I really enjoyed reading the New Yorker profile just before I go to do my interview because it is helping me to get into the right mindset of really pursuing my subject's story. I found the honesty and candidness of the author really reassuring, and it was amusing how she compared profiling someone to becoming intensely interested or even obsessed with them. I don't think I'm on this level yet with my interviewee, but I'm trying to get there before my interview: watching youtube videos of him, reading snippets of his books, and articles about him. Not only do I think this is important for me as a writer, and someone who is going to be genuinely interested in pursuing his story, but I think he will expect it of me as well. It will be understood that I know at least a bit about meat and his accomplishments from his career. As a person interested in his life, why wouldn't I?
I found the Sinatra piece to be long and disorienting at time with so many characters coming into and leaving the scene. One thing that really struck me though that I want to try to channel in my own next piece is the endless forms of characterization the author uses to illustrate the essence, behaviors, tendencies, and life events of Frank. He does a fair amount of "telling" and describing, but these paragraphs and sentences take on a role of reliability and pace-setting within the piece while other strategies of characterization add dynamic details and subplots. The descriptions of Frank's women, friends, agents (Dexter was my favorite paragraph), fans, and employees and their relation to him all reveal little details about him as a subject of the piece. The description of him as "Il Padrone" held overarching characterization that was classified in this way through different sub-scenes. As scenes unfold, more character comes through showing his emotions, behavior, and dialogue. Later on we hear the story of his birth and childhood, indirect characterization about his development and family life. Even through his somewhat doppleganger Delgado we get additional descriptions and ideas about him. My favorite method of characterization was through the series of quotes of people who know and are related to him, giving us ideas about Sinatra himself, but also about his relationships and the impressions others have of him. All of these things working together made for an incredibly descriptive piece, not just in predictable ways but in creative ones, and gave me many ideas for my own piece.
I had some apprehensions after reading Telling True Stories as well, as much of the advice and feedback from the passages were based off of longevity and development of relationship with a subject, which I feel is unrealistic for our assignment right now (at least with my subject). I found myself trying to reconcile our short time frame for the assignment. The advice I felt most helpful, though, included witnessing action or being able to look back on it with the subject, unearth it, and unpack it, allowing the ending to be the beginning in some way, and having guided conversations versus interviews. I do feel a sense of formality with my subject because he is very busy and well known, but I hope I am able to find a tone and create a setting of guided conversation. I think it would have been helpful to read these passages for 3rd or 4th week so we could have kept this information in mind when choosing an interview subject. How much of these circumstances should we expect to be realized in our short 10 week quarter, and how many should we just tuck away for our future narrative endeavors?
I think that you make a good point about the Sinatra profile when you talk about it being disorienting with all the characters coming and going throughout the story. I think that it's important that including different characters in a profile can be a way to add depth and to show interactions with the person being profiled. However, navigating that balance of when to include a character, how to include that person and for what period of time is something that is very difficult. I think it's something that will just come with practice.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, I totally agree with your last point. In such a short period of time, how do we know what to include or exclude? Again, I guess time will dictate.
I had a similar reaction after reading "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold." I came out of it with a lot of ideas for my own profile. It motivated me to talk not only to my subject, but to the people who know her and work with her, because Talese was able to give the reader a really well-rounded portrait of Sinatra. It's important to get other peoples' impressions of our subjects, like you said. Talese's writing is phenomenal as well. The way he describes places and people is interesting and engaging. He was obviously playing close attention to dialogue, mannerisms and props.
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