Gary Smith

Reading his latest SI piece, the one on Agassi, I marveled, as I always do when reading his stuff, at the almost-comical level of detail he gives the reader.

("Johnson looked up. Then to the left. Then the image of his great-uncle, a World War I hero, flashed before his eyes. But not a full image - only the left side of his face. And his left eye was two-thirds closed. His right eye, meanwhile...")

How many hours do you think Smith needs with his subjects before being able to write how he writes?

And how much of his "I-am-IN-his-mind" writing is him analyzing or empathizing? Is 100% of that from stuff he elicits in interviews?

If so - or even if it's only 94% interview-culled material - how the hell does he conduct his interviews? What type of questions would you have to ask to write Smith-like pieces?

I am curious.

 

The better question is, when does even the most dogged interviewer quit believing everything he's told? People recreate events the way they remember them. Memory is flawed. Yet Smith presents memories as facts. If he's there, observing, I believe him; but if he's recreating from others' memories, or telling me that a hawk in the sky looked into Mike Tyson's eyes (as he once did), his use of detail suggests fiction more than journalism.

 

That's the only thing I dislike about Smith. He takes the interviewer for his word, and he recreates the story as if he's 100 percent sure the interviewer would never lie to him. Smith is an incredible, INCREDIBLE writer. And he appears to be a very good reporter, doing lots of research (or having somebody do lots of research) and talking to lots of people. But I stop four or five times when reading Smith's pieces to say to myself, "Yeah, buddy, if only we knew this to be true."

 

Here's my take on Smith taking subjects' words for the gospel: It reads a helluva lot better his way than the way some magazine writers do it. I'm certain Smith has taken some liberties when writing a long piece. And you know what? I bet other magazine writers do, too. But I trust those guys to be sure on the facts that matter, and I would rather them take the experts' recollections as fact rather than plug in attribution every which way.

Here's a graf from the Agassi story -- but with the attribution that would weigh down a Smith piece.

Dad will say later that he plucked him from school a half hour early to get him on the court before Mike leaves for his night job at the casino. Weekends and summer days, he says, Mike wakes up on a few hours' sleep and herds Andre onto the court where the 32 garbage cans await -- each filled with 300 balls -- along with the 11 machines that Andre remembers his dad to have custom-welded to spit balls with different spins from different angles, one every two or three seconds ... for the first of Andre's three-a-day workouts. Andre says he remembers striking thousands of balls each day, 365 days a year, including Christmas and the day after a surgeoun reattaches the piece of finger sliced off by a kid's blade when Andre goes ice skating, which his father still says he never should've done.

And here it is in Smith's words. It might have been 35 garbage cans instead of 32. But this way works for me.

Dad plucks him from a half hour early to get him on the court before Mike leaves for his night job at the casino. Weekends and summer days, Mike wakes up on a few hours' sleep and herds Andre onto the court where the 32 garbage cans await -- each filled with 300 balls -- along with the 11 machines that Dad has custom-welded to spit balls with different spins from different angles, one every two or three seconds ... for the first of Andre's three-a-day workouts. Thousands of balls struck each day, 365 days a year, including Christmas and the day after a surgeoun reattaches the piece of finger sliced off by a kid's blade when Andre goes ice skating, which, dammit, he never should've done.

needles

 

OK, I'll chime in.

If you do your research, you'll find out the following:
1.) In one of the Best American Sportswriting books (the one Rick Reilly edited), he tells the story in the intro about how G. Smith interviews 50 people at the least for each story.
2.) There's also another article that Slate magazine did, which also tells how the man spends an extensively long time with each subject he interviews so he knows all their quirks and characteristics.

The man's reporting is jaw-dropping. What's even more amazing is the fact he hardly uses quotes in his stories. His success comes from observation, and I marvel at it.

 

i've told this one before, but it's worth repeating: when boomer esiason joined the jets, it coincided with the news that boomer's son has cystic fibrosis. that summer, gary did a piece on boomer/gunnar. freaked out us mortal jet writers. he spent about a month tailing the esiasons, all family members, focusing on boomer, boomer's dad and the kid. a tremendous job of reporting, insight and writing. when boomer was a player, he was as good an interview subject as any in sports. but gary culled things never before reported. sure, he gets the time to do it. but i don't care if any of us had 50 years, we couldn't do it as well.

 

Needles

There are a thousand ways to let the reader know attribution without cluttering it up with "he says." In fact, ii you re-read his SI account of Pat Tillman's death, you'll see how cleverly Smith can conceal attribution when even he is not sure he has the facts.

Let me also say I admire and respect Smith's work habits. He wouldn't get the details without the work. And I'm sure he leaves out some details that don't pass the smell test. I just also have the feeling that when a remembered detail supports his theory of the psychological "key" that unlocks the "truth" in all his stories, that detail gets used despite any suggestin of odor.

 

Here's the funny thing...I'm an admirer of both Smith and Agassi, but this was not one of my favorite Smith pieces. I just didn't think Smith's typical dramatic style fit well with a story on Agassi. Normally, Smith's story subjects merit a good bit of drama, but I don't think Agassi does. Yeah, he had a roller coaster career and his personality seemed to change as he aged, but is any of that really so out of the ordinary? As always, the reporting is great, but I could have done without the dramatic style in this one.

 

Completely disagree. Agassi has changed so much in the past 20 years, and to witness it has been amazing. And the way Smith went through that change was outstanding reporting and writing.

 

i agree with you, lefty. i think when he tackles a mega celebrity who's been profiled thousands of times, it calls for this style. when you're writing about some random high school basketball or track coach or even a D-I football player with a twin brother you play it more straight and it works.

 

I suppose I could see how one might think this was over dramatized, but I agree with those that think we needed one of these about a character like Agassi. I was excited when I saw that there was a takeout on Agassi and thrilled when I saw the Gary Smith byline. Personally, I think Smith has swung and missed at some of his more recent profiles, but not this one. I think he hit this one out of the park.

 

I love that moment...it's like finding money in your old pants.