RIP Dan Jenkins

Some of his funniest stuff was built on the kind of white, vernacular, inside-sports cultural comedy it would be impossible to get away with today.

In that way, he was entirely of his time.

And yet he somehow adapted successfully to the post-modern pan-Twitter wisecrack.

 

In the first regard, like Mel Brooks.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/sally-jenkins/?utm_term=.482bb1e7fea2

 

I hope Tom and Giselle (the people) get to read Dan Jenkins' last book.

That was a wonderful tribute.

 

For what it's worth. YMMV ...

 

I read "Dead Solid Perfect" over the weekend. What an amazing book. Great storytelling with memorable characters and a good plot. How he weaved the elements together without hammering his points home was striking. It exceeded any expectation I could have had for it.

I knew about Dead Solid Perfect from having a faint recollection of the movie from when it was on HBO. Over the years I have tried to find it, but it has never been released on DVD and isn't streaming. I read up on the film and realized it was only "inspired" by the book and had a different plot. I also realized while getting the book from the library and finding more information about it is that Dan Jenkins doesn't get the attention I would think he deserves. Only one local library had Dead Solid Perfect and based on previous attempts to get recently deceased writers' books I assumed I would not get it on Saturday. I don't think the book had been cracked open more than once in 40 years. Online, there is very little about the book or Jenkins's novels it seemed. No individual Wikipedia pages for his books (the movie has one) and nothing discussing the book and the movie. (This is all based on a quick Google search, but nothing jumped out.)

 

This was taken from "Fast Copy;" I used it as a writing guide for stringers...

Then told them to utterly disregard No. 1.

 

Yeah, so did I.

 

I read Number 1 and immediately thought "these rules have to be for magazines and not newspapers. We'd be fired if it were for newspapers."

 

Yep. It's fine if you're writing for a magazine which cannot hit the streets sooner than two days after the event. But not if you're writing for an outlet which may actually be the primary news source for a significant part of the audience.

Oh, I told them to go ahead and bust No. 8, too -- but only if they had a really kick-ass quote. And don't do it very often, either.