Catalogue
The Scarlett Letter
The Executioner's Song
The Great Gatsby

EDIT: OK, I'd probably replace the Bible and the Ikea Catalogue with Gravity's Rainbow and A Confederacy of Dunces. And if I really gave this thought, my list might be completely different alltogether.

 

[silent_h]

Catch-22
A Modest Proposal
Heart of Darkness
Miss Lonelyhearts/Day of the Locust OR The Crying of Lot 49 (tie)
Don King Friars Roast Piece in SI

Also receiving votes: The Five People You Meet in Heaven, since ESPN.com editors can't object and/or eliminate if and when you're making fun of your own work.