Whole words, whole sight

I was a reporter for many years, and I have to confess I wasn’t the best. I was a far better writer than nearly all of my colleagues, but the goal of journalism is news – and for all my pretty words I wasn’t hard-nosed or streetwise enough to get the best and toughest stories. I was a decent feature writer and a decent depth reporter – but even there, no more than decent. And one of the reasons for this was that I was not as good at interviewing as I should have been.

My faults as an interviewer were not mine alone; many reporters have them. One was talking too much, filling in the silences rather than letting them stretch out to see what the other person would finally say. The other was asking too many leading questions.

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Not book reviews, just quick notes -

Writing in the Dark: Essays on Literature and Politics, by David Grossman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008; 144 pages, $18). Grossman is an Israeli who writes essays, commentary, and occasionally journalism – but mostly novels. I’ve never read his fiction but his essays are wonderful. The title piece in this collection was first delivered in 2007 as an address at the Pen American Center. Like much good writing it seems artless at first, almost shapeless – think of Montaigne or “The Golden Notebook” – and yet at the same time utterly assured. In this and the other essays, Grossman gropes his way through the dark to celebrate the triumph of private language over the debasement of words by governments and interest groups at war with each other. Grossman writes from a country at war, and yet what he has to say is quite pertinent to the U.S. , a country busy conducting not one but two wars out of the immediate sight of its citizens.

Other Colors, by Orhan Pamuk (Vintage paperback reprint, 2008, 464 pages, $15.95). I’m actually reading the 2007 hardcover edition, which I picked up a couple of weeks ago at The Strand over on Broadway and 12th Street in Manhattan. I enjoyed though never finished an earlier memoir by this Nobel prize winner, Istanbul: Memories and the City – hmm, I’ll have to get back to that one at some point. What I like about Pamuk is his slow style, abhorrence of confession for its own sake, masculine sentimentality, and willingness to muse about meaning rather than merely present a string of scenes. A nice change from the relentlessly present-tense memoirs churned out in this country.

It was exciting to get an e-mail the other day from Robert Plotkin, the Boston-based patent attorney whose book manuscript I helped with back a couple of years ago. Robert is an expert in software patents, and his book is about how the patent system must evolve to cope with a new order of software – “genies” capable of replacing human engineers in the design of products ranging from cars to toothbrushes to pretty much anything.

Like most expert authors I’ve worked with, Robert is not only deeply knowledgeable but inherently a good writer. Most of my critiquing had to do with introducing him to the conventions of book-length nonfiction and helping him develop a writing voice that was clear and relaxed, yet authoritative. Needless to say this was a lot of fun.

At any rate, Robert’s email was to let me know the pub date is in April. Edit: Since this post was put up, the pub date has been moved to May 1. If you’ve got any interest in software, patents, or the future of business in a world increasingly dependent on genie-style technology, check out Robert’s blog, Automating Invention: Computers, Invention, and the Law. You can preorder from Amazon, too. Beyond that I hope to do an interview with Robert shortly and post it here – stay tuned.