Jewel Kilcher in Portland --- Tess Gerritson
Ever have to read several pages of a novel before you got into it? Some writing grabs you no matter where you start reading and you can’t get away.
I started to read in the middle of one of Tess Gerritson’s books one day and I couldn’t put it down. And, by the way, we just came back from Holland and the only thing I wanted to buy the entire time I was in Europe was a Tess Gerritson book in Dutch. I found it at a lawn sale, I offered the woman one euro, she wanted one fifty so I didn’t get it.
But I’m talking here about writing and how some writing grabs you. And then there are writers of thick books who feel they can string the reader along for several pages without throwing out a hook that will draw the reader in.
But you cannot do that with newspaper columns or short magazine articles and that is the topic of this rant.
To be fair, my critics have accused me of telling stories that have no endings, which can just as easily be attributed to a cultural lacunae or intellectual lassitude on their part.
Anyway, perhaps because of my occasional contributions, Colin Sargent very kindly sends me his Portland magazine. And in skimming through the articles I was not surprised to read that a celebrity I’d never heard of named Jewel Kilcher was coming to Portland.
But --- even in the fourth paragraph where we learn that she has 500 songs, we still wouldn’t bet our lives that it is she who will be singing them and that it is she who will be playing the guitar.
If Jewel Kilcher is a singer who plays the guitar , why doesn’t the article start off by saying, “Jewel Kilcher, a guitar picking singer, is coming to town.”
I started to read in the middle of one of Tess Gerritson’s books one day and I couldn’t put it down. And, by the way, we just came back from Holland and the only thing I wanted to buy the entire time I was in Europe was a Tess Gerritson book in Dutch. I found it at a lawn sale, I offered the woman one euro, she wanted one fifty so I didn’t get it.
But I’m talking here about writing and how some writing grabs you. And then there are writers of thick books who feel they can string the reader along for several pages without throwing out a hook that will draw the reader in.
But you cannot do that with newspaper columns or short magazine articles and that is the topic of this rant.
To be fair, my critics have accused me of telling stories that have no endings, which can just as easily be attributed to a cultural lacunae or intellectual lassitude on their part.
Anyway, perhaps because of my occasional contributions, Colin Sargent very kindly sends me his Portland magazine. And in skimming through the articles I was not surprised to read that a celebrity I’d never heard of named Jewel Kilcher was coming to Portland.
But --- even in the fourth paragraph where we learn that she has 500 songs, we still wouldn’t bet our lives that it is she who will be singing them and that it is she who will be playing the guitar.
If Jewel Kilcher is a singer who plays the guitar , why doesn’t the article start off by saying, “Jewel Kilcher, a guitar picking singer, is coming to town.”
posted by The humble Farmer at 9:33 AM
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