Wright Thompson: outta the park, through the uprights, slam dunk, et al

I especially liked the part where he got to LeBron's house and finally found Elvis Grbac.

 

I found that funny, yes I did, and all the people I talked to did too, I think.

 

I don't necessarily disagree with all of this, because it can be intrusive.

But I've noticed that almost every single New Yorker story has some first-person, particularly when the subject is being quoted, and it never seems intrusive. I think the magazine wants context for the quotes - where the interview took place, under which circumstances. My guess is they feel that quotes that fall from the sky, like we prefer, are more jarring.

 

I think the first person element not only worked, but was vital to the premise and construction of the story.

Wright is trying to understand and explain Cleveland's sports psyche. He's an outsider. As are his readers. As such, Wright -- that is, his character, the narrator on a quest -- becomes a stand-in for them.

It's a legit narrative device -- graceful, even -- and I don't think there's a smidgen of "look at me" to it. Not in this case.

Think of it like this: from your reporting, you have a series of characters, scenes, encounters and opinions. You do not have an inherent narrative arc, because that's not the nature of this piece. It has no built-in beginning, middle and end. It's not a classic story, per se. There is no conflict moving to resolution, no obvious drama; there is only confusion and ignorance moving to understanding.

Why wouldn't you use first-person as a way to fit everything together and give the story momentum? What would work better and more gracefully?

I'm a friend of Wright's. I've also written similar pieces that presented similar problems. First person can be an engaging, reader-friendly solution.

Try to think less like a journalist/newspaper writer and more like a reader who needs to be pulled through a story.

 

Yes to all that.

 

And I am done posting on this thread because there is no way I can fathom adding anything of value that silent_h did not say 1,000,000 times better than I could ever dream of.

 

The only part of this piece that bothered me was the Raab section, and here's where I agree with AD's first post completely: The grieving angst-ridden reporter routine always seems so trite and melodramatic to me. I get the frustration of the local fans, the folks who escape their lives via sports and the people who play them. But the sobbing writer who covers this stuff for a living (and oh yeah, has a book in the works) just comes off as, I don't know, sort of ridiculous. And the fact that WT used him to open the piece was disappointing to me.

Otherwise, the first person journey didn't bother me, maybe because the writer is talented enough to pull it off. Could he have done without the 'I sat in the bar. Rock and roll was on the juke box' stuff? Probably. I don't think it hurt the piece, it just didn't add anything. You could easily report the same story with the same color and detail without ever once mentioning yourself.

 

It's a brilliant piece and Wright is one of the best, the I and me stuff is just a real pet peeve of mine and it makes me stop reading a piece that otherwise just flows perfectly.

 

I think the only reason a lot of us notice it is because we've had newspaper writing style drilled into our heads for so long that anything different is jarring to us. Most readers probably just zip right through it without once pondering the use of first-person.

 

I agree with 21. Use of the first person in this excellent and enjoyable piece was unnecessary. It didn't spoil it for this reader, but I did notice it, and found it an irrelevance. I was always taught you could describe things without mentioning your presence it was self-evident that you had seen and heard what you were writing about. Most of the time, even in opinion-writing, first person usage is basically a redundancy.

 

Yup.

 

Disappointed that Thompson did not go and knock on Elvis Grbac's door for a quote.