Esquire's "most gripping story you will read this year."

If only for that story, it will be the best $10.99 you've spent in a while.

 

Here it is 2:22 a.m., I just finished reading it and I'm still too keyed up to sleep.
Just having been through my dad's funeral, being a Navy vet, with the flag and the playing of taps, made me appreciate more what the people who perform those tasks go through.
Then, to read the entire chain of what happens when a solider in Iraq dies.... wow.
Jones, I sincerely mean this, it is the greatest piece of magazine writing I have ever read.
Gripping, powerful, you took me from Indiana to Dover to Iraq.
I felt like I was on that raid.
I hope you are recovering well from surgery and if I ever cross the border again, a Tim's double-double is on me.
Damn, I wish my dad was alive so I could have had him read it.
Damn.

 

Hey everybody,

So I'm home but drifting in and out of a drug haze -- no complaints -- but I just wanted to thank everybody again for the kind words about the story and the surgery.

Just to answer a couple of questions quickly -- I'll get into more when I can type better -- but I spoke to 101 people for the story, from Joey's buddies in Iraq to the folks at Dover to the pilots and truck drivers and bugler and a bunch of people in Scottsburg. I wasn't present for any of this, so it's all reconstruction. For the stateside stuff, there are photographs and news footage, which helped, but mostly I relied on interviews. I just finally had an opportunity, the time and the space and the budget, not to leave anybody out. And I interviewed 90 percent of the people in person, which is always better. Even someone like Steve Greene, the Kalitta Charters manager, I drove to Tennessee to have lunch with him. They were all very giving.

And I knew the story would rely on the detail, so I warned people that I would be asking a lot of questions and they would be hard and they would sometimes sound strange, but they were for a purpose. Some of the answers, I can remember giving me goosebumps. When the two pallbearers in Seymour told me about staring at the flower on the girl's dress, or when Ross told me about Joey cranking System of a Down on the drive out, or the Kalitta pilots told me about the immigrant family beating the casket in front of them... All of those moments I knew were going in the story.

I recorded everything and took lots of notes, but I remembered everything well. Those were the sorts of conversations you don't forget having. But I wrote each section as soon as I'd finished the interviews for it, so it would seem fresh. I wrote the raid overnight in one marathon session, listening to BYOB. I just wanted to feel the crackle there.

All right, I'm fading out here, so I'll post more in a bit. I'll post one of the sections that got cut wholesale. Frank, we took out 4,000 words in the final edit. I was sad about some of the losses, but I think they were important.

Anyway, thanks again. More later. Time for a hit. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

 

I love it. There is nothing I love more in this business than when I'm interviewing somebody and they really start to dig into the memory and move past generalizations ("I was really sad") to specifics ("I remember staring at the flower on the girl's dress, and that's all that kept me from losing it.")

It can be hard to do, because people are conditioned to talk in generalities - and especially when they are self-conscious and think you're just looking for quotes.

I've even gone so far as to tell a subject - I may use quotes, but that's not what I'm here for. So don't worry about whether you're saying something quotable. I'm far, far more interested in the information, in finding out what happened.

That actually relaxes people, I've found.

 

We send our collective regards and fond get-well wishes in return, and hope the opium lollipops are doing their work.

And some of the youngsters in the Workshop have been asking what time your pineal gland goes up on eBay.

 

Jones,

I know when I read about that hamburger in Havana (almost raw!) that you'd regret it later. Medium well my friend, medium well.

 

I just saw this thread. But I'll post some of my PM to Jones here. I'm sure he won't mind;

"I've been reading Esquire since I was in high school--the mid 60's. I remember the Tom Wolfe piece on Junior Johnson, Gay Talese's "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" and his great portrait of Joe DiMaggio --all when they were first published.

I remember laughing hysterically at the very first Dubious Achievement Awards and reading them out loud to my friends. Fuck, I'm old.

I think it was my mother who introduced me to the magazine--I have no idea why--but maybe she thought I'd get some "manly" advice and I guess she figured better to have Esquire around the house than Playboy.

Even at the age of 16 I knew I was reading groundbreaking storytelling and revolutionary journalism.

I've read your article on Joe Montgomery twice now and all I can say is, it should stand as one of the great pieces of writing Esquire has published in its 75 years.

Congrats. I am awestruck."

 

Thanks for getting back. I can't even fathom talking to 101 people, especially because I'm guessing these weren't short interviews. Did you have to go back to certain people more than once? There's nothing I hate more than talking to someone getting home, listening to the recorder, starting the story and realizing there's a hole or wishing I asked one more question. Ideally you're able to get in touch with the person, but as we know not everything in this business is ideal. Maybe you're on a tight deadline or you don't have the person's number or a million other things. The benefit of the mag biz I'd assume is that this wouldn't be as much of an issue. So how many of these people did you have to go back to and talk to again?

 

Did you have a deadline for this story or was it something that your editors would find space for once it was finished?

 

Who had the original idea for the story? You or an editor? How long from first thought of doing the story until now? (Sorry if that's been covered in the NPR interview or elsewhere.)

 

He touched on it on page 2 of this thread, something about seeing something about it on CNN and make the pitch with no problem. But I too am curious about how the whole thing came to be. Why this guy, was it just that one CNN story or had you thought of doing something like this, or even just something on Iraq. I'd like to hear more about that process as well.

 

the npr interview with jones is worth a listen.