Hey all, topic for discussion. How do you write a non-fiction work full of opinions (contentious issues, conflicting viewpoints, cockamamie theories and all) without over-use of the following construction?
To [name], [fact] meant [opinion].
I know there is a way to do it, and I know Howard Bryant does not know that way. In fact, to Howard, the above construction means good journalism. I don't know how to tell him (except in, you know, ranty terms in my livejournal) that I wrote better than he does when I was in the sixth grade.
(The whole book --
Juicing the Game,
about recent baseball history and steroids -- is about opinions, including those of journalists. There is a whole chapter about beat-writers' relationships with players. There is no point in the book thus far where Howard Bryant has said outright that
he is a baseball journalist.
)
Ironically, just the other day I was pronouncing John McPhee's two-part essay on coal trains in the New Yorker kinda boring, because, I just don't care about coal trains. But the topic was boring, and, considering I was reading about coal trains, the writing was pretty good.
see, mr. flea was fascinated by the coal trains.
I want to like John McPhee, but I always get bored with him, even when he's writing about inherently dramatic things like trying to stop a volcano using seawater.
I love John McPhee, because he can make even the dullest things, like the orange industry, interesting. The Curve of Binding Energy? The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed? Edge of my seat.
The Curve of Binding Energy
is about the nuclear power industry, and the security and other dangers inherent in disposing of the waste.
The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed
is about a unique kind of aircraft, one that marries airplane technology with something like a zeppelin.
The Curve of Binding Energy is about the nuclear power industry, and the security and other dangers inherent in disposing of the waste.
Huh. I liked it more when it sound like that book where they had the houses of sex professionals.
Still, I suppose it could be interesting.
trying to stop a volcano using seawater.
This does sound interesting. The ocean does it all the time, but that is probably not what you are talking about.
It's one of the essays in McPhee's The Control of Nature, which I have kicking around not quite finished somewhere.
huh. Amazon informs me that Stephen R. Donaldson has a new Thomas Covenent book out. I guess he realized that no one wanted to read his ponderous rape fantasies.
Um. Okay, but (spoilers for whole series)
isn't Thomas Covenant dead? Pushing up daisies? Pining for the fjords?
