Oh, I'm so glad you posted that. The only notable thing about the piece.
And for those of us griping about Deborah Solomon's Q&A ethics a few months back, I just now saw this quasi-explanatory non-apology from the Public Editor.
Oh, c'mon. It's Modern Love. I don't take People as gospel either.
Who would write a ML column if you knew that NYT fact-checkers were going to call all your exes? (shudder)
What about journalism has led you to believe that quotes are so sacred?
What about journalism has led you to believe that quotes are so sacred?
Are you serious? Very long experience has taught me that quotations are often not at all sacred. However, when you listen to (some) journalists and (many) news organizations, you might be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Why else would they make a deal out of the fact that Solomon uses a tape recorder?
Why else would they make a deal out of the fact that Solomon uses a tape recorder?
But the pretense is part of the game. Don't ruin it for everyone!
Is ML journalism?
Creative non-fiction, I always thought. But it's the mark of a lazy writer to put all the exposition in implausible quotations, anyway.
Also, is it "authors' memory"? I never know what to do with plurals in that situation. (w-lfs-n!)
If each article only has a single author it should be "author's memory".
But why would you trust me?
Sifu, indeed, cannot be trusted in this matter. The Times sentence discusses multiple essays that have multiple authors. Therefore "authors' " is correct.
However, the use of the word "memory" implies a singular author; otherwise it would be "authors' memories."
I was being facetious. I'll let you in on an industry secret. Those recorders? They don't even have tape in them.
No tapes?! They're not even recorders, just Crackerjack boxes painted black.
I thought it was pretty common for memoirs to use reconstructed dialogue, a genre to which I assumed Modern Love columns belong.
Do people not automatically read this sort of dialogue skeptically?
They're not real crackerjack boxes, either. They're thumbtack boxes the same shape as a crackerjack box.
What a ripoff this column was. It's called "Modern Love", not "Modern Home Repair".
I guess after you've been married a decade all the passion that once went into romance is now channeled into redoing your kitchen.
Do people not automatically read this sort of dialogue skeptically?
I think it depends on the person, and how accustomed they are to the conventions of the genre.
That said, I'd bet a nickel that this particular editors' note was necessary because so many of the ML authors' subjects (exes, parents, employers, etc.) are thinly disguised and easy to Google-track, and the social circle they come from is pretty small.
It's not like your high school ex quotes something dumb you said in a fight and eight people in her college class read it. It's more like your neighbor does it and publishes it in the co-op newsletter.
I thought it was pretty common for memoirs to use reconstructed dialogue
Unless you're James Frey, in which case you use a reconstructed life.
I'm probably exaggerating my own skepticism anyway: I tend to figure the specific words are reconstructed from memory - who takes notes on everyday conversations? - while generally figuring that they did talk about the things the dialogue is about. But lots of memoirs can be more unreliable than that.
If you don't even bother with the recorder, you're an editor.
This is the funniest piece in the Times style section this week. Definitely deserves its own post:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/fashion/28wurtzel.html?_r=1&ref=fashion&oref=slogin
"Stories in the Times are reconstructed from thinktank press releases, conversations with PR flacks, really good lines from old issues of Life, bits of gossip heard at three martini lunches with other journalists and chunks of dried snot. Do not take internally. Large doses are toxic. Use only as directed."
max
['Just like Pravda but 100% better!']
Deborah Solomon sure is dreadful.
Actually, I propose that this be the basis for our Modern Love discussion this week:
But nobody ever takes my suggestions.
And so many layers of nuts. You can't even quote from it, it would be a loss to single out just one nut from the box.
26 is indeed batshit. First I thought the high point was the abusive grandad. Then I was thinking the "shadow of the pulitzer" was hard to beat. But by the time I got to
Then, in March, she nearly died from an intestinal blockage in Argentina while on a trip with Ted. The trauma of that led her further to profoundly question her own identity
I didn't know what the hell to believe anymore.
Blockquotes, Gonerill! House style!
Anyway, I felt the climax was:
Ted is permanently and avowedly non-monogamous. But though he has several girlfriends, it is a very small number, and he does not take them up lightly
I guess he learned his lesson with Jane Fonda.
I remember reading that when it was first posted, in July.
Not to sound callous, but I no longer wanted to hear about court hearings or custody. All I wanted to hear was his truck pulling into our driveway. I wanted to hear his hammering and stapling as he built the stairs to the attic. I even wanted to hear the branch-snapping crash of construction waste plummeting from the attic onto my rhododendron.
Wait, hang on, I had some sympathy around here somewhere… [clangs around in back room] No. Wait. Never mind. Fresh out.
How come Metropolitan Diaries gets no love here? It is way funnier than Modern Love. And shorter and less dreadful.
23 proves once again the prescience of a mid-90's Spy magazine article on "Failing Up", in which Liz Wurtzel was held out as the paradigmatic example of a person whose punishment for failing at a series of prestigious jobs is to be awarded ever more prestigious jobs.
She was the first person I ever knew with a pierced nose (sheltered upbringing, I had), and I have to say I found it a little sexy despite myself.
We prize long dreadful things around here, Voet. You still have not learned our ways. Almost all of us read (and reread) Richardson's Clarissa in the unabridged version.
From the ombuds column linked in 1:
The Times's Manual of Style and Usage says that readers have a right to assume that every word in quotation marks is what was actually said.
So.
The protocol is a simple one: "So I was like '....' and she was like '...', and then I said like '....'"
Not just valleyspeak or stoner talk. An important discursive clue!
Ms. Wurtzel denied that these reversals of literary fortune had anything to do with her decision to apply to law school. The events of 9/11, she said, left her paralyzed with fear and largely unable to write.
"I really had the feeling that the whole world had gone crazy," she said. "I felt very powerless. If I'd been a lawyer, I would have known what to do."
Um, what?
Other bits of awesomeness:
a framed copy of Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" hangs in the bathroom.
and one bookshelf is given over largely to various editions of Ms. Wurtzel's works.
Early on, she didn't bother handing in a required assignment in her civil procedure class. "I thought, why should I do this?" she said. "I really had some kind of attitude problem."
Fight the power, Elizabeth! Freak out those squares!
The Economist online archives unfortunately do not go back far enough to find it, but there was an outrageously good line in their review of Prozac Nation. Referring to the part where the narrator confesses that she gave blowjobs so compulsively and indiscriminately around campus that her lips became chapped, the reviewer writes something along the lines of "A generation of male Harvard students is kicking themselves for missing the opportunity."
42: And it turns out the chapping was because of the cold dry winter, not all the cocksucking, which wasn't all that profligate as these things go. Ask Labs.
19: In this particular case, I'm guessing it has more to do with the fact that the author is actually suing at least one of the contractors in the article.
I really had the feeling that the whole world had gone crazy," she said. "I felt very powerless. If I'd been a lawyer, I would have known what to do."
Post on Unfogged!
Just kidding! Actually, you should sue somebody.
We prize long dreadful things around here
That's what she said!
35: I have mentioned before that I published in Metro Diary. I got a lovely mug, my favorite until it broke. I have thought about trying to get something else in there so I can get another mug. Maybe I'll try to get a whole set. They're beautiful, and probably expensive.