Two Recent Encounters with Great Writing

I shut down my computer this past Friday night almost forgetting my name after a full and exciting week. It's a good problem to have, most of time. As I found a cozy spot on the couch next to my pup, Lewie, I capitulated to the mental lactic acid filling my creative muscles. I knew I needed to give the keyboard a rest and switch to a jacket cover. I try to stay well-read, but, for me, it's like staying hydrated: I think I'm doing better at than I am.

On Saturday, I picked up two books: The Gay Talese Reader: Portraits and Encounters and Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography, by David Michaelis.

Gay Talese is a narrative-nonfiction hero, and I enjoy falling into his true, sometime irreverent, storytelling capacities. And I'm a big fan of Charles Schulz's Peanuts (I might be listening to the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas).

As any writer will confess, reading is important, particularly reading just to read. But it's difficult to "turn off" the syntax-investigator part of us; we ask questions of another writer's work and fill margins with notes and observations: Why did they use that word and not this word? I need to remember to use a semi-colon like that. Wait? They accomplished all of that between two em dashes?

Per usual, it happened this past weekend. And I want to share two encounters with great writing.

The first comes from Talese's famous essay "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold." If you do any nonfiction writing of any kind, you need to have read this essay. It's a bar-setting piece full of the detail-laden writing that comes from a writer committed to the craft of immersive reporting and recognizing the interesting in the familiar. The following example reminded me of a powerful storytelling tool that uses varying sentence lengths to buttress a literary effect: revelation.

"Sinatra is ill. He was the victim of an ailment so common that most people would consider it trivial. But when it gets to Sinatra, it can plunge him into a state of anguish, deep depression, panic, even rage. Frank Sinatra has a cold" (pg. 18).

I call this "bookending," using one or two longer sentences to convey factoids and information, and then bookending them with a short sentence on either side. This gives your writing a satisfying cadence while making the most of what the sentences say, especially when you can use them the way Talese has: building to a revelation.

The two short sentences ("Sinatra is ill." and "Frank Sinatra has a cold.") transforms what would otherwise be plain-vanilla facts in standard statement-of-fact writing into tension-building narrators. As we read past the first sentence, we don't notice the longer sentences. Instead we arrive—and not a moment too soon—at a sneezing, wheezing Sinatra.

This confluence of Talese's decisions in what he is saying and how he is saying it creates for us the irony of the gravity of the common cold; it's a common cold for everyone, except for Sinatra.

Don't believe me? Imagine if Talese had written: "Sinatra is ill. Frank Sinatra has a cold. He was the victim of an ailment so common that most people would consider it trivial. But when it gets to Sinatra, it can plunge him into a state of anguish, deep depression, panic, even rage."

Feel the difference?

The second example, from Michaelis's Schulz and Peanuts, reminded me of how em dashes can be the hero of good writing, particularly when you need to use an aside to elevate your main clause.

"But no matter what happened to Charles Schulz for the rest of his life—even when he married and started a family and became known as a cartoonist, then was lionized as a figure of national wisdom, a philosopher-king beloved by millions, a 'seer' revered to the point of idolatry, his standing measured in four decades of unremitting worldwide recognition as one of the most beloved artists on earth—he felt unseen" (pg. 6).

Look at this list of accolades Michaelis has furnished for us. Even one of these would be worthy of our attention, let alone the entire list. It boggles the mind to consider how much one human accomplished with four squares of drawings. And yet, we know that none of these accolades are Michaelis's point. His main point, elevated to the highest heights of clarity, is that Charles Schulz was a profoundly lonely man. Because of Michaelis's decision to couch all this information between two em dashes, it sets everything aside, making room for a main point somewhere. And when we arrive, we realize Michaelis has with expert precision placed the weightiest news last. And we'll never forget it.

Michaelis reminds us of the heroic powers an em dash can bestow on a sentence; they can lift from a main idea the weighty cargo of a sentence that could easily be confused as the main point. And when used as Michaelis has, to create a contrast, they can elevate three words (he felt unseen) to the stratosphere of clarity.