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

Or how S.L. Price is turning his Coolbaugh story into a book.

 

That's a stretch.

It was a terrific story but there's not enough for a book--in my opinion.

 

You don't know until you do a set of interviews.

 

"Let's turn this magazine article into a book" is one of the laziest ways to come up with book ideas.

Sometimes it works but in my experience, many of them are padded versions of the original magazine article, which contained everything interesting or informative about the subject.

 

I tend to agree. Although, I loved Into Thin Air and that was a magazine article originally (didn't read Into the Wild or the magazine story).

Completely unrelated, but was just reading a book about the truth behind "based on a true sotry" movies. I had no idea that Pushing Tin - Top Gun for air traffic controllers - was based on a New York Times Magazine story. Bizarre.

 

I think it would be a better movie than book.

 

I have no idea if Jones has book offers or whether he even has thought about it.

My take on this piece is that it is so damn near perfect a book might be too much. But that's just me.

My personal experience as well (and this doesn't apply to Jones for sure) is that there are a lot of magazine writers who are absolutely lost when it comes to writing a book.

Anyway, if he gets a book deal, more power to him.

 

i actually got through it in one sitting. wasn't easy, but i made it.

what impressed me most was that it's probably one of the least overwritten things i've ever read, especially for something of that length and on such a topic. no fancy flourishes, no unnecessary navel-gazing or 1,000-word throat clearings. just incredible reporting and clear, direct storytelling. truly fantastic work.

 

Rick crystallized the feeling I had that I couldn't put my finger on.

The reportage was tight. Concise. That could have taken 35 Web pages with most writers. No wasted effort.

 

I know plenty of people have already offered props to Jones on this one, but I thought one more couldn't hurt. Absolutely amazing story, I couldn't put it down, and Esquire wasn't overhyping it. It was the most gripping story I've read this year.

 

Just spent an hour reading this online from beginning to end.

Great fucking story.

 

I hadn't seen the last run of comments on this thread before WB bumped it back up -- a belated thank you for the kind words. This story still has me off my head a little bit, so it was nice to read these out of the blue this morning.

Rick, I appreciate yours especially. I really did try to make every sentence count, to have every sentence contain some fact or detail to give it a purpose. I have my editor to thank for that, too. Any time I veered into "writing," he nudged me back on track.

No book, no movie -- just a story in a magazine.