A short example of really excellent writing…

So I have friends on all points on the political spectrum.  For a moment, I’m going to ask you to not grouse about the topic, the protagonist, the political or financial implications, or the class hierarchy issues.  Just focus on the writing below, an excerpt from this month’s Atlantic magazine’s lead article “Inside Man” by Joshua Green about Timothy Geithner, Sec’y of the Treasury:

“I’d arranged on short notice to join him in New York because I’d assumed, in a spectacular misjudgment, that an audience of financiers and the validation of Dow 10,000 would cast him in a different, more triumphant light.  The event took place in a moodily lit subterranean auditorium that pulsed with the kind of understated techno music that one associates with designer vodkas and business-class air travel.”

That description creates such a vivid picture…and I’ve never had a designer vodka and the best I’ve been able to do business-travel-wise is pay the extra 30 bucks for the 6 inches of leg room upgrade from coach  Ok so once I flew first class for personal travel and it was awesome.  Nevertheless, I love descriptions like this.  This makes a magazine worth reading, no matter on which side you come down of the issue presented.

That’s all for today, back to reading…on my Kindle…

A turn of a word…

Sometimes Peggy Noonan can draw a picture that is so pillowy and soft about the Reagan years I feel like I’m moving lightly amongst the clouds when I am reading it.  I don’t remember the time with those same ethereal feelings, but somehow her words float by like billowing cumulus clouds with wispy cirrus tails…

On the other hand, she can be brutal with that same skill.  I really enjoy writing that has irony and a wry descriptions of things.  A good simile or metaphor just captures the essence of the problem being studied.  Here’s an example of that in a recent editorial she wrote about the VP debate:

“We saw this week, too, a turn in the McCain campaign’s response to criticisms of Mrs. Palin. I find obnoxious the political game in which if you expressed doubts about the vice presidential nominee, or criticized her, you were treated as if you were knocking the real America—small towns, sound values. “It’s time that normal Joe Six-Pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency,” Mrs. Palin told talk-show host Hugh Hewitt. This left me trying to imagine Abe Lincoln saying he represents “backwoods types,” or FDR announcing that the fading New York aristocracy deserves another moment in the sun.“

Forget which side you are on.  It’s the writing and placement of the words and ideas.  I’ve been laughing for 10 minutes now.  I wish I could write like this.  Placing “Six-Pack”, “Backwoods types” and “Fading Aristocracy” in one distilled concept…beautiful…