The first is "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," written by Gay Talese for Esquire Magazine in 1966. The article is a terrific piece of creative nonfiction and is considered a landmark in new journalism, not only for the beauty of Talese's writing but also for his use of techniques associated with fiction. Here's how it starts:
FRANK SINATRA, holding a glass of bourbon in one hand and a cigarette in the other, stood in a dark corner of the bar between two attractive but fading blondes who sat waiting for him to say something. But he said nothing; he had been silent during much of the evening, except now in this private club in Beverly Hills he seemed even more distant, staring out through the smoke and semidarkness into a large room beyond the bar where dozens of young couples sat huddled around small tables or twisted in the center of the floor to the clamorous clang of folk-rock music blaring from the stereo. The two blondes knew, as did Sinatra's four male friends who stood nearby, that it was a bad idea to force conversation upon him when he was in this mood of sullen silence, a mood that had hardly been uncommon during this first week of November, a month before his fiftieth birthday.
Perhaps what is most remarkable about the piece is what Talese was able to do when faced with an uncooperative interviewee. Sinatra didn't want to be interviewed by Talese. In addition to the aforementioned cold, Sinatra was preparing for the fallout from a CBS documentary that he felt was prying too closely into his personal life, while also working on a movie and an NBC special that called for him to sing 18 songs. Unable to get the interview with Sinatra, Talese instead embedded himself in Sinatra's world, talking to the myriad people around the singer, and becoming an invisible observer.
What resulted was a piece of writing that gives the reader a fuller portrait of the man than any sit-down interview could have. It's Sinatra unfiltered. And more than just a portrait of the man, it's a rumination on the nature of celebrity, American myth-making, and the nation at mid-century. Sinatra, in Talese's portrait, is not just a singer. Without making any overt mafia references, the character that Talese draws is a variation on the Godfather: a man with tremendous power, a man who's loved, respected, and feared all at once. Talese's Sinatra is also much more complex than the Rat Pack caricature. He's a family man who stays out until the wee small hours of the morning. A private man who spends much of his time surrounded by dozens of hangers-on. A tough-guy who's very being can be threatened by a cold.
What resulted was a piece of writing that gives the reader a fuller portrait of the man than any sit-down interview could have. It's Sinatra unfiltered. And more than just a portrait of the man, it's a rumination on the nature of celebrity, American myth-making, and the nation at mid-century. Sinatra, in Talese's portrait, is not just a singer. Without making any overt mafia references, the character that Talese draws is a variation on the Godfather: a man with tremendous power, a man who's loved, respected, and feared all at once. Talese's Sinatra is also much more complex than the Rat Pack caricature. He's a family man who stays out until the wee small hours of the morning. A private man who spends much of his time surrounded by dozens of hangers-on. A tough-guy who's very being can be threatened by a cold.
If you're a fan of Sinatra, or just someone who enjoys great writing, go read this article right now. It's well worth it.
The second piece is "The Case for Reparations" by Ta-Nehesi Coates, the cover story of the June edition of The Atlantic. Coates has been a national correspondent for the Atlantic for several years now, and in that time has become one of the most thoughtful and provocative writers on race. He rarely approaches the issue from an ideological standpoint, and he often challenges conventional wisdom. On a side note, he was also an occasional guest on the radio program I used to produce, and he's a really nice guy.
Whatever you think of the idea of reparations, the article is a must-read, not only for the carefully-constructed argument but the power of the writing. Coates builds the piece around the story of Clyde Ross, born in Mississippi in 1923 to sharecropper parents. In his lifetime Ross has been the victim of the most overt and covert forms of racism. After escaping the violence and institutionalized racism of the Jim Crow-era south, Ross served in World War II and made his way to Chicago, where he was victim of the more insidious yet no-less-institutionalized bigotry of housing discrimination, (which Coates calls "elegant racism").
Whatever you think of the idea of reparations, the article is a must-read, not only for the carefully-constructed argument but the power of the writing. Coates builds the piece around the story of Clyde Ross, born in Mississippi in 1923 to sharecropper parents. In his lifetime Ross has been the victim of the most overt and covert forms of racism. After escaping the violence and institutionalized racism of the Jim Crow-era south, Ross served in World War II and made his way to Chicago, where he was victim of the more insidious yet no-less-institutionalized bigotry of housing discrimination, (which Coates calls "elegant racism").
Coates uses Ross's story as a springboard for a systematic review of how White America has colluded to deny black Americans the fruits of their labor and prevented them from achieving economic parity. Coates does not attempt to present a plan for how reparations could work, nor does he present reparations as a solution to the problems of black America. Instead, he asks us to consider it not as a "harebrained scheme authored by wild-eyed lefties and intellectually unserious black nationalists" but as a legitimate idea worthy of rigorous, thoughtful debate. Reparations, he argues, could mean "a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history."
The article will no doubt get a lot of buzz over the next few weeks, as it should, and likely provoke all sorts of derision from the pundits of the world, which is unfortunate. Because whatever your stance on this issue, you'll learn something from reading this article.
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