annotations: "it's" time to talk about profiles
Rob Delaney Tunde Way Jane Mayer; an irreversible conviction; and other things I read
annotated: a handful of profiles
Let’s talk about profiles.
Leah Finnegan wrote in her Outline newsletter last fall about the plague of articles (particularly magazine profiles) that open with “It’s…”; since then I haven’t been able to read a profile without my eyes immediately zeroing in on the first word. Here’s more on the temptation and folly of “It’s”:
Many different words describe these ledes: Passive. Lethargic. Stultifying. Boring-ass. You see, language is a beautiful thing. There are so many words to describe things, to use in different combinations, endless permutations of sentence arrangements. There are so many ways to begin an article that are not the ways everyone else is beginning their article. And it’s one thing to write with short, minimal, declarative sentences, which can be great; it’s another to retreat to convention.
Another thing about these ledes — they often tell us the weather and the day of the week to “set the scene,” perhaps, even though such descriptors are superfluous. I do not need to know what the weather was during a celebrity interview unless the celebrity and writer were riding out a hurricane together. I do not need to know on which day of the week a celebrity interview occurred unless the celebrity does not believe in the Julian calendar and has created new names for the days of the week.
This week seemed to be flooded with buzzy profiles, so I thought it’d be fun to look at a few through the lens of ledes. If the lede is not good, there’s a decent chance the entire profile is also not good. Another way of putting it: If the writer has to fall back on conventions right out the gate, what kind of writing and imagination will sustain the rest of the piece?
(HERE ARE MY ANNOTATIONS … is what I would write if I were writing/linking my usual annotations, which I am not today, thank you very much!!)
Collage by me lol. Photos (L-R) by: Jay Brooks/Camera Press/Redux, Edmund D. Fountain, Heather Hazzan.
“Rob Delaney Still Wants to Make You Laugh” by Gabriella Paiella, Vulture
Here, in brief, are the high and lows of Rob Delaney’s last five years: First, he moved his family halfway across the world to take a chance on a new job, a TV show he expected to be canceled in six months. It turned out to be pretty much universally beloved, and Delaney, who had spent a decade working under the radar, saw his career reach fantastic new heights. His face was on billboards and subway ads. His wife gave birth to their third child, a beautiful baby boy named Henry. Just when things could not be going any better, Henry, before his 1st birthday, fell ill. Delaney and his wife took him to doctor after doctor until a specialist discovered that the problem was about as bad as it could be: Henry had a malignant brain tumor. He had surgery to remove it and spent over a year in the hospital recovering. Then the tumor returned. In January 2018, Henry, only 2 years old, died at home surrounded by his parents and older brothers. Delaney’s fourth son was born a few months later. And through it all, he was still writing and starring in that hit comedy show. Called Catastrophe.
Here, in brief, is how a lesser (or maybe just different) writer would have begun this profile: set the scene, place the author and subject “on an alarmingly balmy February morning, floating up the River Thames on a ferry,” before pulling back and giving the overview of who the subject is and why he matters, what some could consider a nut graf.
Instead, Paiella flips it, zooming through the summation of Delaney’s recent life with admirable efficiency; only then does she start weaving in the scene. This works precisely because the speed and scope of the lede hook readers early on; not to be crude, but on the surface level, the most important things to know about Delaney are that a) he’s suffered the the tragic death of his son, and b) he writes and stars in a hit comedy show. There’s a feeling of whiplash to how this unfolds, simulating (in a way) how it might feel to ride high on an accelerating wave of success, only to be assailed by a force so crushing and devastating it’s hard to stand upright again. High, low.
“The Provocations of Chef Tunde Wey” by Brett Martin, GQ
Nobody is quite sure what's going on in the event room of the Westwood Baptist Church, University Center. Not the older black ladies from the surrounding North Nashville neighborhood, who arrive exactly on time, summoned by a mysterious postcard sent to 300 homes, like the first chapter of an Agatha Christie novel:
Dear Neighbor,
You are cordially invited to attend a community dinner where we will discuss how to end gentrification in North Nashville.… Dinner is FREE and will be delicious! Don't miss the twist!Not the young white people from farther afield, with their vacuum-sealed water bottles and social-justice 5K T-shirts, who heard about this meeting on NPR or in the local alt-weekly. Not even the pastor, who pops his head into the room, where the long, folding tables are normally used for repasts and Bible-study groups, with a look of puzzlement. The fluorescent bulbs hum, the sneakers of each arrivee squeak on the linoleum floor, and those already seated squirm and murmur to each other awkwardly.
Classic narrative lede, only about 20 times more interesting than the typical “subject does x.” There’s mystery, there’s tension. I am immediately intrigued!
At the head of the main table sits their host: slim, bearded, 35 years old, dressed in a dark dress shirt and slacks, and in no hurry to interrupt whatever ripples of uncertainty are traveling up and down the table. A helper moves in and out of an adjacent kitchen, quietly delivering Dixie Ultra paper plates of food. On them sits a southern meat-and-three by way of Africa: a version of efo riro, made with cooked-down collard greens; a pottage of mashed plantains; and finally, a Nigerian take on Nashville's most famous culinary export—hot chicken. The name of this event is Hot Chicken Shit. The aforementioned “twist” is that while dinner is free for the black residents of the neighborhood, the prices for white visitors are listed on a pledge form at their seats: $100 for one piece of chicken; $1,000 for four pieces. For a whole bird, with sides, you must donate the deed to a property in North Nashville.
Damn, what a great fucking twist on two levels: the actual twist itself, and how it answers the heightened mystery that Martin sets up in the previous graf. Bold and a little shocking, just like the image of Wey that’s sculpted throughout the rest of the profile. This is a lede that makes you want to keep reading.
“What's Next For New Yorker Reporter Jane Mayer?” by Molly Langmuir, Elle
It’s a few weeks after Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court, and Jane Mayer, one of the most prominent investigative reporters in the country, has just finished a stunning professional run. She and her New Yorker colleague Ronan Farrow broke the Christine Blasey Ford accusations, then followed that with the account of Deborah Ramirez, who said Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at Yale. These pieces helped trigger the political spectacle—a “partisan inferno,” as Farrow puts it—that led to Ford and Kavanaugh’s televised testimony, which captivated the country. Yet Mayer, sitting across from me at lunch, is focused only on the scoop she missed. I ask if the Kavanaugh debacle has been difficult to process. “It took me a while,” she says. “I got sick. And I’m not done yet, that’s the other thing.” Working through it? I ask. “No,” she says, and her voice becomes steelier. There had been another allegation, she explains, similar to Ramirez’s, but she hadn’t managed to get it on the record. “I’m not done reporting yet.”
Sorry, let me zoom in there:
A little more:
There we go.
I’ll be honest, I’m not a huge fan of this profile, in spite of all the praise that has been heaped upon it. The subject is obviously fascinating, but the writing doesn’t quite do her justice, imho. “It’s” and the rest of the lede are pretty emblematic of the issues that weigh down the story as a whole:
an over-reliance on quotes that disrupt the flow and leave little room for the narrative to breathe
the writer’s oddly prominent inclusion of herself, in a way that neither adds depth or tension through interplay with the subject (see: Brett Martin in GQ), nor further embellishes the story through a unique voice (see: Gabriella Paiella in Vulture; also Caity Weaver in everything)
a general tendency to fall back on conventions (“It’s”) and, occasionally, cliches (“her voice becomes steelier”—what does that even mean? “Steely” is a word that sounds good in prose, but it doesn’t actually convey anything. I guarantee no one knows what it physically sounds like for a person’s voice to be “steely” in real life)
Sorry to be that buzzkill! There’s some decent reporting in this piece, but idk the edit could have been more rigorous to nudge it firmly into “magazine profile” category, rather than this strange profile-interview-etc. hybrid. Just a thought!!
read
Was this a great week for reading, or what?
Seth Stevenson, a Slate coworker with whom I’ve had approximately zero interaction, reported a tremendous cover story about a trial in which he served as a juror in in 1998—and what has happened in the two decades since. This story is a shattering indictment of our criminal justice system and the blindly turning “cogs” that keep it running. [Slate]
I had worried the new GQ would eschew the bold, long-form narrative features that former editor-in-chief Jim Nelson had such an eye for. This recent story about “the world’s greatest art thief” allayed those fears. [GQ]
There are certain tropes to an Eater Life in Chains essay: nostalgia, immigrant families, assimilation via American fast food (mine kind of did the inverse, but the elements are all there). This newest one about a Vietnamese family’s McDonald’s tradition in LA checks all those boxes, and it’s lovely. Classic Life in Chains. [Eater]
Clio Chang’s review of Wesley Yang’s book The Souls of Yellow Folk is so exacting and smart. (Looks like someone wasn’t a fan, though.) [Jezebel]
Alison Willmore wishes more TV shows ran for just one season. Same. [BuzzFeed Reader]
Helen Rosner profiled Niki Nakayama, a Japanese-American chef who opened what was then probably the only woman-run kaiseki restaurant anywhere. There are some really nice descriptions in here. [The New Yorker]
It takes 10 minutes to file the necessary paperwork to run for president, one writer discovered by signing up his coworker as a write-in candidate. Good, funny blog, truly an exemplar of the form. [The Outline]
Another good blog: “Everyone hates my big stupid horse in Red Dead Online.” [Polygon]
I forgot to recommend this last week: a stellar package on Chinese food in NYC. [Eater NY]
And for this week: the gorgeous Eater Guide to Taipei. I went to Taipei for the first time last spring, and guess what! I fucking loved it!! Still plotting my return. [Eater]
navel-gazed
Thinking about this a lot:
More on this from the International Policy Digest:
Left-wing politics is often dominated by the idea that people have a right to free things from large institutions: a right to free healthcare, a right to free movement of people, and a right to free journalism. Right-wing politics is often dominated by the idea that people do not have a right to things from large institutions: healthcare, restrictions on immigration, and paywalls.
The end result is that the vast majority of people are either reading high-quality center-left or low-quality hard-left news outlets (because they are free) or low-quality hard-right news outlets (because those too are free). And that isn’t just speculation; the data backs it up. The high-quality center-right outlets are there — they exist and they produce good content — but they aren’t free.
P.S. In other media insider news, looks like I have a new boss’s boss’s boss. How will this impact me? lol positively, I hope!!!
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jgz (@jennygzhang)