New Yorker staff writer William Finnegan interviewed in The New New Journalism
Yes, yes, yes. I realize I’ve done several posts on this one book. I realize I’m posting about it as if I have some financial stake in selling copies of it. I don’t. There’s not even some cozy relationship between me and Robert Boynton, the book’s author. In fact, I e-mailed Boynton on May 6 with a concern about the book’s Kindle edition and I never heard back from him. My nose is a bit out of joint over that. So there’s no good reason for me to be writing so much about his book.
Except that there is. There’s a great reason. I’m finding the book so rich, so useful that I want to tell people about it. I have. Three times already on this very blog. Big deal! You can’t fathom the restraint I’ve shown.
For instance, I can’t turn up any evidence that I’ve blogged a single word about Boynton’s interview with Michael Lewis. I stayed admirably silent about two moments in that interview that I found especially winning. It’s great — and a little dorky — that Lewis told Boynton that he cackles to himself while writing. Also, in ways I can’t quite justify, I love that Lewis said, “I have huge literary ambitions. When I bother to write a book, I hope it is a book that might one day be thought a ‘classic.’ I have grandiose notions of what my writing might be and that’s what gets me excited.”
On one level, I see that and I’m almost embarrassed for the guy. Because he said it. He said it out loud. People are going to know that he’s so grandiose.
On every other level, though, my reaction is just “Hell, yes!”
In my newspaper days, there was not a single time I did good work by reminding myself that readers would be lining bird cages with my story within 36 hours. No, I tend more toward the grandiose. So I appreciate Lewis’ company.
Andrew Sullivan wrote something Monday that might seem, at first, to drive a skewer right through the very idea of grandiose ambitions in journalism: “The basic truth is that amateurs are often as good as professionals in journalism, which requires simply basic skills, integrity and practice.”
Sullivan’s right. Especially about the last part. I’d quibble with his use of the word “simply.” Sure, “basic skills” are, well, basic skills. But “integrity and practice” are no small things. Particularly, as I’m sure Sullivan would agree, when the practice goes on for decades. And that’s what’s on display in The New New Journalism: people who have practiced their craft, people who have thought about their work, people who are so advanced that they can get back to simple. On that point, one (probably) final William Finnegan quote:
There was a time when I was almost more interested in the sound of my sentences than in whatever sense they made. Working as a journalist for a couple of decades has pretty much knocked that out of me, and I’ve stopped letting myself write the kinds of rhetorical glissandos and crescendos that I still hear in my head. On balance, that’s a good thing. I’m sure.
