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Matters of the spirit were not among Studs Terkel’s higher priorities as a left-wing agnostic writer. Writing on Friday afternoon, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Dave Hoekstra noted that Terkel died in the same week that gospel singer Mahalia Jackson was born, and described their “spiritual connection”:
Sometimes a kind woman does the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. Jessica Myers of The Dallas Morning News reports:
The New Republic and The Washington Post have paid tribute recently to novelist Marilynne Robinson. Both articles — a 4,100-word essay-review in TNR by Ruth Franklin, a senior editor, and a 2,400-word profile by Post reporter Bob Thompson — are informative and well-written. In one major respect, Thompson understands Robinson with greater precision.
Time for a confession: I am not so bothered, as a matter of journalism, by Jon Meacham’s two recent cover essays for Newsweek. Terry critiqued Meacham’s previous essay, and I’ll reflect more on this week’s essay, “It’s Not Easy Bein’ Blue.”
Once he was in the street the battle was won. I showed him a newsboy shouting the midday paper, and a No. 73 bus going past, and before he reached the bottom of the steps I had got into him an unalterable conviction that, whatever odd ideas might come into a man’s head when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy dose of “real life” (by which he meant the bus and the newsboy) was enough to show him that all “that sort of thing” just couldn’t be true.– Letter 1, The Screwtape Letters
James Fallows is a maddeningly prolific writer who makes it look easy to grind out thousands of words about China’s economic development, or alternatives in air travel or the finer points of software.
In the Oct. 20 edition of Newsweek, longtime film critic David Ansen criticizes director Oliver Stone for not showing greater depth in his depiction of George W. Bush. Fair enough, until one stumbles across this double-barrel shotgun blast of boorish stereotyping:
Songwriter Graham Kendrick has managed to land in the book 50 People Who Buggered-Up Britain by Quentin Letts, a parliamentary sketch writer for the Daily Mail.
Newsweek‘s Lisa Miller has written a mostly thoughtful and revealing profile of Kirbyjon Caldwell this week. The story describes how Caldwell, pastor of Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston, introduced George W. Bush at the Republican National Convention in 2000, voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004 and has now changed his political loyalties.
