Michael Silver -- I just don't get it...

[silentbob]

there's nothing wrong with what silver did.
he's just showing that the information he got is exclusive.
edge talking shop at a bar is much more sexier than edge talking shop at his locker.
journalists hate it, readers love it.
they dont care that silver put himself in the story. they dont even know that's an issue in the writing community.
as for the drink detail, i like it.
if peyton manning goes home and relaxes with a zima, i'd find that interesting.

 

[goalmouth]

Those breathless details come off as comical...and immature, if you're a reader over 25.

I clearly remember an A.J. Foyt profile maybe 30 years ago, a front-seater where the writer described Foyt's hands on the wheel, his fingers making a "million little corrections" as they drove. THAT's a meaningful detail that goes right to the heart of the subject.

 

[broadway joe]

No problem with the description of the drink. Better to be specific than to just say he had a drink in his hand. I don't know what Patron and Rosie's Lime Juice is, but that's my fault, not Silver's. Also, the fact that he's working on an apparently trendy drink, as opposed to a beer or a Jack Daniels or something, tells me a little about Edge.

The "I asked Joe Blow and Joe Blow told me," is eye-rolling stuff, though. Unnecessary and egotistical, and it has always been a drawback to Silver's writing. SI may have tolerated it, but I wouldn't be surprised if the guys at Yahoo actually encourage it. Expect Silver to go hog-wild with that stuff from now on.

 

[playthrough]

Peyton Manning frequently goes to Indy's famous steakhouse, St. Elmo's, often sitting at the bar alone and having a steak and a Bud Light. After they lost at Tennessee last season, he came in about 7 or so and ordered a martini.

Bartender: "Peyton, I've never seen you order a martini before."
Manning: "I've never seen a kicker kick a 60-yard field goal to win the game on me before."

 

[SuperflySnuka]

Playthrough -- that is an immaculate detail. Hell yes that belongs...because it has a sense of time and place. Not Edge drinking a ****in tequila

 

[broadway joe]

Edge is in a Phoenix nightclub, in the wee hours, surrounded by babes, drinking a Patron's and lime. How is that not a sense of time and place?

 

[SuperflySnuka]

Because it's not after a tough loss at a place where he usually orders the same thing, and then, this one time, he switches it up.

This detail is simply to prove: I'M Michael Silver, I get to hang out with Edge James, and you don't! Nah nah nah

 

[X-Hack]

It also doesn't read "I was with Peyton at the bar and he ordered a martini...."

The writer is giving a sense of time and place without inserting himself.

 

[playthrough]

Full disclosure...that story came from a Q&A with St. Elmo's proprietor in a local Indy magazine. Made me think that if you can't get SI-level access by eating a steak dinner with the star athlete in his/her favorite restaurant, you can still get great detail by trying to get the restaurant's owner. Cheaper too.

 

[broadway joe]

The objection to Silver putting himself in the scene is valid. The objection to descriptive detail is not. If Silver had written "Edge was at the bar with a drink," any good editor would have asked what kind of drink? A bottled water? A ginger ale? A Budweiser? A Corona? And what kind of bar? An out of the way neighborhood joint? A crowded nightclub? All those details form a picture. No, it's not as perfect as the Peyton Manning example, but few scenes are. I don't like some of Silver's excesses, either, but this seems more a criticism of the writer than the writing.

 

[SuperflySnuka]

A good editor would've said, "Why is this necessary?"

 

[broadway joe]

Yeah, you're right. Why is any of it necessary? Why not just print a transcript of the interview and be done with it?

 

[SuperflySnuka]

::) ::) ::) ::) ::)

 

[Jones]

Snuka, I think you're half-right here, which means, if I've done my math correctly, you're half-wrong, too.

I think the detail about the drink is good. It's not especially important, but if it had just said "drink," I'd wonder, What kind of drink? Now we know. Patron says, Money. Lime juice says, ***** who can't drink even good tequila straight. There we have it.

If someone's drinking a beer, I usually name the beer. A guy who drinks Schlitz is different from a guy who drinks Sapparo, say. Can or bottle or glass says something, too.

That all being said, the "told me" **** is hateful stuff. Who the **** else would he be telling it to? The potted plant in the corner?

The reader is smart enough to know you're there. So, if you do get great access -- if you find yourself in Peyton Manning's truck on the way to the game -- and you want to flaunt it, just write that scene, and write it well and with intimacy, and everybody will know you were in the truck on the way to the game. People can make that connection.

Anything more than that is hacky, juvenile bull****.

 

[broadway joe]

Snuka, I think you're half-right here, which means, if I've done my math correctly, you're half-wrong, too.

I think the detail about the drink is good. It's not especially important, but if it had just said "drink," I'd wonder, What kind of drink? Now we know. Patron says, Money. Lime juice says, ***** who can't drink even good tequila straight. There we have it.

If someone's drinking a beer, I usually name the beer. A guy who drinks Schlitz is different from a guy who drinks Sapparo, say. Can or bottle or glass says something, too.

That all being said, the "told me" **** is hateful stuff. Who the **** else would he be telling it to? The potted plant in the corner?

The reader is smart enough to know you're there. So, if you do get great access -- if you find yourself in Peyton Manning's truck on the way to the game -- and you want to flaunt it, just write that scene, and write it well and with intimacy, and everybody will know you were in the truck on the way to the game. People can make that connection.

Anything more than that is hacky, juvenile bull****.

Precisely. That's exactly what I was trying to say. There's only one thing wrong with this passage from Silver:

"All those years without a fullback, I didn't realize what I was missing," James said early Sunday as we stood near the bar at a bustling Phoenix nightclub. He was sipping a small glass of Patron and Rosie's Lime Juice while surrounded by the usual assemblage of lovely ladies.

Change the "we" stood near the bar to "he" stood near the bar, and it's fine.

 

[SuperflySnuka]

How bout this: What if he added just one or two more bits of detail. Something about the fans, if they were clamoring over him, or if he wasn't getting noticed. What about if any of his teammates were there. What about if it was his first glass or his sixth.

Is that a compromise?

 

[Bob Cook]

That all being said, the "told me" **** is hateful stuff. Who the **** else would he be telling it to? The potted plant in the corner?

Now if James WERE talking to the potted plant in the corner, that would be a detail worth including.

 

[jgmacg]

While it's hard to argue with The Jones' expertise in the realm of cocktails, cordials and apertifs - and their meanings - my gut tells me the drink reference was pretty casual, and that Mr. Silver wasn't necessarily freighting it with any interpretative weight. Why? Because the second half of that same sentence carries no detail at all - "assemblage"? "lovely ladies"? - and makes no nod toward color or description or individuation. It sounds to me rather that Mr. Silver simply wrote out the drink order as he heard it, then retrieved it from his notebook when he started writing.

Which is fine, but like S'Fly, I'd rather hear that the drink was his usual; or his fourth; or that it made him wince; or made him mellow; or that he held it without drinking it; or that it cost $12 and he ordered a round for all the "ladies"; or that he ordered it as if he'd never tried one before; or that four college guys at the next table were drinking the same and that's how the idea came to him, etc., ad inf.

That my beloved Jones could decode and tease out the meaning of the drink says more to me about him - and about the breadth and depth of his writerly instinct - than it does about what Mr. Silver actually put on the page. But that's just me, and there's plenty of room for disagreement on the point.

Do not, however, get me started on Mr. Silver's all-seeing "I".

 

[Jones]

Oh, jgmacg, as usual, I agree with you 100 proof. That kind of scene deserves a couple of fat grafs, at least, with lots of telling detail -- and that's if the story's just a short hit.

If you're writing it up as a feature, you could (and should) write a couple thousand words just watching a guy like that work a bar -- what he drinks, how he interacts with people, how people interact with him, how he moves to music, who he arrives with and who ends up in the bathroom stall with him.

Of course, that kind of story would be most effective if you're just a ghost taking notes. Pretty sure that's not Silver's style.

 

[Double Down]

Do not, however, get me started on Mr. Silver's all-seeing "I".

Does it make you madder than Tony Soprano when he's catching a bad beat at the table, Mr. jgmacg?