By Marc Jampole
How soon would you get bored if every other song on the radio station included the exact same guitar riff, usually at the beginning of the tune? Not long I imagine. Nothing to fear: music producers and musicians would figure it out pretty quickly and come up with new riffs and other ways to make their songs interesting. Too bad that contemporary writers of features for newspapers, magazines and Internet media haven’t figure out yet that if you use the same verbal trick in every article, you’re going to end up with something bland and boring.
How soon would you get bored if every other song on the radio station included the exact same guitar riff, usually at the beginning of the tune? Not long I imagine. Nothing to fear: music producers and musicians would figure it out pretty quickly and come up with new riffs and other ways to make their songs interesting. Too bad that contemporary writers of features for newspapers, magazines and Internet media haven’t figure out yet that if you use the same verbal trick in every article, you’re going to end up with something bland and boring.
The trick is using an anecdote from the writer’s own life to
begin or advance the text. Writer after writer persists on injecting an
anecdote about themselves into articles. Are these writers so uncreative that
they can’t figure out another way to start or move a piece along? I’ve said for
years that it’s easy to write about oneself, but the professional writer can also
write about other people and other things.
Far too many prose writers today feel compelled—no, obsessed—with
throwing a verbal selfie into the article.
Here are some recent examples:
·
Writer claims to have been the only “normal person in a health food store or the late 80’s in an article about juicing.
If you think I’m creating a storm from a few raindrops,
consider that of the 20 non-editorials in the New York Times “Week in Review” section of February 9, 2014, nine
included anecdotes from the lives of the writers. One writer remembers his experiences skiing
as a child in article about the scarcity of snow in traditional winter resorts
because of global warming. Another writer remembers an ugly incident from her
childhood in a discussion of the purported lack of multiracial characters on
TV. A writer who’s a nurse mentions her own experience in an article about poor
communication between physicians and their patients. And on and on… Some of these “verbal selfies”
are appropriate to the article, but many just slow things down or serve in
place of what could have been a more apt or illuminating example.
There are many rhetorical devices that writers can employ to
make their case or tell their story. Why do so many stick to this one tired
trope? Some thoughts:
·
The writers are lazy or so overwhelmed with work
that they look into their own often paltry experience instead of taking the
time to do actual research and reporting.
·
College journalism professors have stressed this
one technique of writing a feature article to the detriment of all others, and
mediocre writers are unable to discover other techniques on their own (Hint:
read Dante, Dickenson, Shui
Hu Zhuan and other great writers).
·
The prevalence of injecting the self into
reporting has increased in tandem with the growing selfishness of all of
society and with the growing prevalence of adults continuing to enjoy childhood
pleasures well into adulthood. The narcissism at the heart of the verbal or the
photographic selfie also can explain the politics of selfishness and the desire
of grown people to visit Disney theme parks and read Harry Potter fiction.
At least in all the articles I have referenced so far, the selfie
that each writer throws into his or her piece advances the topic of the
article. But in Joe Queenan’s stunning display
of narcissism in a Wall Street Journal article
titled, “A Word to the Wise,” the selfie constitutes the entire article.
In “A Word of Advice…on Advice,” Queenan proposes that
Americans love to get advice—from books, from newspaper columns, from the
Internet, from experts, from other people—but that the advice often doesn’t
help. Queenan starts with three
anecdotes of advice he did not take, followed by a glib anecdote of the last
time he remembers taking advice: when he was hitchhiking at night and a trucker
told him not to accept hitchhiking rides from truckers at night. Finally we get
to an expert—the only expert he quotes in the article. The expert says that
most people don’t take advice because they feel that the person giving it is
acting superior or being high-handed. No studies, no reference to years of
clinical cases. Just the statement. Of course, Queenan does qualify the expert
for us: he’s psychologist who played guitar in a failed rock-and-roll band 43
years ago—with Queenan! I guess if he’s FOJQ (friend of Joe Queenan), he must
know his stuff.
The remainder of the article drones on in the same vein:
anecdotes from Queenan’s experience, advice Queenan has given others and glib
statements that mostly support the conservative status quo that the Journal loves so much such as “At some level people know that, unless the
good word comes from McKinsey or Warren Buffet, most off-the-cuff advice is
useless.” Queenan presents no
reality on this issue outside of his own admittedly glib imagination. No
studies. No textual analysis. No comparisons. No real world-renown expert. In
fact, there is absolutely no content in the article. It’s a 2,329-word verbal
selfie of Queenan.
After turning the article into his editor, I wonder if Queenan
bought a pie from his local bakery, stuck his thumb through the crust, pulled
out a plum and grinned broadly as he snapped a selfie with his smart
phone.
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