Outside Counsel

First semester freshman year I took a class called "Experimental Literature", taught by the poet in residence, a big bear of a guy named David Kelly. I don't actually remember much about the class, except that it was full of exactly the sort of pretentious English major twits you'd think would take something like that (and although I was certainly one of them, I think I was far from the bull goose pretentious English major twit). I do remember that the book list was long, and that the books were expensive-- and that some of them were pretty terrific. John Cage's "A Year From Monday", was one; something called "Concrete Poetry" which combined minimalist verse with origami, or maybe pop-up books; and an anthology called "The New Journalism" edited by Tom Wolfe. I don't know what became of my copy of this collection, although I suspect that it may now reside in the Antipodes, but it made a big impression on me.

We were talking about journalism in the office the other day and something from Wolfe's introduction came flooding back. Specifically, we were complaining about Mary Kunz, and how she seems to confuse annoying with cute, and how her Tuesday column in particular seems to suffer from a poverty of original thought. That's what happens when they give you a column, I said. You stop going out and reporting, and start scraping around for anything to fill the space. Cute things your kids say, something you saw on tv-- anything. Tom Wolfe said you've got to wear out shoe leather."

That set me off looking for the book, which is, to my astonishment, out of print in the US. A check with Amazon got me a used copy from the UK, which arrived today. What Wolfe actually said is a bit more elaborate:

"In any case, Breslin made a revolutionary discovery. He made the discovery that it was feasible for a columnist to actually leave the building, go outside, and do reporting on his own, genuine legwork. Breslin would go up to the city editor and ask what stories and assignments were coming up, choose one, go out, leave the building, cover the story as a reporter, and write about it in his column....As obvious as this system may sound, it was unheard of among newspaper columnists, whether local or national. If possible, local columnists were even more pathetic. They usually start out full of juice, sounding like terrific boulavardiers and raconteurs, retailing in print all the marvelous mots and anecdotes they have been dribbling away over lunch for the past few years. After eight or ten weeks, however, they start to dry up. You can see the poor bastards floundering and gasping. They're dying of thirst. They're out of material. They start writing about funny things that happened around the house the other day, homey one-liners that the Better Half or the Avon lady got off, or some fascinating book or article that started them thinking, or else something that they saw on the TV."

There is more, but I think you get his point. A question that seems to occur with some regularity about blogs is whether blogs are journalism-- or even some kind of New New Journalism. I would put it to you that the answer to this question is nicely answered by Wolfe-- if it means going out and getting facts, it qualifies; but if it is thumbsucking in public, quit putting on airs. Regrettably, this means that a great deal of professional journalism doesn't qualify, either. Funny how some things you learn stay with you-- I haven't though about Dave Kelly in years, and I'm pretty sure we never got to the Wolfe book in the class, but there it was, right there when I wanted it when I needed it. I can't believe it's not in print-- there is a lot more in there that is useful to know, and I'd like to be able to give it to people.

A's grandmother used to say, "It's the chicken that goes out of the yard that comes back with a full beak. That sums it up pretty nicely.