thinlinednotepaper

“The art of sports writing always amazed me. Nine out of ten times the reader already knows the outcome of your story before reading it. They know who won, they probably even watched the game. But they read about it anyway and you have to write with an insight and angle that makes it seem fresh.”

Which is interesting, and accurate nowadays. We’re well removed from the time when you’d have to follow a team from the box scores, or recreate a game from a newspaper report. But the difference in media matters to the experience of the game — listening on the radio is always surprising, when you realize how much better the color and play-by-play guys have to be to create their complete picture of the action on the court; likewise sportswriting, which has more in common with criticism than straight news reporting, revealing not just action but what it means, providing a close reading of a text that illuminates its finer points.

Little Brown 05.26.09

August 28, 2010, 7:45am   Comments

“Not an auto-parts store. The auto-parts store. Maybe the only one, or at least the main one. Which in any city is always right there on the same strip as the tire stores and the auto dealers and the lube shops. Which in any city is always a wide new strip near a highway cloverleaf. Cities are all different, but they’re also all the same.”

Late-summer head cold. Means pulp. 

“A place like that, stock was unloaded directly onto the shelves. No hidden inventory. Reacher knew how modern retail worked. He read the papers people left behind on buses and in diner booths.”

Delacorte 06.05

August 27, 2010, 7:16pm   Comments