by Iliam » Fri Nov 28, 2014 6:53 pm
today, instead of doing work, I read Joan Didion's , which made me think of David Foster Wallace's essay , and which I also procrastinatoraly (re)read.
They're both long articles that cover the campaign trail of presidential hopefuls. Joan follows the '88 presidential election and David tracks McCain's 2000 presidential campaign. Both stress their outsider status, neither are 'professional' political writers, and the way that this gives them special insight into the vulgarities of the campaign trail, which they are equally great at chronicling.
Reading both pieces is a great way to see how different writers approach similar material. 'Dividing' by the the common denominator (the campaign trail) allows you to see/ think about the writer's approach, selection and construction etc. of events into an organised, coherent piece of writing, and the pros/cons of each approach. Interestingly, this kind of writerly comparison is something that both Joan and David do to the other (political) writers around them. They show how the campaigns' constructed set-pieces of political play acting, designed for and aimed at the other political journalists and media professionals, are then filtered by this same group, so that when these events appear in the paper or on the news, they seems almost like reality.
Both pieces are superb, both are well worth reading, if not for the incredible incredible talent of these two writers (wow! really? [i know]), then for a look at the absurdities of political journalism and the general bizarreness of western democratic elections.