June 2005 Archives

I stole this meme from Cheryl, who does mean things with cranberries, chicken and curry sauce, and who has no problem undermining my workout efforts with devilish temptation via stroopwafels, or sending me five-word e-mails designed to stir me into a confused frenzy. Wench.

1. Total number of books owned: I just don't know. I have about a hundred in my room, a couple of giant boxes in my childhood bedroom, a downstairs closet in my mom's house full of them, and lots in attics and alcoves. The hundred in my room are the ones I had to take with me when I moved, so I suppose they matter more. My complete Shakespeare, my Strunk & White, my Edna St. Vincent, my Roget's Thesaurus, my Webster's Dictionary, and my Harry Potters are there. I have more every time I see Cheryl; I have more every time I walk by a bookstore; I have more every time I see something interesting on a friend's shelf; I have more with each birthday and with each gift certificate, and I have more each time I visit Amazon.com, no matter what I was browsing for.

2. Last book I bought: Erm. Hm. Savage Beauty? The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay? It's hard to buy books when your friends pile them into your arms every time you see them. I have more unread books than I can get through, for awhile. OH, wait, I got The New Journalism by Tom Wolfe, just delivered to me. It's out of print and I could only find a very beat up copy, but it's Tom Wolfe, and was recommended to me by Chip Scanlan of The Poynter Institute, so, you know. Important. I've read a page and it's now at the top of my list.

3. Last book I read: This is hard, because I am in the habit of reading several things at once, and therefore finishing several things at once. I finished recently a Lemony Snicket, Savage Beauty, a reread of the first HP (have an interview to prepare for!), and something else I'm forgetting. But, for instance, I have not yet finished Kavalier and Clay, because the story seemed to level off near the end, and I just haven't had the inclination to actually finish. So I've been reading it for half a year, though I read the first 3/4ths in half a week.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me:

Clearly, Harry Potter, and I count all the books, even the seventh, as one. These books literally changed my life. Nevermind all I've been able to do journalistically; through them, and the people I've met through them, I've learned exactly what real friendship is, what it's not, what it means to have it, and how overly blessed I am with it.

Act One, by playwright Moss Hart, recommended to me by Frank Rich of the New York Times, who saw the lost soul trapped in the theater geek trapped in the writer that is me, and prescribed a book to fit. There was supposed to be an Act Two, but Moss Hart died before it could be written; it's the tale of his do-anything to be near the bright lights of Broadway, and boils down to a heartrending account of how any seemingly insignificant person finds his way in a big, blinking world. I need to get another copy; I lent it out a few years ago and now it's GONE.

Hot Seat by Frank Rich. I haven't read this all the way through (because it's a GIGANTIC anthology of reviews and time is very stingy with me), but this was the book that started everything. I was studying for my Organic Chemistry final at Barnes and Noble in Georgetown, and was clearly looking for anything to do but organic chemistry, so started wandering shelves. Whenever I wander shelves I magically appear in the theater section. I started flipping through this book, and the writing was a revelation - sharp, and like it mattered, like theater reviews and culture were actually intertwined, like culture wasn't something to be written about lightly, and those who wrote about it weren't puff writers or celebrity stalkers. It gave validation to this nudge I had, this feeling that you could be in entertainment/culture journalism and still do something people could care about, and which contributed to the overall lexicon of insightful commentary. I became obsessed with the book, bought it, and then thought, what the hell, and e-mailed Frank Rich at the New York Times. I had no idea who Frank Rich really was; I knew he was an excellent writer, but only that; I had no idea he was this powerhouse figure, this last of the great critics. I didn't know that until right before I met him, because a month after I e-mailed him he brought me up to his office for a chat, just about my future and about whether or not I could really make a go of it in journalism. He gave me some fantastic advice, recommended some terrific books (see above), and had his assistant, Carlos, walk me around the New York Times newsroom. We kept in touch for some time over e-mail. It's been a while now, but I'll always consider him my first mentor.

The Best Newspaper Writing 2000 - this was the first of these books I perused, and the first to show me what journalism really could be. I would leaf through it at time off at The Hoya and admire the features. I think this is when my interests ballooned past entertainment.

The Great Gatsby - because it's the first book I re-read after college, and hence discovered how wonderful the books I'd only read in school because I had to could be. I remember staring at the text of this book and wondering how on earth I missed its beauty the first time. "...Gatsby was overwhelmingly aware of the youth and mystery that wealth imprisons and preserves, of the freshness of many clothes and of Daisy, gleaming like silver, safe and proud above the hot struggles of the poor." I mean, does it get better?

Oh, and another thing: I really should not have ordered The Sims 2. Really should not have. Of the time I have for things in my life, this gets about ZERO percent. But they have STORYLINES now. Storylines! The geek in me is throwing a party, and I could not resist.

'Oh my God' is going to be on my tombstone (look near the end of the piece). The phrase shall be right next to, as Cheryl suggested (and Arjuna agreed with, when he had finished laughing hysterically at how on spot she was), "Oh, what the hell, I'll just e-mail them directly."

Oy vey. :)

It is hot. It's hot like my bathroom is right after my shower. It's hot like I feel right after I work out. It's wet air, stinky pits, damp clothing, everything-is-too-much-effort, get-me-a-damn-mint-julep-and-lace-fan HOT.

I would not mind if summer came driving up casually, with its top down and its music playing. NO. It screeched in like a teen with his first car. Like a guy on a Harley. Like it was very late and is overcompensating, getting into accidents and inconveniencing innocent passersby in order to make up for time lost.

HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT.

And so, naturally, I thought of Harry Potter.

No, really, there's a natural segue. It's always hot when you first read a Harry Potter. It's always summer, either where you're reading or in the book. So, um. Yes. Hot. And Harry Potter. Sure.

Anyway, I've been thinking about reading speed of late. Everyone keeps asking me if I'm going to feel rushed, having to finish the book in about 15 hours. And the answer thus far has been that I don't care, that it's WORTH it even if I am a little rushed.

But I actually thought about it yesterday, and realized that, hm, this may actually be quite perfect.

I was one of the last to finish book five, of my group. I took about an hour of naps/breaks, I talked to people, I even did radio interviews in the morning. I was done about midday Saturday, and though others have always thought I did, I didn't rush at all. There was once or twice someone saying, "OOH WAIT UNTIL PAGE 62!", and if I was on page 59, I did rush a little. But that stopped after about the third chapter. People broke off on their own, as did I; I stopped to freak out with other people who had read as far as I had several times, but the reading itself was done privately, for the most part.

I read it at totally my own pace. I had said at the time that I was going to take as much time as I needed to read that book, and it wasn't anything but the book that had me reading all through the night and into the next day. I intended to take more naps; I intended to laze around in pajamas and casually leaf pages and absorb. No way, man. That story - a proper JKR story - just propels you right through it, and if i couldn't put it down it was only because that was absolutely what was required of me by the fiction.

That was simply the pace I chose - rather, it was the pace the book chose for me. In retrospect, I do not feel as though I rushed. I do not feel as though finishing it by Saturday diminished it even in the slightest. I don't feel that obeying the natural obligations of a fast-paced story - even one that is hard to read at points - does anything to anyone's enjoyment of the text but enhance it.

I do feel that purposefully denying that push, that force, that momentum that all the Potter books have had thus far, would drain the book of some of its power and enchantment - that purposefully slowing my reading would mean I was forcing the book to take on a different narrative shape than it is intended to have, at least on me.

With book five, I just let the story and my connection to it dictate my reading speed. I have never had a different experience with a Potter book; I pick it up, and it carries me along. So, I do not expect different for book six. I will pick it up, and find the pace that fits, that is natural, and go with it. I've no reason to believe it won't be fast, and fun, and wild, and so gripping I am loath to do anything resembling sleep.

So, 15 hours, when that's about the time it took me (maybe it took me 17? I don't remember) to finish a book that was not only two to three hundred pages longer, but was actually physically painful in parts? Fifteen hours for a book that Jo has compared to Prisoner of Azkaban, the one of them that I read the fastest? Fifteen hours sounds like plenty of time to read the book, revise questions, get a nap in, shower and be clean, and be off to interview Jo with a clear head.

Holy crap.

OK, sorry, that happens sometimes. But still, it's plenty of time. And I wouldn't have it any other way. Why would I force false impediments on the experience? Potter books have always been rides, always been unputdownable, at least for me. I can't imagine how obeying that gravitation, that attraction, would do anything to harm the journey.

OK, I'm off. (Ed, I'm writing the article. Honest. Right now. A girl needs a break now and then, from writing - to write.)

The Watergate revelation has morphed, for me, from something of "huh" interest yesterday into an endless, morbid, rabid fascination today - and not with W. Mark Felt. His identity has become secondary to the bigger story today: The activity at the Washington Post, what this means for journalism, and the lid slamming shut on one of America's most determined mysteries.

It's in watching all of this unravel in every news media organization in the country; it's in imagining what it must have been like, to be a cub reporter with only a sniff of perhaps middling corruption, and to be launched into such a vortex; it's in looking at the old pictures of two obviously flummoxed, overworked, tired, determined reporters, and then the new ones, of two time-fattened journalists displaying the relief that only the unleashing of a 30-year-old secret and the denouement of a 30-year-old story could cause.

We had a special lunchtime session today, with the echelons at my newspaper calling us up to the fourth-floor conference room to watch parts of "All the Presidents' Men" and talk about anonymous sourcing, Watergate, and journalism in general. It was perfect, and I spent the rest of the day, instead of doing any of four hundred things I'm supposed to be doing, sucking up blogs and articles and transcripts.

The vast market of internet media is cooperating in my quest; everyone's writing something, even all the "shoulda woulda coulda" people - turned down the book, almost wrote the story, knew he was Deep Throat long ago, had lunch with his son - are writing must-reads. So here's my list of the best things I read today.

1. The Washington Post's web site, which is cycling through home-page pictures of Felt, of Woodstein hovering over a computer, of Woodstein with Bradlee - simply watching this home page change with stories of escalating importance, escalating quality and escalating interest over the day has been fascinating.

2. "Introducing Deep Throat," The New York Times' editorial - succinct and so smartly phrased - like finding out Superman is really Clark Kent, indeed. Though, the NYT does get a big fat raspberry from me, too, for showing grapes of the most sour variety by overemphasizing how badly the Washington Post got scooped on the reveal. It's been 30 years. Let it go.

3. The Washington Post's chat with reporter David von Drehle - this was much more interesting to me than the chats with Howard Kurtz or the other top brass - von Drehle was chosen to write the story on Deep Throat's death a short time ago, just to be prepared for it, so when this was launched, he became the spotlight writer. His recap and perspective on the situation is gives nostalgia but is also sharp; he recounts how Woodward and Bernstein were "two young Metro reporters who had to overcome the initial feelings of the National desk that this was not a big story," describes the scene in the newsroom today and yesterday, and also telling how while the paper did the ethical thing in keeping it silent even shortly after the news broke, "I promise you there is not an editor in America who would not have wanted that Vanity Fair story."

4. Editor & Publisher's piece on how this breathes new life into anonymous sourcing at a time when it's coming under such fire. An anonymous source who's some shmuck with a phone and a grudge, you don't rely on - one who's highly placed at the FBI? These types keep the powerful accountable, and these morons who are saying they should be outlawed have some serious perspective issues (in my opinion, anyway; that and a buck gets you half a subway ticket). The Los Angeles Times's piece on this issue, also good.

5. Nora Ephron supposedly figured it out while married to Carl Bernstein, though he never told her.

6. The New York Times again for the article that while badly hyped is excellently written - how the story went to Vanity Fair. At the bottom are some great tidbits about the Post's newsroom yesterday, like this:

"Few clues were coming from The Post's top echelon about how the paper would react. During the afternoon, two electronic messages went out to the staff. One simply contained a link to the Vanity Fair article. The other, sent at 3:28 p.m. from Chris Richards, a copy aide in the Style section, read, "If you snagged the 'All the President's Men' file from the fourth-floor photo archive today, can you phone me."

And this:

"Around 6:30 p.m., Mr. Woodward emerged from his office with Mr. Bernstein and with Mr. Bradlee nearby, creating a tableau of the old days when they helped to bring down a president. The scene left many in The Post's fifth-floor newsroom to stare as a photographer took pictures."

...really give a feel for what this momentous day was like.

7. Again, the NYT, with Watergate era politicians reacting. Conservative Patrick Buchanan: "I think Mark Felt behaved treacherously." Jeb Stuart Magruder (Nixon's deputy campaign manager, convicted in the scandal): "It sort of ends the mystery of this person that was named after the greatest porn queen of all time."

8. And the "shoulda woulda coulda" link, a People editor who will feel nauseated forever when he thinks of the story that got away.

Woodward's writing some epic for tomorrow's Post. That thing's gonna sell like...like...oh, forget it. There's no comparison.