Journalism:New Yorker essays show how great journalism can be when it is allowed to breathe.
David Remnick has been editor of the New Yorker since 1998, and one of its finest writers since 1992. This collection of 23 essays, he says, is about "figures in the public arena, people who are in the midst of a crisis, passing out of one, or anticipating one on the horizon". It begins with Al Gore and ends with Mike Tyson, and along the way takes in, among others, Tony Blair, publisher Katherine Graham, Philip Roth, Alexander Solzhenitsyn (twice), Benjamin Netanyahu and boxer Lennox Lewis. Occasionally they are destined for importance, as with Lewis; or are misfits or drifting from significance, such as Gore. Or they might be chroniclers of their time, as with Don DeLillo and Philip Roth. Or, as in the case of Solzhenitsyn, all three can apply.
Remnick is neither intimidated by the weight of these subjects nor, just as importantly, is he intimidating. These essays take a straight line through history, politics, literature, art and sport, and the writing is crisp, forceful, yet lyrical; and the insight just as impressive. But more than anything, this is a reporter who knows how to tell a story.
He has a ravenous appetite for detail. His piece on Gore is titled The Wilderness Campaign due to its having been written during those years when he "used to be the next president of the United States" rather than in his current incarnation as environmentalist hero. In the essay, Remnick delivers a stunning portrayal of an exiled king, a man who won the popular vote in a two-horse race to become the most powerful man on earth but who suddenly finds himself yesterday's man in a country heading for a very dangerous future. Remnick's study has a comic edge, but he knows that Gore's jollity is forced, and easily stymied. "Gore smiled," he observes at one point, "then un-smiled." He also profiles Tony Blair in the middle of what is referred to as the "masochism campaign", in which the British prime minister allows himself be humiliated by pre-pubescent TV presenters "little Ant 'n' Dec", daytime chat shows and his own party for the sake of winning a general election. And even if it was designed as somewhat of a primer for American readers less familiar with Blair than we are here, Remnick's measured disbelief at the circus hoops this major world leader jumps through in a self- immolating search for respect makes it fiercely entertaining.
Remnick spent some time reporting from Moscow for the Washington Post, leaving in the summer of 1991 having become immune to the continuing predictions of an impending coup. "Twelve hours later, back in New York, with a television tuned to CNN, my wife and I watched a column of tanks rumbling past our apartment building." But it gave him a strong handle on Russia at a fascinating, and fluid, moment in its history. His pieces on Solzhenitsyn are particularly excellent, the first focusing on him in exile in Vermont, with the second following a by now waning moral authority upon his repatriation.
THE FINAL SECTION focuses entirely on Mike Tyson. Even if only one piece - and an addendum - does so explicitly, the essays on veteran cornerman Teddy Atlas and Lennox Lewis are used as mirrors by which to view one of the greatest - and worst - sportsmen. Boxing, of course, has long thrown up decent writing, but Remnick's study of Tyson on the night he chomped on Evander Holyfield's ear - and a lead-up in which he witnesses "the power of a ghetto kid's fatalism, a boundless sense of self-drama, of the dark future" - throws fresh light on a generally over- exposed subject.
Reporting is a collection that reminds you of how great journalism can be when it is allowed to breathe; when stories are given time by reporters, and reporters are given time by their subjects. Although, of course, it helps to be able to write as well as Remnick does. He uses the lengthy word counts to develop place, time, and - always - the character of whoever he might be profiling. And while almost novelistic in his approach, he uses that style to facilitate the subject rather than crowd it out.
Shane Hegarty is an Irish Times journalist. His book, The Irish Times Book of the 1916 Rising (written with Fintan O'Toole), was published last year by Gill & Macmillan
Reporting: Writings from the New Yorker By David Remnick Picador, 483pp. £18.99
