Chris Jones has never read Gary Smith -- and why

Um, because I'm prone to it, Michael, which is what I wrote.

Imitation is not always a deliberate act. Sometimes it just creeps up on you. I didn't purposefully try to mimic different writers when I wrote my boxing book; I just did.

Anyway, I find it weird when writers question the methods or processes or tics in other writers. There isn't one best way in this game. I don't really care about the means so long as the ends are there. Part of my development was avoiding Smith. That wasn't your way. Good for you. But I'm sure we all do some things that other people would regard as weird.

I find it strange that some people write in the early morning, for instance, which I could never do. I can't believe some people still write longhand. But I'm not baffled by the idea, and I'm not going to criticize them for it. Process is a pretty personal thing.

 

No, Socky, just an apparent obsession with Good Morning America leaking through. Thanks for the catch.

Everybody needs an editor.

 

Jones, I think this is pretty interesting and give you credit for -- continually -- being open about your process, knowing it will subject you to criticism.

So, while this in some ways helped you, do you think it hurt you in other ways?

I mean, the first piece advice almost anyone would give an aspiring writer would be to read good writers, and you purposely avoided one of the best.

Also, was it just that first editor's words that caused you to avoid Smith, or was it something else you heard about his style that you thought would make you especially prone to mimicking him?

 

Having nothing to do with Gary Smith or his immense talent, and really kind of a threadjack, but boy, you read that Tiger Woods story from 1996, and then consider what has happened to him in the last 20 months, and it's simply amazing the pronouncements that were made then -- all based on the way things were at the time -- what happened for 13 years after that, and what has happened beginning pretty much with the 2008 U.S. Open.

 

This was the point I made earlier: Smith never, ever tells a reader what to think about a subject. So why would he have done it for this one piece where he made his boldest proclamations?

As I said earlier:

Smith doesn't tell stories through his own lens, he tells them through the lenses of those living the story, on every side of the story. You find me a host of people who didn't feel Tiger Woods was going to change everything in golf. And, actually, he kind of did.

 

This doesn't necessarily relate to the overall point of your post, but being concerned about imitating Smith seems like a much more valid concern than imitating Gladwell. As successful as he's been, I don't know too many people who'd say, "God I wish I could write like Gladwell." Have his bank account, his influence? Yeah. But Gladwell's impact is because of his ideas and arguments (the validity of those ideas and arguments can be the subject of their own thread: re, the full-court press is the greatest weapon in basketball), not his prose.

I guess you might find yourself writing more sentences in the form of a question if you imitated Gladwell's writing but I don't think most writers would be trying to copy the structure or language.

But with Smith or others who are really known for the actual writing, it's definitely an issue.

After reading The Yiddish Policemen's Union, I couldn't write anything - or even have internal thoughts - without wanting to break out some Chabonesque similes. Fortunately I held off, most of the time.

And to continue the sort-of-threadjack-by-mentioning-other-Smith-stories, I just read one that's not among his most famous and is structurally different than many of his pieces - his article after Magic Johnson returned in 1996. But I really enjoyed it.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1007724/index.htm

And my personal favorite Smith stories: Damned Yankee, the story of John Malangone; the one on Jamila Wideman and her famous family;

 

CHRIS, WELL DONE TO come around and finally succumb to reading gary. maybe i missed it, but did you reach the conclusion that NOT reading gary for all these years was silly and deprived you of a teaching tool? or did it reinforce for you that the younger chris would have been too seduced by gary and indeed allowed imitation to infiltrate your heart?

and are you now in a rightfully more confident, secure place that you will be catching up often on the pieces you went to such great pains to ignore?

meanwhile, how reassuring to hacks such as myself that even the most accomplished, admired, intimidating wordsmiths fight their own demons.

as i've written before, gary worked at the n.y. daily news ('80/'81) when i was a youngin' there. and his writing immediately struck us all as well beyond the limitations a daily presented to him. when he did his outstanding piece on boomer/boomer's son/boomer's dad in '93, i was covering the jets and gary spent the late spring through training camp working on the piece. it was boomer's first year with the jets and ALL of the beat writers were freaked that gary's piece would blow anything any of us had written on norman julius esiason already.

i finally calmed myself by rationalizing that what gary does and what i was doing as a newspaper beat hack were totally different. as if we weren't even in the same business. and that if gary was limited to 500 words and a few notes every day you could hardly tell the difference between us -- and deluded myself into believing that if i had a couple of months and tremendous access at my disposal, i, too, could write a smith-calibre feature on boomer and family.

well, whatever gets you through the day. i was then able to read gary's piece without fear or insecurity. what's that line from 'the big chill?' 'nobody gets through the day without uttering two or three juicy rationalizations?'

 

It's pretty awesome that SI has made their past articles so accessible and easy to find.

Here's the article Shockey is refering to:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1138646/index.htm

 

Agree well done "Fred"! Shows a lot of maturity on your part. You are coming out of the stone age.

 

I have it on good authority that JonesFitter doesn't read TigerVols either.

 

Don't know Jones personally. Wish I did. Correspond with him via email sort of regularly. He's offered some tremendous advice. I started bombing his inbox with questions about three years ago. A lot of what he's said has helped me make some really surprising leaps in my career.

Don't want to say too much else because I don't enjoy these threads that spend time dissecting the "wrong" writers have done. Just wanted to give my take on the guy. He's helped me a lot. It seems like he's a pretty decent dude.

His reasons for not reading Gary Smith are curious to me. Being a young writer, I read everything I can of everybody I want to be, hoping that if I let enough of their sentences into my brain I will by osmosis produce a few really good ones of my own.

But hey, that's him, and he's had a hell of a career. He's helped me a lot. So there's nothing bad I have to say. Sorry, I guess, that I can't contribute to that. But I wanted to contribute to what I knew, and that is that Jones has taken the time to help out young guys who left him with too many emails to respond to.

That, and as IJAG said, he, clearly, labors over his work.

I'm human, and so I can't always agree with everyone, even guys who've helped me and whom I admire, like Jones. But I'll always respect someone who works as hard as it seems Jones does.

Anyway, that's that. Sorry for the ramble.