Professional Readings (New Feature)

[Angola!]

All right, I haven't been reading as much as I should have been lately so I just bought the following books recommended on this thread from half.com (which I must say is the best way to buy used books because it is so damn cheap!): Writing for Story, Jon Franklin; The Last Shot, Darcy Frey; Up in the Old Hotel, Joseph Mitchell; One More Time, Mike Royko.
Hopefully they help me as much as they seemed to have helped such respected board members.

 

[Jones]

Cousin Jeffrey, that's some kind of story. I think "devastating" is the word that describes it best; there's something about the language in it, the rhythm of it, that's almost painful to read.

And so it should be. It's a painful subject. My wife and I lost two babies to miscarriages, but we lost them long before they were babies -- long before we had named them or seen photographs of them. That experience was awful enough. I can't imagine what it was like for these parents, or what it's like for any parents who lose children.

What makes the story, though, is the pure honesty of it. It makes imagination unnecessary. The author, I'd guess, used the writing of it as therapy -- just blunt, brutal memory, relayed to the reader without pity. But if you're going to write a story like this, that's how it needs to be written. That's the lesson for the rest of us here: first-person stories are sometimes the worst of what we write, but they can be the best, too, if they are like this one -- unflinching, honest, and universal.

I liked the last line a lot. I think he's saying there that we all could have been lost like this, that life hangs on such a thin thread, but we're here, and so many others are not, and if anything, we should feel so lucky for the chance at breath we've been given, the same chance that Irene was denied.

I know it made me feel even more lucky for the boy my wife and I now have. I think every parent sees their child as a kind of miracle, but it's important to be reminded just how much had to have fallen into place for them to be with us.

That's how devastating becomes somehow uplifting here. It's quite a trick.

 

[jgmacg]

Thanks for posting this, Cousin Jeffrey. Not much I can say that our other CJ hasn't already said better. A beautiful piece of work, at once heartbreaking and redemptive and hopeless, as honest and bracing as a punch in the face.

 

[jgmacg]

Following the argument on the Journalism Board about the nature and meaning of words with which one might be unfamiliar, may I suggest the following: From the Modern Library panel, 2000, a graduate education in literature for the price of a library card.

Novels

# ULYSSES by James Joyce
# THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
# A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
# LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
# BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
# THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
# CATCH-22
# DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler
# SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
# THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
# UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
# THE WAY OF ALL FLESH by Samuel Butler
# 1984 by George Orwell
# I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
# TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
# AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser
# THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
# SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
# INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
# NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
# HENDERSON THE RAIN KING by Saul Bellow
# APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA by John O'Hara
# U.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos Passos
# WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson
# A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster
# THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James
# THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James
# TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald
# THE STUDS LONIGAN TRILOGY by James T. Farrell
# THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford
# ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
# THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James
# SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser
# A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh
# AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
# ALL THE KING'S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
# THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder
# HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster
# GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin
# THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene
# LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
# DELIVERANCE by James Dickey
# A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME (series) by Anthony Powell
# POINT COUNTER POINT by Aldous Huxley
# THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
# THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad
# NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad
# THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence
# WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence
# TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
# THE NAKED AND THE DEAD by Norman Mailer
# PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth
# PALE FIRE by Vladimir Nabokov
# LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
# ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
# THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett
# PARADE'S END by Ford Madox Ford
# THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton
# ZULEIKA DOBSON by Max Beerbohm
# THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy
# DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa Cather
# FROM HERE TO ETERNITY by James Jones
# THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLES by John Cheever
# THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
# A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
# OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
# HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
# MAIN STREET by Sinclair Lewis
# THE HOUSE OF MIRTH by Edith Wharton
# THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET by Lawrence Durell
# A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA by Richard Hughes
# A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS by V.S. Naipaul
# THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathanael West
# A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
# SCOOP by Evelyn Waugh
# THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Muriel Spark
# FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce
# KIM by Rudyard Kipling
# A ROOM WITH A VIEW by E.M. Forster
# BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
# THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH by Saul Bellow
# ANGLE OF REPOSE by Wallace Stegner
# A BEND IN THE RIVER by V.S. Naipaul
# THE DEATH OF THE HEART by Elizabeth Bowen
# LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad
# RAGTIME by E.L. Doctorow
# THE OLD WIVES' TALE by Arnold Bennett
# THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
# LOVING by Henry Green
# MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie
# TOBACCO ROAD by Erskine Caldwell
# IRONWEED by William Kennedy
# THE MAGUS by John Fowles
# WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys
# UNDER THE NET by Iris Murdoch
# SOPHIE'S CHOICE by William Styron
# THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
# THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain
# THE GINGER MAN by J.P. Donleavy
# THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by Booth Tarkington

Non-Fiction

# THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS by Henry Adams
# THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE by William James
# UP FROM SLAVERY by Booker T. Washington
# A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN by Virginia Woolf
# SILENT SPRING by Rachel Carson
# SELECTED ESSAYS, 1917-1932 by T. S. Eliot
# THE DOUBLE HELIX by James D. Watson
# SPEAK, MEMORY by Vladimir Nabokov
# THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE by H. L. Mencken
# THE GENERAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT, INTEREST, AND MONEY by John Maynard Keynes
# THE LIVES OF A CELL by Lewis Thomas
# THE FRONTIER IN AMERICAN HISTORY by Frederick Jackson Turner
# BLACK BOY by Richard Wright
# ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL by E. M. Forster
# THE CIVIL WAR by Shelby Foote
# THE GUNS OF AUGUST by Barbara Tuchman
# THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND by Isaiah Berlin
# THE NATURE AND DESTINY OF MAN by Reinhold Niebuhr
# NOTES OF A NATIVE SON by James Baldwin
# THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ALICE B. TOKLAS by Gertrude Stein
# THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE by William Strunk and E. B. White
# AN AMERICAN DILEMMA by Gunnar Myrdal
# PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell
# THE MISMEASURE OF MAN by Stephen Jay Gould
# THE MIRROR AND THE LAMP by Meyer Howard Abrams
# THE ART OF THE SOLUBLE by Peter B. Medawar
# THE ANTS by Bert ***lldobler and Edward O. Wilson
# A THEORY OF JUSTICE by John Rawls
# ART AND ILLUSION by Ernest H. Gombrich
# THE MAKING OF THE ENGLISH WORKING CLASS by E. P. Thompson
# THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK by W.E.B. Du Bois
# PRINCIPIA ETHICA by G. E. Moore
# PHILOSOPHY AND CIVILIZATION by John Dewey
# ON GROWTH AND FORM by D'Arcy Thompson
# IDEAS AND OPINIONS by Albert Einstein
# THE AGE OF JACKSON, Arthur Schlesinger by Jr.
# THE MAKING OF THE ATOMIC BOMB by Richard Rhodes
# BLACK LAMB and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West
# AUTOBIOGRAPHIES by W. B. Yeats
# SCIENCE AND CIVILIZATION IN CHINA by Joseph Needham
# GOODBYE TO ALL THAT by Robert Graves
# HOMAGE TO CATALONIA by George Orwell
# THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN by Mark Twain
# CHILDREN OF CRISIS by Robert Coles
# A STUDY OF HISTORY by Arnold J. Toynbee
# THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY by John Kenneth Galbraith
# PRESENT AT THE CREATION by Dean Acheson
# THE GREAT BRIDGE by David McCullough
# PATRIOTIC GORE by Edmund Wilson
# SAMUEL JOHNSON by Walter Jackson Bate
# THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X by Alex Haley and Malcolm X
# THE RIGHT STUFF by Tom Wolfe
# EMINENT VICTORIANS by Lytton Strachey
# WORKING by Studs Terkel
# DARKNESS VISIBLE by William Styron
# THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION by Lionel Trilling
# THE SECOND WORLD WAR by Winston Churchill
# OUT OF AFRICA by Isak Dinesen
# JEFFERSON AND HIS TIME by Dumas Malone
# IN THE AMERICAN GRAIN by William Carlos Williams
# CADILLAC DESERT by Marc Reisner
# THE HOUSE OF MORGAN by Ron Chernow
# THE SWEET SCIENCE by A. J. Liebling
# THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES by Karl Popper
# THE ART OF MEMORY by Frances A. Yates
# RELIGION AND THE RISE OF CAPITALISM by R. H. Tawney
# A PREFACE TO MORALS by Walter Lippmann
# THE GATE OF HEAVENLY PEACE by Jonathan D. Spence
# THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS by Thomas S. Kuhn
# THE STRANGE CAREER OF JIM CROW by C. Vann Woodward
# THE RISE OF THE WEST by William H. McNeill
# THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS by Elaine Pagels
# JAMES JOYCE by Richard Ellmann
# FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE by Cecil Woodham-Smith
# THE GREAT WAR AND MODERN MEMORY by Paul Fussell
# THE CITY IN HISTORY by Lewis Mumford
# BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM by James M. McPherson
# WHY WE CAN'T WAIT by Martin Luther King by Jr.
# THE RISE OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT by Edmund Morris
# STUDIES IN ICONOLOGY by Erwin Panofsky
# THE FACE OF BATTLE by John Keegan
# THE STRANGE DEATH OF LIBERAL ENGLAND by George Dangerfield
# VERMEER by Lawrence Gowing
# A BRIGHT SHINING LIE by Neil Sheehan
# WEST WITH THE NIGHT by Beryl Markham
# THIS BOY'S LIFE by Tobias Wolff
# A MATHEMATICIAN'S APOLOGY by G. H. Hardy
# SIX EASY PIECES by Richard P. Feynman
# PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK by Annie Dillard
# THE GOLDEN BOUGH by James George Frazer
# SHADOW AND ACT by Ralph Ellison
# THE POWER BROKER by Robert A. Caro
# THE AMERICAN POLITICAL TRADITION by Richard Hofstadter
# THE CONTOURS OF AMERICAN HISTORY by William Appleman Williams
# THE PROMISE OF AMERICAN LIFE by Herbert Croly
# IN COLD BLOOD by Truman Capote
# THE JOURNALIST AND THE MURDERER by Janet Malcolm
# THE TAMING OF CHANCE by Ian Hacking
# OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS by Anne Lamott
# MELBOURNE by Lord David Cecil

 

[jgmacg]

This piece was a hit on the J-Board, so I'll tack it up here. Mark Kram the younger writing about Mark Kram the elder. Touched in equal measure by both genius and madness, Kram the father was one of our best. And one of our worst.

http://www.thesmartset.com/article/article08060706.aspx


And Kram's most legendary piece:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/centurys_best/news/1999/05/05/thrilla_manila/

 

[funky_mountain]

'saddlebags' by shelby strother. it's a collection of his columns and stories.
it's hard to find a new copy but you can buy an used copy from amazon for the bargain price of 1.80 plus s/h.
http://www.amazon.com/Saddlebags-Collection-Columns-Shelby-Strother/dp/1878005286/ref=sr_1_1/105-4448366-8414812?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1186755845&sr=8-1

 

[sirvaliantbrown]

Sir jg,

I've heeded your advice - belatedly - and have begun attempting to deconstruct the work of the writers I admire. I love George Will. But I just cannot pinpoint what it is, what he does, that makes his punditry consistently seem so...level-headed, learned, and different from what anyone else does.

I've pasted a column - a random, rather unexceptional one - below. Would any of you care to go through it with me?

(One observation, first: one of Will's most common tactics, I've noticed, is the fact-fact-fact-OPINION paragraph. In other words, he often refuses to opine, refuses to reveal what he thinks about the facts he is stating, until the very end of the paragraph. [See the "Founded in 1852" paragraph below.] By doing so, he appears to: a) build momentum. By frequently making the last sentence of each paragraph the most interesting of all, he propels his pieces forward. b) creates an air of trustworthiness; the reader feels as though he can rely on the information Will provides before his punch lines.)

Other thoughts?


-
Forfeited Glory

By George F. Will
Sunday, July 15, 2007; Page B07

During the campus convulsions of the late 1960s, when rebellion against any authority was considered obedience to every virtue, the film "To Die in Madrid," a documentary about the Spanish Civil War, was shown at a small liberal arts college famous for, and vain about, its dedication to all things progressive. When the film's narrator intoned, "The rebels advanced on Madrid," the students, who adored rebels and were innocent of information, cheered. Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, had been so busy turning undergraduates into vessels of liberalism and apostles of social improvement that it had not found time for the tiresome task of teaching them tedious facts, such as that the rebels in Spain were Franco's fascists.

That illustrates why it is heartening that Antioch will close after the 2007-08 academic year. Its board of trustees says the decision is to "suspend operations," and it talks dottily about reviving the institution in 2012. There is, however, a minuscule market for what Antioch sells for a tuition, room and board of $35,221 -- repressive liberalism unleavened by learning.

Founded in 1852 -- its first president was Horace Mann -- Antioch was, for a while, admirable. One of the first colleges to enroll women and blacks, it was a destination for escaped slaves. Its alumni include Stephen Jay Gould, Coretta Scott King and Rod Serling, whose "Twilight Zone" never imagined anything weirder than what Antioch became when its liberalism curdled.

In 1972-73, Antioch had 2,470 students. In 1973, a protracted and embittering student and employee strike left the campus physically decrepit and intellectually toxic. By 1985, enrollment was down 80 percent. This fall there may be 300 students served by a faculty of 40.

In 1993, Antioch became an international punch line when it wrote rules to ensure that all sexual conduct would be consensual, step by minute step: "If the level of sexual intimacy increases during an interaction . . . the people involved need to express their clear verbal consent before moving to that new level." Does consent to a touch cover a caress? Is there consent regarding all the buttons?

Although laughable, Antioch was not funny. Former public radio correspondent Michael Goldfarb matriculated at what he calls the "sociological petri dish" in 1968. In his first week, he twice had guns drawn on him, once "in fun" and once by a couple of drunken ex-cons "whom one of my classmates, in the interest of breaking down class barriers, had invited to live with her." A true Antiochian still, Goldfarb says: "I do think I was made stronger for having to deal with these experiences."

Steven Lawry -- Antioch's fifth president in 13 years -- came to the college 18 months ago. He told Scott Carlson of the Chronicle of Higher Education about a student who left after being assaulted because he wore Nike shoes, symbols of globalization. Another left because, she told Lawry, the political climate was suffocating: "They all think they are so different, but they are just a bunch of conformists."

Carlson reports that Lawry stopped the student newspaper's practice of printing "announcements containing anonymous, menacing threats against other students for their political views." Antioch likes to dabble in menace: It invited Mumia Abu-Jamal to deliver its 2000 commencement speech, which he recorded on death row in a Pennsylvania prison, where he lives because 26 years ago he shot a Philadelphia police officer first in the back, then three times in the face. Antioch's invitation was its way of saying . . . what?

In an essay in the Chronicle, Cary Nelson, Antioch Class of 1967 and now a professor of English at the University of Illinois, waxes nostalgic about the fun he had spending, as Antioch students did, much time away from campus, receiving academic credits. What Nelson calls "my employee resistance to injustice" got him "released from almost every job I had until I became a faculty member." But "my little expenditure was never noticed" when "I used some of Lyndon Johnson's anti-poverty money" to bus Vietnam war protesters from Harlem to Washington.

Given that such was Antioch's idea of "work experience" in the "real world," it is unsurprising that the college never produced an alumni cohort capable of enlarging the college's risible $36 million endowment. Besides, the college seems always to have considered raising money beneath its dignity, given its nobility.

"Ben and Jerry could have named a new flavor for us," John Feinberg, Class of 1970 and president of the alumni board, says with a melancholy sense of unfulfilled destiny. His lament for a forfeited glory is a suitable epitaph for Antioch.

 

[sirvaliantbrown]

(And, of course, he is a brilliantly creative turner-of-phrases. "Repressive liberalism unleavened by learning"...that is not bad.)

 

[silentbob]

I never read Tracy Kidder's name much on these boards, but he's a master of nonfiction narrative. "House" is one of the best books I've read, a simple tale about a couple that wants to build their dream house. And yet the dialogue and conflict Kidder captured is pretty amazing.

"School Children" -- a year spent in an elementary school classroom -- is also good. I believe Kidder won the Pulitzer for "The Soul of a New Machine" but I haven't gotten to it yet, eventhough it's been on my shelf for years. Am I the only one who has a waiting list of books to read that passes 20?

Also, I just came upon this book --

http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/narrative/anthology/index.html

-- which is based on those who have lectured at the Nieman Narrative conference at Harvard. For those who havent attended this conference, I highly recommend it -- it's the best writing conference out there.

But as an above poster pointed out, if you don't have The Gay Talese Reader, that is where you need to start.

 

[Donegan17]

The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, edited by Halberstam, is a must-read. It's like a big golden bible of fantastic sports writing, both deadline and feature pieces and can be had for pretty cheap. There are some big omissions, but it's an invaluable resource. I never fly without it.

http://www.amazon.com/Best-American-Sports-Writing-Century/dp/0395945143

I'm sure most of us have read nearly all the articles in it by now, but having it all in one place is amazing.

I recommend all the Best American Sports Writing books. Some years are better than others, but you can't go wrong with Stout's series.

 

[friend of the friendless]

Sirs, Madames,

I just finished James Woods's How Fiction Works. It's not an easy read and I've had to search for my uncracked-since-college copies of Sentimental Education and Crime and Punishment, two of myriad novels he refers to several times. It's pretty prescriptive, maybe overly so. Still, it forces you to assess and re-assess how you assemble your non-fiction.

o-<