Sarah Miller’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.
So everyone was talking about character
and I thought I really should write a book
about it soon so I called up my agent
and I said “Do you think this is a good idea?”
and he said “David, I like all of your ideas,
plus, you really understand America.”
So I looked out my window at America
and I thought about character
and I thought about some ideas
you know – those things you put in a book
and I sent them under the heading “idea”
to my agent
and of course my agent
thinks he’s so funny because he’s not from America
and he said to me, “David, one idea
with essentially just one character —
you — won’t make a great book.
But I can come up with some ideas
because let’s face it. Making ideas
out of things that aren’t is just what an agent
does when he wants to sell a book
in America.
I mean, I find some character
and I convince people he’s got a great idea.
It’s my job to take one ok idea
and make it seem like it’s actually a couple of really good ideas.
Like if it was fiction, you’d have this character
who is maybe going to turn out to be a secret agent
spying on America
and then it turns out to be a book
Where there is actually is no big surprise, where really nothing happens at all. A book
that sold because on that particular day that idea
seemed like it would grab America
and give them the right set of ideas
that would somehow enable them to be their very own agents
in their attempt to feel like they as a people had some kind of character.”
And that was it, America, and I understood then that all the ideas
I needed for the book — Well ok, all the idea!
were right there. And so commenced the sober duty of leading you all to agency, of setting you all upon the road to character.
Tags: america, beauty, david brooks, humor, poetry, sarah miller
The best explanation for Brooks’ carrer is still “Poorly worded genie wish”
This is a perfect comment.
I was listening to Brooks being interviewed on NPR and my take on it was that, post-divorce, he was starting to think that maybe when people would call him a blowhard or worse (Charles Pierce is especially good on this), they weren’t kidding.
Don’t feed the troll!
Never before has a poetic form been more perfectly matched with its subject.
The sestina is really a perfect form for encapsulating the happy circular tumult of his brain. I love this. (“Well, ok, all the idea!”)
This is exquisite.
I think you’ve explained my problem with contemporary nonfiction perfectly.
thanks that was kind of my intention i guess
The One Reason For All The Things Ever by Malcolm Gladwell, foreword by Seth Godin
If I start screaming I’ll never stop.
Too late
Related: The Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator.
I got “Nothing: What Sandcastles Can Teach Us About North Korean Economic Policy”
From wikipedia (no, i didn’t know what a sestina was):
“the form’s “harshly arbitrary demands echo its subject’s”.”
So I looked out my window at America
and I thought about character
and I thought about some ideas
ahahaha
That book… certainly is a piece of think, alright.
I mean, totally yes on one level. But his recent article in the Atlantic about Frances Perkins – first labor secretary and first woman on the president’s cabinet – is BOMB. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/…
The character is going to be his daughter’s admission officer from Yale (or was it Harvard? Cornell?) and how he has this idea about what makes a good college application essay.
The character is going to be his daughter's admission officer from Yale (or was it Harvard? Cornell?) and how he has this idea about what makes a good college application essay.
The One Reason For All The Things Ever by Malcolm Gladwell, foreword by Seth Godin
If I start screaming I'll never stop.
Sestina! These are SO HARD and you made this one amazing!
I was listening to Brooks being interviewed on NPR and my take on it was that, post-divorce, he was starting to think that maybe when people would call him a blowhard or worse (Charles Pierce is especially good on this), they weren't kidding.
and he said “David, I like all of your ideas,
Irrefutable indictment of quality control in the editing profession in less than ten words.
This was absolutely friggin’ excellently done.
On the subject of sestinas and, y’know, people called Miller, anyone else a fan of The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina? http://wonderingminstrels.blogspot.co.uk/2001/10/…