You Got the Title Wrong

Begin at the beginning: The full title of this book is The Beholder’s Eye: A collection of America’s Finest Personal Journalism. In the preface, subtitled “When Writing About Yourself Is Still Journalism,” editor Walt Harrington explains how he came upon personal journalism and realized how effective it could be as a sub-genre. True personal stories, he said, evoke strong emotional responses from readers in a way traditional reporting doesn’t seem to do. In personal journalism, the story still has to be researched, facts must be stated and details must be examined, but the reporter has the ability to do something in this form that he cannot do in traditional journalism. The reporter in this type of writing is allowed to have a face. The writer’s personality here openly shapes the story, helping the reader form responses to what would otherwise be disembodied facts, (cold, hard facts as reporters and detectives say in movies).

Of the essays in this collection, several accomplish exactly what Harrington describes when he says:

They were stories with action taking place around the journalists, action that created insight into a subject or place at the same time it created self-discovery in the journalists themselves and, by extension, in their readers. In short, the stories combined the personal essay and deep reporting into a distinct form.

Initially, I do have some complaints. Of twelve pieces, ten are by men, and two are by women. Of the ten by men, most are on somewhat typical “manly” topics: dogfights, war, boxing, Marlon Brando, politics. And another thing: Why isn’t Joan Didion in this collection?

Something in this collection of exceptional writing by distinguished writers doesn’t sit well with me. Something isn’t right. A lack of Joan Didion is one problem – you can’t collect America’s best personal journalism without including her – but there’s something else. There’s an ulterior motive to this book that the title tries to hide. It might be the machismo of the essays. These stories are by men, for men, and about men and their near obsession with other men, with brotherhood and competition, with what makes one man stronger, smarter or better than the rest. I definitely had a problem with the reporterly attitude that personal essays without the word “journalism” tacked on are somehow less valuable, “thumb-suckers” as Pete Early suspected when he was asked to write about his sister’s death.

Oddly enough, I am as turned off by manly ruminations on the greatness of Marlon Brando as Pete Early would be by a “thumb-sucker” piece. This is the first book I’ve reviewed this semester that wasn’t by a female author, and I find a striking difference between the books I’ve read by women and the type of writing these men are doing. Men (or at least these men) just never seem to get over the idea of manliness, which raises an interesting question for me: While women are rejecting the stereotypes of everything a woman supposedly is, men are still bound, however subtly, to the idea that they are logical, serious, tough and powerful. Maybe that’s why this book of personal journalism is dominated by male authors – because these men are pondering, in a dignified masculine way, the problems of gender identity. They grapple with the stereotypically male issues of war, brute force, violence, and power as well as the more multi-faceted issues like image: Boys grow up taking their examples from Marlon Brando and Muhammad Ali, and as adults, Mike Sager (“Last Tango in Tahiti”) and Davis Miller (“My Dinner With Ali”) have an opportunity to look more closely at their heroes.

In “My Dinner With Ali,” Miller describes how Ali helped him up the steps into his Winnebago: “His grip was not a grip at all – his touch was gentle, almost feminine.” First, we are disappointed to see how old and fragile Ali appears to be, and how feminine. But as the two spend time together, Ali becomes more of a grandfatherly character, performing charming grandfatherly magic tricks and wrapping his arm around his younger fan’s shoulders. And though Miller is an adult, he seems to feel like a child as he receives the attention and acceptance every child wants from his heroes. “I felt my stories were finally complete, now that he’d confirmed their existence,” he writes. But Miller gains something deeper from his hero on this visit than any fan can get from a backstage visit with any superstar when Ali says of his aging body, “I know why this has happened. God is showing me, and showing you that I’m just a man, just like everybody else.”

Immediately following Miller’s essay of a true champ is J.R. Moehringer’s “Resurrecting the Champ,” and the champ in this essay has the opposite of Ali’s fate. This man, Champ, is poor, homeless, and worse – a fake. Aside from being a beautiful piece of writing, this essay does exactly what Harrington says personal journalism should do, which is give the reader new insight by allowing the writer to share his experience of the story he is reporting. Without Moehringer as a narrator, it’s just the story of a homeless guy who pretends to be someone else, just the story of one very sad sick man. But as Moehringer shows us how he was taken in, how he wanted to believe more for his own comfort even than for the sake of the story, we begin to understand why people like Champ do what they do and why they matter to the rest of us

Moehringer slips an unexpected bit of wisdom into this essay: “Hitting a man is sometimes the most satisfying response to being a man.” And there you have the truth of what this is all about. Men are as frustrated and confused about this gender business as women are.

The Marlon Brando essay, “Last Tango in Tahiti,” is similarly concerned with masculine heroes and mysteries, but to tell the truth, I couldn’t get through it because the whole thing seemed a bit of a rip-off of Gay Talese’s “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” considering that it’s based on the writer’s search for the celebrity rather than an actual interview. However, if you skim the story, you get to the last page and realize that Sager has indeed learned something about himself, learned that sometimes it’s more important to be a good person than to be a great reporter. That’s a good thing to learn, but Moehringer put it much more succinctly when he said, “Maturity means knowing when to solve another man’s mystery and when to respect it.”

If I were to try improving this collection, I would complete what Harrington seems to have done 75% already. I would remove the two essays by women (although they are definitely astonishing essays), and I would change the title to Hitting A Man: The Journalism of Masculinity. After all, I already have a collection of women’s essays, a collection of women’s fiction, a collection of women’s love poetry, and countless books by women on every subject. Why not have a book by a bunch of men who are honestly and meticulously examining the male experience in America? Maybe we need just such a book.

Find the book here: The Beholder’s Eye: A Collection of America’s Finest Personal Journalism