Abstract
In the introduction to this eclectic collection of essays spanning an amazing seven decades from her days as a New Yorker journalist, Lillian Ross notes it felt natural for her, as someone who grew up going to the movies several days a week, to write “stories entirely in little scenes” and “like a movie—showing everything from the outside, with lots of talking.” Now 90-something, Ross adds that a personal, core tenet is to “write only what can be observed, what I see and hear and never what the subject might be ‘thinking.’”
It is wonderful advice, and all journalism students today who intent on either magazine writing or long-form, non-fiction storytelling would do well to read this book closely to absorb Ross’s style and techniques. If the maxim is true that to be a good writer one must first read good writing, then this book is mandated reading.
Indeed, the assembled essays allow readers to vividly see and precisely hear people—some famous, some not—often moving and talking in unguarded moments. Ross’s subjects reveal much about themselves, not only by their actions and movements, but by what they say and how they say it. In brief, it is the dynamic of image and sound—just like in the movies she loved to watch as a child—that Ross exploits to the reader’s benefit.
Consider this splendid little vignette from her 1995 essay “The Shit-Kickers of Madison Avenue.” Details and dialogue do the work, as Manhattanite sophomores huddle on a sidewalk 15 min before morning classes start at their tony, private (possibly Dalton) school: One girl in a cluster of five takes out a pack of Marlboro Lights—the brand favored at the moment—and each member of the cluster participates in lighting the cigarette—striking the match, guarding the flame, offering a propane lighter. They share. The lighted cigarette is passed from mouth to mouth. They all inhale, the girls twisting their mouths like thorough pros, exhaling the smoke from a tiny corner opening on one side of the lips. One angelic-looking blond beauty with raw, red nostrils takes a puff, inhales deeply, and says wearily, “I’ve like got the fucking flu or something.” “Fuck the you know fucking germs,” another says smoothly, reassuringly, a positive reinforcer.
Those three paragraphs parlay juxtaposition (the angelic rich beauty who swears like a sailor) with irony (sharing a cigarette “from mouth to mouth” and then blaming the “fucking germs”)—two vital techniques seasoned journalists use to convey points that the rituals of objectivity forbid them from making directly. The quotes capture teen affection for placeholder words “like” and “you know.” We see rich girls talking tough, trying to be cool. The combination of coarseness and rawness—of smoke, flu, red nostrils, and expletives—strips away the elite prep-school veneer and renders the girls, via their own words and actions, the same as any other 10th graders anywhere in America, smoking and cursing. The only difference, of course, is that their high school parking lot is a sidewalk on the Upper East Side.
The word authentic is so overused and abused today in marketing and branding that it often is meaningless. But Ross’s rich writing reveals people at, well, their most authentic selves.
Consider Ernest Hemingway, brought to life in 1950 during a visit to New York City in one of Ross’s most well-known (and controversial, for how it portrays him) essays, “How Do You Like It Now, Gentlemen?” Hemingway seems addled at age 50 by drinking, but Ross does not tell us that. She shows it. On flying into Idlewild (now J.F.K.), Hemingway cannot even make it out of the airport without stopping at its cocktail lounge for double bourbons. “Let’s not crowd honey. Order of the day is to have a drink first,” he tells his fourth wife, Mary. Later, Ross captures Hemingway at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as “he paused, pulled a silver flask from one of his coat pockets, unscrewed its top, and took a long drink.”
The book works at multiple levels for different audiences. Celebrity-obsessed readers can learn details—and not the kind one finds today in the vapid pages of Us Weekly or People—about the lives Robin Williams, Clint Eastwood, Al Pacino, Ernest Hemingway, Judi Dench, and John McEnroe, to name a few.
Voyeurs, in turn, gain glimpses at lives imagined and rarely seen, as in the 1954 essay “Terrific.” It provides a fabulous behind-the-scenes look at the year-long preparations by the wealthy ladies of the Junior League of New York City for the annual Mardi Gras fundraiser. They fret about the dinner and decorations, as well as the desires of corporate sponsors. The seriousness, silliness, and innocence of it all are well captured. To wit, Mrs. Adams said that Mrs. Harry I. Stimson, the committeewoman in charge of costumes, had done a terrific job, and that the costume she herself had admired the most was the one worn by Mrs. Wickliffe W. Crider, who had appeared as a chicken sandwich, to represent Pepperidge Farm Bread. Mrs. Crider had worn two giant slices of bread and had been carried in by four gentlemen dressed to look like toothpicks.
It is hard not to chuckle.
Most importantly, Reporting Always serves as a model-by-example for today’s journalism students, assuming they have the attention span to closely read some of the longer essays. If they do—and if they absorb Ross’s storytelling techniques—then surely they can learn to write well and to listen for telling quotes when reporting.