Literary nonfiction is an art of collage and has been ever since the earliest essays, collections of fragments. Which is what Twitter is all about. Some writers -- and some students, emulating their elders -- dismiss Twitter as trivial, but the truth is there are more interesting (and more democratic) conversations about writing occurring there than at the National Arts Club and the Yaddo dinner table combined. Sometimes they're dialogues, sometimes they're arguments, and sometimes they're what follows, Twitter's special form -- the rant, in intervals. This one's from a veteran sports writer, another kind of literary journalist. (click on the link to follow his Twitterings.) To read the rant, start at the bottom and scroll up.
--Jeff Sharlet
--Jeff Sharlet
- Mr. Sports Journo @BIGSPORTSWRITER3h
I guess for me it was always good enough to have a nice seat at the nerd table. Relatively cool, to those with more realistic dreams. - Mr. Sports Journo @BIGSPORTSWRITER3h
But I've always known that I was covering the cool people, not one of them. It's an important distinction.
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I love to write. It got me made fun of as a kid. It got me made fun of as an adult. I've been heckled in bars, stadiums, weddings, funerals.
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But somehow sportswriters started AIMING to be cool. And it sits awkwardly on us, like a hat we stole from a badass cousin we admire.
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Somewhere along the line, the industry got a little lost. Maybe it was the attention, or the minor, MINOR fame -
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And that - that would be cool.
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Maybe if I blistered my fingertips, furiously erasing every impure thing escaping my pen - someday people might say I could write a little.
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Maybe if I spent merciless hours, bleeding onto a pad or page, and then looked at it - stark naked - and said "This isn't good enough."
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It's funny, when I got into this - the goal was to be as near sports every day, and I thought maybe if I struggled with it...
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We had athletes that were friend, we all had people we could go to - but we didn't use "I just spoke to ____" as a badge of credibility.
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The contest was to write the best, period. Not 'who can be the most acerbic' or 'who can best demonstrate that they're an insider.'
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I'd cover a baseball game, then go back and look at old Red Smith columns, and be struck with a paralyzing fear that I don't "get" the game.
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I remember reading Plimpton and thinking to myself, "I'll never have an idea that original." Glaring at it, desperately looking for errors.
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I'd read Gammons - even when he was still beat writing - and seethe with jealousy. How dare you weave together words that way. Why can't I?
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I can remember buying 5 or 10 newspapers on a Sunday, and pouring through them - feeling great stories like sharp pains in the chest.
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The competition in the press room, and amongst colleagues is supposed to be upward-striving.
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This job is supposed to be fun. You get to watch the greatest athletes int he world, never knowing when you'll wade into historic waters.
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I dunno, maybe I'm just having a senior moment.
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The public's thirst for athlete's interpersonal drama, and media's willingness to feed it is a snake eating itself. It's bad for sports.
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But more than that, I think the people designing the narratives, from sports conglomerates to bitter, rogue writers need to evolve.
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I think that fans need to take a look at how they root for - and especially against - their favorite or least favorite athletes.
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(Jesus, that made me sound old)
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I can't tell you how many strong, smart, funny, independent voices I've come across because of twitter and the internet.
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And this is not some fatalistic "journalism is dead" rant. There are great writers out there, doing incredible stories every day.
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This obsession with the personal lives, and interpersonal drama of athletes was probably always the end game. But led the nosedive.
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In an effort to show you something you haven't seen, we gave you things you didn't know you needed. Now you're hooked. It's insatiable.
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They want to take you into their bedrooms and living rooms, never mind the locker rooms. They want to not show, but paint personalities.
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They idea was to take you into the huddle, into the dugout, into the stadium. Now so many writers want to take you into the bathrooms.
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"Henderson stole third on a 1-2 fastball, put extra pressure on the pitcher, who had to now stay out of the upper zone, fly ball scored him"
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When you weren't their eyes, you were a telescope, or a microscope for the fans that DID watch.
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For columnists, or for those that wrote two pieces about the game, the job was to unearth something viewers may have missed.
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There was an honor to that, an implicit trust placed in you by whomever chose to read your work. 'Why did my team win? Why did they lose?'
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The whole goal of the job was to be the ears and eyes of the fans. You picked up the paper in the morning, and we put you in the front row.
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