GENE WEINGARTEN IS THE O. HENRY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM Simply the best storyteller around, Weingarten describes the world as you think it is before revealing how it actually is—in narratives that are by turns hilarious, heartwarming, and provocative, but always memorable. Millions of people know the title piece about violinist Joshua Bell, which originally began as a stunt: What would happen if you put a world-class musician outside a Washington, D.C., subway station to play for spare change? Would anyone even notice? The answer was no. Weingarten’s story went viral, becoming a widely referenced lesson about life lived too quickly. Other classic stories—the one about “The Great Zucchini,” a wildly popular but personally flawed children’s entertainer; the search for the official “Armpit of America”; a profile of the typical American nonvoter—all of them reveal as much about their readers as they do their subjects.
Reviews with the most likes.
Gene works within the confines of a terse newspaper style pushing against the constraints of limited lines of copy. There's not much room for meandering prose and building a scene. It's just the facts ma'am. He also relies on the aside and necessary tangents that loop around the main narrative to keep up the punishing pace of information. It's just I kept getting jarred out of the flow.
He's a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist (both are included in this collection) so don't listen to my armchair criticisms. I love the ideas behind most of his stories too, whether it's a write up on Doonesbury creator Garry Trudeau, having dinner with a girl he had a crush on in elementary school or following around a wildly successful but ultimately damaged children's entertainer - the stories have got legs. I just wasn't that into them.
