Lobbying is a quintessential part of our political system today, but did you know about the persistent rumor that the concept originated at the Willard Hotel in Washington D.C.? https://t.co/KONCqLXmio Lobbying is a quintessential part of our political system today, but did …
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Propriety was king in the 1920s and a fire in the Willard Hotel would not stop those frequently the hotel from washing themselves to make sure they were properly cleaned and dressed before exiting the burning building. https://t.co/QXhklLrqO6 Propriety was king in the 1920s …
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Basketball, a heart-pounding sport that can bring out the competitive spirit in most people overtook the District in the summer of 2011 as people gathered to watch the Goodman League in the gymnasium of Trinity University. https://t.co/h5IJSQC9zw Basketball, a heart-pounding…
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Did you know that The Exorcist was inspired by a disturbing story of possession that occurred in Prince George's county in 1949? https://t.co/Y9bfr63oCx Did you know that The Exorcist was inspired by a disturbing story of possession that occurred in Prince George's county in…
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Today in History - August 20 https://t.co/jxbEFHyHBQ On August 20, 1866, the newly organized National Labor Union called on Congress to mandate an eight-hour workday. Continue reading. Click here to search Today in History for other historic moments.
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Realtor Edward H. Brown and his daughter pose in front of his Hyattsville office in this mid-century postcard photo. The house still stands, greatly expanded but still used for commercial purposes. https://t.co/M1hZ5bQyO7 Realtor Edward H. Brown and his daughter pose in front …
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Moon Over New Orleans via NASA https://t.co/0OpTu4MWhS https://t.co/GClZBeMH01
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Photographer Addison Scurlock sought to capture Washington D.C.'s secret city, the lives of the Black middle class that went largely unnoticed by white Washingtonians. https://t.co/nNSxPGtn6S Photographer Addison Scurlock sought to capture Washington D.C.'s secret city, the …
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📸 We’re focusing in on eminent DC photographer Robert H. McNeill this #WorldPhotoDay! Here, McNeill captures diners enjoying a meal at Harrison's Cafe at 455 Florida Avenue NW. 📷 Scene in Harrison's Cafe at 455 Florida Avenue NW, ca. 1950 (Robert H. McNeill, MG 11.05) …
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Big disappointment for would-be Declaration thieves out there https://t.co/smoF10f4MX Big disappointment for would-be Declaration thieves out there https://t.co/smoF10f4MX — Boundary Stones (@BoundaryStones) Aug 19, 2022
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During the havoc of President Richard Nixon's resignation post-Watergate and Vice President Gerald Ford moving into the White House, Ford's family home in Alexandria temporarily served as the White House while the real one was being prepared. https://t.co/pCVUGv1u5E During t…
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Today in History - August 19 https://t.co/mOLCfMW6sL On August 19, 1814, during the War of 1812, British troops under the command of Major General Robert Ross and Rear Admiral George Cockburn landed at Benedict, Maryland, on the shores of the Patuxent River. Continue reading…
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Here are five standout pieces we read this week. You can always visit our editors’ picks or our Twitter feed to see what other recommendations you may have missed.
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Bushra Seddique | The Atlantic | August 15th, 2022 | 4,429 words
A year ago this week, Kabul fell to the Taliban. A year ago this week, Bushra Seddique tried to leave. At 20 years old, Seddique had never lived under a Taliban government, but as a journalist and a woman, she realized she could not stay. It was an agonizing decision; while a friend helped her and her youngest sister get a place on a flight, her mother and middle sister had to stay behind. This essay focuses on a seemingly small thing — the journey to the airport — but conveys so much. In an instant, Seddique’s prose pulls you closely into this tight-knit family, leaving you pulsating with the sisters’ turmoil as they reel between emotions. The joy: when after three days of waiting in fear near the airport, they are sent home and see their family. The grief: when the airport briefly opens again, forcing them to flee before saying goodbye. The excitement: when they are finally on a plane to a new country. The constant underneath it all is a deep sadness for a home that is disappearing, a place where just a few weeks ago “[p]eople were going out to sing and dance; music played in restaurants and taxis.” I vividly remember the scenes at Kabul airport playing out on the news last year: people clinging to planes, the bomb, the chaos, the filth. This essay takes you back — and removes any detachment you may have felt along the way. —CW
Simon van Zuylen-Wood | Vulture | August 17th, 2022 | 4,430 words
Each decade seems to bring with it a new version of social panic around hip-hop, generally rooted in sex or violence. In the ’20s, that mantle so far has been laid on drill rap, and especially New York City’s version of the scene. But while the moralizing around drill had already ramped up, the February 2022 murder of Bronx teenager Jayquan McKenley brought a simmer to a boil. And as Simon van Zuylen-Wood captures in this affecting look at the McKenley tragedy, it gave NYC mayor Eric Adams and many other people the perfect symbol for a crackdown. This is more than a profile of a sweethearted teen, though. It’s a sober, neutral-minded tour through the fallout of the drill scene’s uniquely inflammatory recipe, from the artists who engage in hyper-personal social-media baiting to the NYPD detectives whose investigations often collide with the music. It’s not a fun read, but it’s a necessary one. —PR
Laura Mauldin | The Baffler | July 26th, 2022 | 3,204 words
I read a few tweet threads recently about Pottery Barn’s new line of accessible furnishings. While many people praised the upscale furniture company for this ADA-compliant collection, others noted it was yet another example of inclusive design led by abled people. This discussion came to mind as I read Laura Mauldin’s enlightening piece on disability hacks. We live in a world in which health care systems and tech innovators are more invested in shiny objects that don’t consider disabled people’s actual, basic needs. As Mauldin explains, disabled folks and caregivers often rely on their own simple but ingenious hacks, and lean on shared knowledge “to MacGyver their way through daily life.” Perhaps surprisingly, Amazon has emerged as an indispensable service for disabled people to get affordable and essential health care equipment quickly. Mauldin offers us an insightful look at how disability and caregiving communities use creativity and collaboration to make their worlds more accessible in a time when businesses and larger systems continue to fail them. —CLR
Kathryn Miles | Popular Mechanics | August 9th, 2022 | 3,776 words
I’m not a true-crime aficionado. I’m not one of the people who’s watched David Fincher’s Zodiac a zillion times. But I like weird shit, and I like puzzles, and this Kathryn Miles tick-tock unpacking one of modern culture’s enduring cryptographic mysteries serves up both. For more than 50 years, an encoded note from the Zodiac Killer went unsolved, until a trio of sleuthing obsessives connected online and brought all their combined power to bear on the problem. (To be fair, they had a supercomputer too.) The solution process itself would likely be more at home in a slide deck than in a blockbuster narrative — essentially waiting for a computer to brute-force various combinations of solving paradigms — but Miles manages to squeeze some real glee from the proceedings. Or, hey, maybe that’s just me. —PR
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Lucas Mann | Hobart | Aug 16th, 2022 | 8,227 words
Meet Joe Black is a bad movie. It’s long, and slow, and pretentious. But it has one thing going for it, and that is Brad Pitt eating. Specifically, Brad Pitt licking peanut butter off a spoon, considering it with his tongue, and then asking for more. Watching this scene in the theater in middle school was a seminal moment in my sexual awakening. Needless to say, I clicked fast when I saw the headline of this essay. And I wasn’t disappointed: Lucas Mann uses Brad Pitt eating — in a number of films, but starting, rightly, with MJB — as a lens through which to consider his relationship to his own body and to the bodies of others, some of which he knows intimately, others of which he knows only from watching them on screen. It’s a lovely, surprising piece that makes me crave peanut butter, straight out of the jar. —SD
Quote of the Day: "Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen." - Warren E. Burger
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Voyager 1 Sees the Great Red Spot via NASA https://t.co/sQyYoh0Nn6 https://t.co/MsPrVsK4Az
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To all our friends in #Chicago, we have just added the Windy City to our latest GIS project, the Sanborn Atlas Volume Finders! D.C. and NYC coming soon! Check it out here: https://t.co/01EkB8Ec84 See all available Sanborn volume finders here: https://t.co/soCrKfIiUl …
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Jim Morrison, front man for The Doors, had an odd homecoming in 1967, when he returned to Alexandria to perform on stage while staggeringly drunk and belligerent. https://t.co/4ev2ggGSYL Jim Morrison, front man for The Doors, had an odd homecoming in 1967, when he returned t…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 18, 2022
On this day in 1802, D.C.'s first convicted murderer escaped execution by choosing to leap from the gallows with a noose around his neck. https://t.co/9hKU3mKGcJ On this day in 1802, D.C.'s first convicted murderer escaped execution by choosing to leap from the gallows with …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 18, 2022
Today in History - August 18 https://t.co/UqNSPC2qCC Explorer Meriwether Lewis, who joined William Clark to blaze a trail across the continent to the Pacific Ocean, was born on August 18, 1774, near Charlottesville, Virginia. Continue reading. Click here to search Today in …
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As host of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, Brendan O’Meara is no stranger to talking about the art and craft of storytelling. In this craft-focused excerpt, we’re digging into Episode 326, in which he interviewed Atavist editor-in-chief Seyward Darby and writer Jana Meisenholder about her work on the latest issue of The Atavist.
In Jana Meisenholder’s piece for The Atavist Magazine, “King of the Hill,” she recounts how her central figure, Andres Beckett, prepared for the Suicide Race — a horse race that starts with a violent descent down a steep hill and into a river — as his “organizing principle.”
Be it a piece of writing or a career, having an organizing principle and singular drive crystallizes the vision and makes goals attainable. How serious are we? What will we cut out in order to realize our dream?
And so it was when speaking with Meisenholder and Atavist editor-in-chief Seyward Darby about an organizing principle around crafting “King of the Hill” that applies to any piece of writing: an essay, an article, a book. It’s something Darby calls “the skeleton, the meat, and the bones.”
“The skeleton of the piece needs to be sturdy,” Darby told me, “and that skeleton is the narrative, the actual story of what happens. You start there for the thing to hold together.”
She continues, “When I’m working with writers we always start with those fundamentals — the bones — and figuring out how they fit together so that the story stands. Then you create muscle and flesh through character, scene, and dialogue. You start to make something whole and presentable. But at the end of the day, if you were to strip all of that away, the bones would still be there, and the story itself would still be strong.”
In this conversation, we also talked about when it’s appropriate for a writer to figure in a story and not — as well as what it takes to develop a single character over a long piece of narrative journalism. Please enjoy this excerpt below, and listen to the full episode for more.
These interviews have been edited for clarity and concision.
* * *
Brendan O’Meara: I’d never heard you mention — or if you did, I forgot — about this idea of the skeleton, the meat, and the bones. Walk me through what that means as an organizing principle.
Seyward Darby, The Atavist: There are obviously a lot of metaphors you can use for narrative nonfiction, and this is one that I use in talking to writers. The skeleton of the piece needs to be sturdy, and that skeleton is the narrative, the actual story of what happens. You have to start there for the thing to hold together. And then you start to create muscle and flesh through character and scene and dialogue, and you really start to make something whole and presentable. But if you were to strip all of that away, the bones would still be there, and the story itself would still be strong. When I’m talking to folks, sometimes they’re lost in thinking about the muscle — some detail here or there — and it’s about putting that stuff aside to figure out what the bones are underneath that part of the story.
I find that that can be really helpful from an editing standpoint as well. Certainly when I’m editing, I try to identify what I think the skeleton of the piece is, because then it makes my job a lot easier. It’s an outline of sorts, right? You need to go from this bone to that bone for the thing to hold together. And once the skeleton is there, the other stuff starts to feel so much more organic.
When you have the skeleton in place, then all of the details that you layer in feel less gratuitous, like they’re in service of something greater — not merely because you collected the information and it’s cool.
Right, exactly. To be clear, it’s always fun when you can kind of wander off for a little while. I don’t know, what the appropriate metaphor would be in this wider body metaphor; maybe fat, padding, something that gives a story even more of a curve in the best possible way. But as a whole it’s: What are these details in service of? Are they in service of the story that we’re trying to tell, as opposed to something I just happened to learn?
There’s an anecdote in this story, actually, that I think is a good example of this. There’s a section where we’re talking about Andres’ character, who he is as a person and how he thinks about choices he makes. And at one point, in a car, Jana witnessed him pull over to the side of the road and chastise this guy for letting a stray dog wander so close to the road. On one hand, it doesn’t have anything to do with the journey of him getting to the starting line of this race — but it beautifully encapsulates the kind of person that he is, and that’s the thing we’re focused on at that point. That is the bone. So this moment really helps fill that out. This story is character-driven, it’s a narrative profile, and details like that just help it pop.
But you can also imagine another version of this story. It’s a sporting event, and an intense one, to put it lightly.
The Suicide Race.
Yup. And there’s a more straightforward version of this feature that would take place at the race. The race would bookend the piece. But one of the nice things in working on this story was that this one man, Andres, his story becomes the skeleton of the piece. It’s a quieter, more unusual way in, and one that I was very, very into. That’s how it was really pitched: his story, as opposed to the story of this race. I really loved Jana’s choice to focus on Andres.
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Andres doesn’t win the race, so it doesn’t have that classic sports-story arc — but it’s still satisfying. How do you deliver that, knowing that there’s not that payoff of a win at the end?
My favorite kind of sports writing or adventure storytelling is less about the excitement of victory than it is about the obsessiveness required to pursue something. There are two great examples of this — one written, one filmed. Barbarian Days by William Finnegan is so many different things, but it really is about a singular obsession, with surfing as a continuous lifelong quest. You’re not seeking one thing; you’re seeking a wave over and over and over and over, punishing your body, going to the ends of the earth to find a wave. There’s a circularity to it that you get the sense will never end. The other one I would mention is Free Solo, about Alex Honnold’s quest to free-climb — oh, what is it called? The big scary wall.
El Cap in Yosemite.
Thank you. Obviously, that’s an incredibly shot documentary. The harrowing visual of this guy climbing up a sheer face of rock without any ropes attached to him. But what’s really compelling about that movie — to me, anyway — is exploring what kind of mentality is required. What feeds into an obsession with something that’s one false move and you die?
Similarly, in this story, we knew that Andres does not win the race. But what I was interested in, and what Jana was interested in, was the fact that he was so obsessed even with what was required to run the race that it was less about winning and more about being able to do it. I kind of love the fact that he didn’t win, because then we get to see him preparing to do it again. This race down a very steep track is a very harrowing thing to do, on a horse that weighs a thousand pounds. What makes a person want to do that, and what makes a person want to do it again? What led him to be like this?
That’s so much a question we answer as much as we start to excavate the pieces of his personality and his experience. The people who he’s trying to convince to mentor him are same way: They run the race again, and again, and again. And it’s so much less about winning than it is about doing it. Those were really the boxes we were trying to tick: How can we tell the story of the race, tell the story of Andres’ life, and show how these things came to intersect? So we start on the hill, with him galloping toward the edge, and then we jump back to his origin story and how he came to be something of an outsider in this small Native community near the Canadian border.
But it’s really the story of how he came to be so fixated on the hill — how it became the organizing principle for his life.
That phrase was one of the things I highlighted from this piece. It’s the wireframe on which he hangs his entire year. Obsession is something I deeply enjoy reading about; I tend to have a pretty splintered attention span, and I just love people who are so singularly driven, and for no glory other than the sheer love of the thing.
Like you, I’m a pretty splintered person. I’m kind of always doing a lot of things at once. My husband is actually the exact opposite: He can write for 10 or 12 hours straight. It fascinates me that somebody who can be so focused and fixated — and not in a negative way at all — and everything in life sort of starts to distill around this particular experience or task or training.
But also, the development of relationships. Andres could have tried to run the race by himself. But first of all, that would have been exceptionally dangerous. Second of all, that’s just not the way it’s done. There’s a lot of courtship in this story, of him trying to convince the people who are basically race royalty, whose families have been running it for the longest time, that he was worthy of their teaching.
I’m really glad you brought up the dog anecdote. What struck me about it was that originally Jana cut it out of a draft. We’ve talked about killing your darlings, but in this case it was a resuscitation of a darling: You advocated to put it back in the piece, or such was her recollection.
After she turned in the original draft, I sent a pretty extensive memo about structure. There was a lot of “notebook dumping,” which is totally reasonable when you’ve had this thrilling experience, getting to know your main character and the cast of characters around him. One of the things we talked about was making sure that details were in service to the skeleton, to circle back to the beginning of this conversation.
I loved the dog anecdote, and when I saw it was not in the revision — and the revision was great — I just kept telling myself, I gotta find a way. When I read that first draft, that was the moment where I saw who Andres is: incredibly compassionate, and at the same time a bit rash. I knew that I wanted to work it back in, and in the course of editing, we ultimately came to this quieter character-building section that allowed us to put that back in.
Things wind up on the cutting room floor all the time, and you pick it back up, and you think about it, and you’re like, “well, maybe,” and you toss it back down. But in this case, it was just such an illuminating piece of information. If I recall correctly, it was initially told as more of a first-person anecdote because it was something that she experienced with him while she was there reporting in person. One of the things we talked about is dialing back a bit on some of the first-person stuff, letting scenes speak for themselves. So part of it was also figuring out how to put that scene back in such a way that felt natural to the story.
On your website, you write that you “mostly [cover] character-driven stories about family, culture, true crime, and also … deep-dive longform features.” How did you arrive at that as the core of your work?
Jana Meisenholder: Oh, man, I have to think about my answer. I think true stories can come in different forms. Some people like to write about murder mysteries, where you have this central incident that tethers readers to the story. That can be thrilling, but I found that sometimes they can also be predictable. If you focus on the characters and motivations that aren’t necessarily black and white — two truths can often exist at the same time — it often makes for a more compelling story. My story on the Han twins is probably the biggest example of that. And I genuinely enjoy it. I like things where I’m learning something in the process, and when I’m focusing on characters, I learn a little bit about myself too. I start questioning my own motives and decisions I’ve made in my life because I’m focusing on the people at the heart of the story.
Whenever the great writer Tracy Kidder would start a book, it was always character first, and then worry about everything else. Some people are the other way around; they need to find something cool to cover and then search out the character.
I think with the Rolling Stone article that I did on Black cowboys — specifically on a cowboy from Texas named Justin Richard, who unfortunately got killed by a drunk driver in early 2020 — how I came across it was a combination of him being a charismatic character, and the news peg of Lil Nas X’s huge hit “Old Town Road” launching his career. Before I’d even reached out to Justin, I saw that he wrote on his Facebook: I AM AMAZING!!!!! And I’m like, “I like this energy. This is a good character.”
When Walter Thomas-Hernández’s book Compton Cowboys came out, he came on the show, and he strikes me as a reportorial or journalistic kindred spirit to you.
Definitely. I’m really drawn to the cowboy world — obviously, as you can tell given the latest Atavist story — from my own experiences of growing up in Australia, and going to the Outback, and being the only kid of color at the rodeos.
Give me a sense of how you arrived at this Atavist story about this incredible race and the beating heart at the center of it.
Actually, from that Rolling Stone article, I’ve built friendships and connections with sources in the cowboy world. And one of them, a cowboy named Brian White, was my first interview for my own publication, which is on Medium; it’s called Unearthed. He’s been a bullfighter. He’s a cowboy. He was a football star. And now he works in production for rodeo, as the camera guy. So he has an eye for visual aesthetics and seeking out things to capture, and he’s also a very, very friendly person and can talk to anyone. He got asked to do a gig in Omak Washington, which is where the story takes place — a reservation in rural Washington, about four hours east of Seattle. He knows that I’m interested in cowboys and cowgirls of color.
He told me, “I was at the top of this hill that they go down — it’s called the Suicide Race — and I met this guy, and you’ve got to talk to him. You’re just gonna love him. This guy has some kind of energy about him.” Brian thought Andres was Native, which he’s not, but he knew that I would be interested in connecting with Andres, based purely on the fact that this was Andres’ first time going down the hill.
Hearing Brian tell me that made me think like, okay, there’s something. There’s a reason why this kid is up there doing this race. I just booked a flight the next day and flew up to Seattle. This is the biggest event for this tiny rural rodeo town, so it was a struggle to get a rental car, and all the hotels were booked. I had to stay in three different motels on different nights. It was smoky as hell. I wore the same clothes for three days. So Brian introduced me to Andres; we hung out on Friday night at the rodeo after it had wrapped up, just sitting by the bullpen. I just started peppering questions at him. That’s when I found that he’s not Native, he’s Mexican American, and he had this background of being what his family calls a “Greyhound baby” — his mom and dad met on the back of a Greyhound bus. We talked for hours, and I realized that there was a bigger story here.
When you’re reporting out the story, and you’ve got a great central figure, how do you go about getting to the core of a character and what really motivates them?
You have to spend as much fucking time as possible. They’re not going to lay it out and say “this is exactly what you need, these are the answers you’re looking for.” So there’s 100-plus hours of audio that I recorded. Every time he spoke, I just chucked on my recorder. And sometimes like he would speak and I didn’t have my recorder with me, so I’d furiously be typing into my phone. He was kind of caught off guard by that, but I’d had to explain, “no, just keep talking.” After that, I went home and highlighted the key plots and started framing it in my mind.
When you started getting all that information, how did you go about organizing it, given that you had so much tape? It can be hard to get your head around it.
I tried to transcribe it initially, then I was like “this is just getting out of control, there’s too much.” I did it through a transcription service called rev.com, and was able to download that in PDF form. And because it’s dialogue, it’s a little easier to speed read. I literally would just read it and then write it. After Seyward told me about the skeleton, the meat, and the bones, that became the title of the Google Doc where I’d highlighted all the key points and key milestones in Andres’ life, and the quotes attached to those things.
So when you’re going through and you know you have to cut things that are objectively probably very good scenes, how do you make those decisions?
Honestly, a great editor helps, and that’s where Seyward came in. When you do a certain amount of reporting, you’re like, “I did this work,” and you feel like you’ve got to throw it in there. But then you ultimately have to show restraint.
For example, I stayed at the tribal casino during the duration of my reporting trip, and I overheard Mandarin — and I speak Mandarin — and I turned around to see Chinese guys that at the blackjack tables. Why are they in rural Washington? Why are they on a reservation? So I spoke to them. After Washington legalized marijuana, a lot of laborers from China actually came out to Washington to start pot farms; that’s how they were making a living, and what they were doing out here. I included that in my draft to paint a landscape of how Omak is this weird place where people go and hustle, and you had different types of people. But it was just too distracting, and I ultimately left it out. It’s interesting to me, but it doesn’t serve the story at all.
You can’t have an ego about it. Like yeah, I spent an hour talking to them, and it was time that I could have spent talking continuing to talk to Andres. But you just can’t get attached to these things. Because ultimately, it’s not about you. Your loyalty is and should be to people who are reading this for the first time.
You speak of Andre feeling like he needs his life to have purpose. In the work that you do, be it documentary or written journalism, what’s the purpose that you’re seeking?
I think I was in ESL until high school. I think I had to prove to myself that I could string sentences together. And Seyward makes this piece really shine — she really polished it up for me — but I was able to sort of put together the main pieces, and that means something to me. I grew up in an agricultural part of Brisbane, which is on the east side of Australia. It’s farmlands, and mostly white, so I was one of the very few Asian kids in my school. With ESL, I got plucked out of my classroom, and I would have to go with the ESL teacher — who was actually very lovely, and I want to track her down, and her this story.
Oh, yeah, you’ve got to do that.
Yeah, that’d be cool, right? But yeah, it was like a very singling-out sort of moment. And I’ve always wanted to do better with the English language and prove that I can tell a good story. I can tell good stories in my head, but putting it on paper and making it eloquent and easy to read, keeping people engaged, is a whole different thing. It’s more impactful when you can do that instead of keeping it all in your head and telling it over drinks with your friends or something. This format that The Atavist has is just a beautiful way of storytelling. So that’s that’s where I get a lot of my meaning. Being able to tell good stories, and particularly stories that haven’t been told before.
You’re kind of alluding to your stuff in the piece about Andres making the suicide race his organizing principle, but I just want to dig in just a little deeper: What would you identify in your work as your organizing principle?
Damn, you ask really good questions.
It’s my COVID fever dream, I don’t know.
I like it, you should always be sick.
Hilarious.
My god, this is such a trip, but I want my mom’s sacrifice — all that she sacrificed to bring us to Australia — to mean something. But I ultimately also want my life to have meaning. And sometimes when you’re an immigrant kid, and you don’t speak the language, sometimes your voice isn’t totally heard. I spent a lot of my childhood feeling unheard. And now I finally get to feel heard through journalism.
It’s for being invisible, in a sense. And now, not only do you have some platform, but you’re able to broadcast from it and say, “I am here. I have value. I something to say, be it my story or other people’s stories.” But it’s still your voice that you’re finding.
And I don’t want to make it me, me, me. The people that I’m fighting for with these stories — Andres, the Han twins, Justin — they are the vehicles for this storytelling. But in order for me to do a good job of it, I am having to mine certain things from my personal life. And so inherently I am becoming more heard through these people.
The people we’re drawn to actually reflect something inside of us. And that’s why we’re drawn to them.
Journalism isn’t always super academic; it’s psychological and personal and intimate. You’re having to dig into your own situation to try and better understand the sources and try to understand what questions you should be asking.
Do you find yourself writing in your head as you’re reporting? Like imagining where a scene or quote could go?
I absorb, absorb, absorb. And then I go back to my hotel room, or whatever, and do the skeleton/bones thing. I did that before with my other stories, but now I have a name for it. And then I start structuring in my head, even though it’s necessarily the structure we end up with, but it does help paint a picture. I think it helps that I do things chronologically: Andres’ milestones, what led him to this point, then to the next point, et cetera.
Well, Jana, I love ending these conversations by asking the guests for a recommendation of some kind for listeners — that can be anything from a brand of coffee to a fanny pack or pair of socks you’re really tickled by.
Blundstone shoes. They’re an Australian brand and are apparently really popular in Israel for whatever reason. I’m not sponsored. They’re expensive. But mine have lasted me 10 years. I actually wore them to the rodeo for this story, and they didn’t break down — I climbed rocks, went hiking, was in the river, was on top of the hill, at the bottom of the hill, and not one scratch. So go get your Blunnies.
Read “Follow the Leader” at The Atavist now
Quote of the Day: "Honor is not the exclusive property of any political party." - Herbert Hoover
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The British War Office made this map for the Royal Geographical Society in March 1922. It shows the physical features of northern Arabia—the steppe from Arabian Hasa or Ahsa in the SE to Jerusalem in the NW. Look closer: https://t.co/R0qvqfS4QQ https://t.co/Nzz493WEmR The Bri…
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Have you ever thought about what it would be like bathe at the Capitol? Washingtonians in the late 1800s didn't have to wonder, as there were six bathtubs installed for Congressmen in the basement of the Capitol building. https://t.co/npLW3y6QAI Have you ever thought about w…
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Leo Frank, a young Jewish man accused of murdering Mary Phagan, and subjected to life in prison was lynched on this day in 1915 in front of Phagan's house. https://t.co/bliJsiRhKJ Leo Frank, a young Jewish man accused of murdering Mary Phagan, and subjected to life in prison…
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We Are Going: Artemis I on Launch Pad via NASA https://t.co/kKpGH0s1vN https://t.co/LZdy616JwP
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1918 brought many things, the end of World War I and the beginning of the Spanish Flu epidemic, which raged through D.C. as the city expanded rapidly to try and accommodate the mass of war workers. https://t.co/ykY8hmeEus 1918 brought many things, the end of World War I and …
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They say that dogs are man's best friend, and Stubby, a brindle bull terrier, proved this again and again throughout his life. He helped out the 102nd regiment during WWI, providing emotional support and at times, literally saving lives. https://t.co/EYTpX5k2Iu They say that…
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Robert Hilliard Harrison (1875-1959) opened Harrison’s Café, at 455 Florida Ave NW, in 1923. A fixture in the Black community for almost 40 yrs, Harrison’s had few rivals. A banquet hall, the Gold Room, was the scene of countless dinners and special celebrations. @BlkBroadwa…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 17, 2022
Today in History - August 17 https://t.co/VnwTHYFr7W On August 17, 1790, the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, presented a congratulatory address to President George Washington on the occasion of his visit to their city. Continue reading. Click here to search To…
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In 1973, D.C. police had stop an odd protest. Several Jewish children were bouncing basketballs outside the Russian embassy, protesting the disrespectful insults that Israeli athletes and those who supported them received at the Moscow Olympic games. https://t.co/UbAzZlIj1b …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 16, 2022
Perennial Perseids via NASA https://t.co/NsGTSbZfDQ https://t.co/xKX12UwpS8
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 16, 2022
Arena Stage found themselves with an amazing opportunity in 1972: the chance to perform in Moscow, Russia, as part of a cultural exchange between Russia and the United States during the Cold War. https://t.co/wotDG3yU7K Arena Stage found themselves with an amazing opportunit…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 16, 2022
Early 1900s postcard of the Georgetown waterfront above the Aqueduct Bridge. The Washington Canoe Club is seen on the water, with Georgetown University on the hilltop behind it. https://t.co/amv8ttWLvM Early 1900s postcard of the Georgetown waterfront above the Aqueduct Bridge…
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1967 brought changes to the D.C. theater scene with the now award-winning play The Great White Hope, which told the story of Jack Johnson the first Black heavyweight boxing champion in America. The show proved that great theater can be found anywhere. https://t.co/LjyM0R3YLu …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 16, 2022
Today in History - August 16 https://t.co/5eL3YmDl36 On August 16, 1939, New York City’s Hippodrome Theater closed its doors for the last time. Continue reading. Click here to search Today in History for other historic moments.
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Aug 16, 2022
By Lisa Bubert
When asked to picture a writer’s life, many people envision a cliché: someone holed up alone in a cabin in the woods, writing longhand on a yellow notepad, until they emerge months later with the next Great American Novel
. The coffee forever on brew; the cigarettes overflowing in the ashtray. Cliché or not, I’ve always been a sucker for this image.
Who wouldn’t want to live a life of eccentric glamour where all you need to be a tortured genius is a pen, a notepad, and a complete disregard for time? Where you can lean into all of your weird idiosyncrasies that are probably a sign of poor mental health but that you insist are crucial to the creative process? Where you can reasonably tell your loved ones not to disturb you because you are daydreaming and they actually respect your daydreams as having literary merit?
It’s a strange thing to be a writer, to argue with yourself about the way things are and should be, and committing those arguments to paper for others to read. It requires a level of self-awareness shaped by tireless observation of the world, and an internal dialogue picking that same world apart. The best writers out there, with the most recognizable voices and distinct styles, are writers who know exactly who they are: their flaws, their strengths, and most importantly, their oddities.
Which is why I live for a good writer profile. Give me the weird tics, the turns of phrase, the strange beginnings. Give me the writer in their natural habitat. Give me that artistic magic, the writer as myth. Let me never forget that the voice is hard-won and earned through a commitment to self as art.
A great literary profile is one that captures the subject both in setting and in voice. The profile feels embodied, as though the subject has written it themselves from the outside looking in. This one from William Kennedy captures everything that is Gabriel GarcÃa fMárquez; the debonair aloofness; a sense of humor that feels like an extended inside joke; long paragraphs of description and scene-setting that tell a whole story within a story; perfectly-placed single lines of dialogue that tie everything up in a beautiful literary bow; and, along with all that, wickedly funny lines aplenty.
This piece is a blast from The Atlantic‘s archival past — originally published when Márquez had just released One Hundred Years of Solitude to great acclaim but was yet to realize the literary success that would be Love in the Time of Cholera. A time capsule at its best.
It was in January, 1965, while driving from Mexico City to Acapulco, that he envisioned the first chapter of the book that was to become Cien Años. He later told an Argentinian writer that if he’d had a tape recorder, he could have dictated the entire chapter on the spot. He then went home and told Mercedes: Don’t bother me, especially don’t bother me about money. And he went to work at the desk he called the Cave of the Mafia, in a house at number 6 Calle de La Loma, Mexico City, and working eight to ten hours a day for eighteen months, he wrote the novel.
Having grown up on a ranch in rural Texas, I couldn’t not be in love with Hank the Cowdog. There are two formative books I remember from my childhood: Joe Hayes’ adaptation of the La Llorona folktale, and John R. Erickson’s Hank the Cowdog series. La Llorona taught me that there can be ghosts and magic in all stories; Hank taught me that even a little cowdog from Texas belonged in literature. (And that we cowboy types are funnier than most.)
This profile covers all the bases. It has all the Easter eggs Hank-ophiles have come to appreciate, like the 1980s picture of Erickson looking eerily like Slim Chance, the opening with Erickson face to face with a Western Diamondback, and the picture of Rosie, Erickson’s brown and bushy-tailed cowdog who looks an awful lot like another cowdog we know. The writer, Christian Wallace, perfectly captures the panhandle voice with its off-kilter lilt and understated humor — which in turn perfectly captures John R. Erickson, a panhandle cowboy who holds true to who he is, come hell or high water.
(I once met John R. Erickson at a Texas Library Conference. I was so excited and verklempt at the sight of him when I shakily asked for an autograph that he signed it and sent me away without charging me, just to get me out of his booth. A truer cowboy there never was.)
Erickson rose early this morning, as he has almost every day for 54 years, to write, or, as he likes to say, “to pull the plow.” At 5:30 a.m. he made the short drive from his house to the one-room cabin that he uses as an office. His headlights shone in the predawn dark, and his two dogs—Rosie, a red heeler bounding with energy, and Daisy, a sweet yellow Lab with an age-stiffened gait—picked their way through tall grass and burned-out cedars alongside the pickup. At the cabin, Erickson made some coffee. Then he got to work.
Some mornings, “work” might mean scribbling replies to fan mail—piles of it—at the folding table that serves as his desk. Other days, he might jot some notes in his journal. But more often than not, he spends the next four or five hours sunk deep into a faded, dust-covered armchair, pecking at the keyboard of his laptop. He works on articles for livestock journals, essays for various websites, and nonfiction books about ranching, cowboying, Texas history, wildfires, and Panhandle archaeology. And twice a year, as the sun eases over the eastern rim of Picket Canyon, Erickson types these words: “It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog.”
I love a literary recluse almost as much as I love a good literary profile. It is a romantic notion, the idea of a writer who has nothing to offer the world but their words. And words are all we will get from Gayl Jones.
It’s no surprise if Jones’ name is not as familiar to you as other writers with such acclaim to their work. Perry describes her as “transformative,” a writer handpicked for publication by Toni Morrison herself, then editor at Random House. Her work utterly changed the face of Black women’s literature. But with that transformation came the spotlight, and a sense of public entitlement to know everything about Jones, to peek into her life no matter how much she would have preferred otherwise — an impulse to create a mythical story about the writer that was based partly in truth and mostly in assumption. Perry handles all of this with care, calling us out on our assumptions before we even realize we’ve made them, making her the correct choice to write about such a guarded subject.
Jones’s novels have, from the beginning, cracked open something new in African American literature. Tasked with explaining how and why, without a glimpse or an interview, I sought an alternative. It was second nature to me. I’m a scholar and a writer. I work in archives. So I dug into Jones’s words, gathered from dozens of scattered sources. And there I found her, in cached papers like those of William Meredith, her mentor and friend at Connecticut College; of her Random House editor, Toni Morrison, at Princeton University. I sought out the poems, stories and essays she published in numerous small Black literary journals, the handful of interviews with cherished interlocutors (and some who raised her ire), as well as works she published abroad or by herself over the years. I also looked for her influence, a soul-searching exercise — because she has shaped me as a writer — as well as an exploratory one with my peers who agree that she is a writer’s writer, and more than that, a Black woman’s writer.
Remember how I love a literary recluse? Well, Donna Tartt is another that fits the mold, with the added benefit of some Fran Lebowitz-styled fashion where the outfits are androgynous and the signature hair never changes. I may not be a huge fan of Tartt’s prose, but I have to admire her style and commitment to character.
This profile is doubly interesting in that it’s a look at Donna Tartt before she was Donna Tartt. Even from the first line, Kaplan knows he’s dealing with a strange new literary star: “Donna Tartt, who is going to be very famous very soon — conceivably the moment you read this — also happens to be exceedingly small.” From there, it’s all you would expect from a writer hailing from small-town Mississippi who happens to write like the epitome of a highbrow East Coast WASP. I blame Bennington, clearly.
Donna Tartt has her own secret history. Her childhood in Grenada should not, must not, be talked about. Bennington places, but no Bennington people, may be associated with her book. McGloin may not be spoken to. The novel itself is a thicket of literary references and inside jokes: the narrator’s surname is the same as that of the Weimar Republic chancellor who knuckled under to the Nazis; Bunny, whose real name is Edmund, has the same nickname as literary critic Edmund Wilson. The hotel where Henry and Camilla go off together, the Albemarle, has the same name as the English Channel hotel where T. S. Eliot, recuperating from a nervous breakdown, revised “The Waste Land.” What does this mean? Perhaps we shouldn’t overinterpret—but then, maybe we shouldn’t under interpret, either. When, pleased with my discovery, I point out the Albemarle correspondence to Tartt, she grows chilly. “I have nothing to say about that,” she says.
As a children’s librarian, I know firsthand the depth of artistry and control of language it takes to write a picture book for children. I also know first-hand how often that artistry and ability is tossed aside by writers who mistakenly believe that picture books must be simple to write. Picture books are high art. And no one understood that better than Margaret Brown, author of the incomparable Goodnight Moon.
I love this article not just because it does justice to picture book writers everywhere (and to Brown as a poet with a keen sense of how a child sees the world), but because it dispels the myth of picture book writing as “women’s work,” or as something only suitable for shy, quiet, child-friendly rule-followers. Margaret Brown was anything but. In fact, she was a queer rebel who blew right through expectations to create children’s literature still relevant today. She also happens to have had a feud with the most powerful children’s librarian of her time that lasted decades after both of their deaths — and this article has the tea. #TeamMargaret.
Brown was most taken by the idea of writing for five-year-olds. “At five we reach a point not to be achieved again,” she once wrote in a notebook. In a paper on the topic, she argued that a child of that age enjoys a “keenness and awareness” that will likely be subdued out of him later in life. She went on, “Here, perhaps, is the stage of rhyme and reason. . . . ‘Big as the whole world,’ ‘Deep as a giant,’ ‘Quiet as electricity rushing about the world,’ ‘Quiet as mud.’ All these are five-year-old similes. Let the grown-up writer for children equal or better them if he can.”
***
Lisa Bubert is a writer and librarian based in Nashville, Tennessee. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Texas Highways, Washington Square Review, and more.
***
Editor: Carolyn Wells
Copy Editor: Peter Rubin
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This #BlackBusinessMonth, come learn more about Black businesses from DC’s history by researching in our library! Our librarian recommends starting with the Michael Fitzpatrick African American businesses research collection (MS 0873). 👉 https://t.co/dxm0rmV1VT …
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The 1960s were an exciting time in music history, with rock and roll steadily gaining in popularity. Months before the first Woodstock festival in 1969, Maryland had its own celebration: The Laurel Pop Festival. https://t.co/hXwGAUaTIF The 1960s were an exciting time in musi…
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Aquanaut Gets to Work Underwater via NASA https://t.co/npoVMg5xsj https://t.co/ykijBx4tdc
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Early 1900s postcard of the first floor entrance hall of Georgetown University's iconic Healy Hall, completed in 1882. @GeorgetownInDC https://t.co/Xglx8VroJQ Early 1900s postcard of the first floor entrance hall of Georgetown University's iconic Healy Hall, completed in 1882.…
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In honor of the anniversary of the end of WWII, we look back at a hero from the DMV, that of Virginia Hall. Despite losing her leg in a hunting accident, Hall went on to be an important spy in France, first for the British, then the Americans. https://t.co/O1GdldPraZ In hono…
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Early 1900s postcard of Georgetown University's iconic Healy Hall, completed in 1882. https://t.co/GI75bTUk3j Early 1900s postcard of Georgetown University's iconic Healy Hall, completed in 1882. https://t.co/GI75bTUk3j — Streets of Washington (@StreetsOfDC) Aug 14, 2022
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In May 1969, rock history was made at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD. Led Zeppelin and The Who played a concert at the MD venue when both bands were rising stars. This was the only time the bands rocked the same stage. https://t.co/yzl8Z5ZfN3 In May 1969, roc…
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Today in History - August 14 https://t.co/th4jAQRkSN On August 14, 1848, Congress created the Oregon Territory, an area encompassing present-day Oregon, Idaho, Washington, and parts of western Montana and Wyoming. Continue reading. Click here to search Today in History for …
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