'Creative bumbling'

My first experience reading John McPhee was last month, when I devoured "The Curve of Binding Energy" and wondered what took me so long to discover him, so I was delighted to see his byline in the April 7 New Yorker on an essay titled "Elicitation." It's about reporting, note-taking, writing, getting it wrong and getting it right. Here are some choice lines that I have smuggled through the subscription wall:

Writing is selection. When you are making notes, you are forever selecting. I left out more than I put down. [...]

Who is going to care if you seem dumber than a cardboard box? Reporters call that creative bumbling.

On how much he prepares for an interview:

Candidly, not much. At a minimum, though, I think you should do enough preparation to be polite. [...]

I have no technique for asking questions. I just stay there and fade away as I watch people do what they do. [...]

Before, during and after an interview, or a series of interviews, do as much reading as the situation impels you to do. In the course of writing, you really find out what you don't know, and you read in an attempt to get it right. Nonetheless, you get it wrong, especially if you are an innumerate English major and you are writing about science.

I have not yet figured out why "The Curve of Binding Energy" works so well, or why its writing feels so fresh and bracing, but I suppose it's just a function of a man of letters creatively bumbling into a world of numbers, and being read by another English major.

'I wish you all the best, son. You'll need it.'

Every couple months I have an e-mail exchange with a "reader" like the one below.  Truly. Nearly verbatim. Every couple months. I'm always a villainous communist who is paid to fellate the president, and the country is always on the brink of unimaginable cataclysm. It's stunning how the talking points and "rhetoric" are so consistent from e-mail to e-mail. My reaction to them is pity. I just want to hug these people -- not because they are largely misinformed, or because I may disagree with some of their arguments, but because they are stricken with a blind rage that saps them of any civility. It's sad.

This exchange is actually briefer than most. My text is in bold. I have not cleaned up any of the reader's typing.

Sebelius is too damn ugly to be a demon.

What are you, 6 years old?

What are you,an asshole?

Of course. All journalists are assholes. 

Journalist? HaHa--It doesn't  take much to qualify as a "journalist" today. Set up a website, type a few inane words and "VOILA !--I'm a journalist". Of course it always helps to be a liberal clown to qualify as a real journalist today. I remember when Edmund Burke's "4th estate" ( have someone read you the meaning of the term) meant a free press that stood between the people and the government. Now it's just another arm of the democrat party. Picking an ass as their symbol was appropiate, I'll give them that.

Right. That’s why we broke all that NSA news. Because we’re just another arm of the “democrat party.”

I wish you peace of mind, Mr. Smith.

Haha-When did the Washington Compost become The Guardian and when did you become Snowden?

Well,Dan, I appreciate your wish for me but it's difficult to have peace of mind when your country is being torn apart. It doesn't matter so much for me. I'm a 72-year-old totally disabled veteran with God only knows how much time left. It does matter to me about the men who were with me who died fighting communism and now I know it was all for nothing. I do worry about my son and his family. I worry about you,believe it or not. You're what? In your 30's? But yet you cling to this false hope of big government taking care of you. Do you "journalists" no longer take World History in school? Do you really not care if you're free or not?

Actually,Obama has been successful beyond his wildest dreams. He has torn this country apart which was his goal from the beginning. Do you really think he gives a damn about his approval ratings? He's got three years left and he knows he's an untouchable because he's black and no one in congress has the cajones to draw up impeachment papers. He's already past obamacare and onto throwing our borders wide open for every degenerate in Mexico to "come on up". I remember when Castro opened up his prisons and asylums and sent them all here and Nieto is getting ready to do the same thing.

 Obama also has the likes of McCain,Graham,McConnell and Boehner kissing his butt at every turn. I hate to see what's coming next. I'm sick of seeing these do-nothing republicans on these news shows, "He Lied! He lied about "fast and furrious"! He lied about Benghazi! He lied about the NSA and the IRS ! He lied about obamacare"! (Or ,as you "journalists" put it, "he misspoke"). I wish they would just shut up and keep kissing his butt. You should be, not asking, but demanding answers as a journalist. But that won't happen because he's your lord and saviour. I wish you all the best,son. You'll need it.

I did not vote for Mr. Obama. And I think it's useless to engage in dialogue with someone who makes such assumptions, who looks at the world only as black and white, right and left. The world -- and the country -- is a more complex and grander place.

And it's also useless for someone like me to be trying to debate an idiot. It's sorta like me going against a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest. So long,crackerjack

Aye, there's the nub

In this joint interview with Adrian Levy about their new book "The Siege: 68 Hours inside the Taj Hotel," journalist Cathy Scott-Clark speaks to my soul: 

Nothing can be known right away. I watch people sprinting, cable news style, to the story and rolling all over it. People take breathless stabs at getting to the facts or are clamped down on by the authorities, or are lazy or corrupt and headed off before getting anywhere. I have always liked to wait, even now in the age of Twitter. And walk with a story, a real event, letting it settle so that finally something of the essence of it, something visceral, can be revealed. This can cost you jobs and enrage commissioners. It runs against the times in which we live now, where everything is hyphenated, expedited and précised. But then when you have a story to tell, the art of it is to strip it to the nub and make it march behind the characters.

Notice also the exchange at the end of the Q&A.

Outlook India: What’s coming next? 

Adrian: Only the NSA knows.

Cathy: We’ve stopped using email and cell phones.