Southern Bookman

John Feinstein's return to Washington Post a gain for NCAA basketball fans

It's been an entertaining NCAA tournament, marked by upsets, dramatic three-point shots and play-making excellence. 

And John Feinstein is back writing about March Madness for The Washington Post.

Feinstein in his tournament columns shows why he's one of our most entertaining story-tellers. He's written about Tennessee coach Rick Barnes saving a lost dog, a pioneering black referee's retirement, Howard University's appearance in the tournament and the tarnished career of Iona and now St. John's coach Rick Pitino.

After the death this week of NBA great Willis Reed, Feinstein recalled going to Madison Square Garden as a student to watch Reed and the New York Knicks play in the years they won two championships. Feinstein said that he never lost his hero worship of Reed, even as a sportswriter covering Reed when he was a Knicks executive.

Feinstein was one of the legendary Post sportswriters who left the newspaper for TV and radio. Unlike fellow alums Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon, Feinstein didn't find permanent success with broadcast media and was even fired by CBS Radio. Along with appearances on ESPN's sadly gone "The Sports Reporters," Feinstein gave commentary for the Golf Channel.

While continuing to publish best-selling sports books and popular novels for young readers, Feinstein recently returned to the Post, restoring some of the luster lost when Thomas Boswell retired. Feinstein and Sally Jenkins give the newspaper a dynamic one-two sportswriting punch.

Like legendary columnists Red Smith and W.C. Heinz, Feinstein knows that stories are the heartbeat of sports.

 

 

David Milch's "Life's Work" tells redemptive story of self-destruction, Hollywood fame

Only David Milch could have transformed St. Paul and the cross into Deadwood and the South Dakota gold rush.

Milch, famed TV producer and writer, details that shift in his entertaining, self-absorbed memoir "Life's Work."

Although Milch finished the book with the aid of his daughters while battling the early stages of Alzheimer's Disease, "Life's Work" gives a full account of his troubled childhood, heroin and gambling addiction, Yale education and  unlikely TV success.

The change from Christianity and the Roman Empire to gold and the American West is not that surprising coming from a writer who taught a course at Yale titled "Strategies of Indirection in Fiction."

Noted poet and critic William Logan in an article in the current New Criterion recalls taking the course, presenting a vivid portrait of Milch, an inveterate gambler on football games and horse racing and a superb writing teacher.

Milch in his memoir looks back on his career as a rebellious Yale undergraduate. Although seriously addicted to heroin and alcohol, and frequently in trouble with local law enforcement, Milch enjoyed a warm relationship with Yale professor, novelist and poet Robert Penn Warren.

Warren, as Milch fondly remembers, gave special attention to Milch's work, praising his novel in progress as containing the best dialogue that one of his students had ever written. Warren treated Milch as a wayward son, inviting him to visit his home and giving him career advice.

Milch also built a close relationship with the famed Yale critic R.W. B. Lewis, assisting him with his research on Lewis' Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Edith Wharton. All the while, Milch was searching for drugs and betting on horses and sports, while struggling to finish the novel praised by Warren.

The book looks back on Milch's abusive, reckless father, a surgeon also addicted to gambling who treated gangsters to pay off debts. Milch also was sexually abused as a young boy by a camp counselor. He used his chilhood traumas as material for his TV shows.

After Yale, Milch received a chance opportunity to write for Steven Bochco's ground-breaking NBC police drama "Hill Street Blues." Milch and Bochco then collaborated on the controversial crime saga "NYPD Blue," a smash for the network while drawing fire from conservatives because of its violence and explicit sexuality. A few flashes of nudity shook the foundations of network TV.

TV's gain was literature's loss; Milch never finished his novel. Yet characters like Dennis Franz's alcoholic detective Andy Sipowich in "NYPD Blue"  laid the foundation for HBO "quality TV" productions  like "The Wire" and "The Sopranos."

With a wife and family, Milch entered rehab, leading to his fascination with St. Paul's conversion to Christianity, his evangelistic career and New Testament writings, and his martyrdom in Rome.

Milch pitched HBO a show based on Paul's establishing the church throughout the Roman empire, but the cable network already had a show on ancient Rome in the works.

Seeing gold as analogous to St. Paul's world-changing symbol of Jesus' cross, Milch instead sold HBO on  the series"Deadwood," which explored  the rough life in the South Dakota boom town where the precious metal was discovered in the 1870s. It was famous as the place where "Wild Bill" Hickock was murdered, the subject of a powerful "Deadwood" episode.

"Deadwood," known for its vulgar dialogue, shocking violence and striking characters, was one of HBO's most memorable shows although it only lasted three years. Despite battling Alzheimer's, Milch completed the show with a movie-length conclusion.

"Life's Work" while often disjointed and egocentric tells a compelling story of redemption. After all of his destructive behavior, Milch achieves grace.

 

Rediscovering Gay Talese's New Journalism classic, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold"

Gay Talese's "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" remains as vital today as when it was published in 1966 in Harold Hayes' Esquire magazine.

I recently reread Talese's classic, collected in "The Gay Talese Reader," which I found again on my bookshelf.

Sinatra lives again in the long and detailed portrait, even more remarkable in that Talese never talked to the famed singer and actor. Talese's efforts over many weeks to connect with Sinatra raises the narrative excitement.

Despite the limited access to Sinatra, Talese fully describes him interacting with fans and cronies in favorite hangouts and taping his "A Man and His Music" TV special. 

The article shines a bright light on the triumphs and defeats of Sinatra's career, from his adolescence in New Jersey through his early popularity, downfall and comeback.

Sinatra's cold turns into a metaphor for the vulnerability that underlay his macho persona, which Talese compares to that of a Mafia chieftain.

Along with extravagant acts of kindness, Sinatra was vindictive and domineering. In an amusing/alarming anecdote, Sinatra berates the writer Harlan Ellison at a nightclub for wearing casual clothes instead of a suit and tie.

The portrait of the self-proclaimed "chairman of the board" resonates today. Threatened by rock in the 1960s, Sinatra's music is now acclaimed by new generations and his style of American masculinity endures as a flashpoint in politics and culture.

Fellow Esquire writer Tom Wolfe considered "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" the foundation of the "New Journalism," of which Wolfe was a leading figure.

Talese's profile pioneered the use of a novelist's techniques of characterization and scene-setting in non-fiction. His 1966 Esquire profile of Joe DiMaggio also displayed a novel's narrative power.

The writer, now 91, gained fame for his books like "Thy Neghbor's s Wife," an examination of American sexuality, and "The Kingdom and the Power," a ground-breaking study of The New York Times, where he began his career.

"Frank Sinatra Had a Cold" and other magazine pieces show Talese at the height of his talent.

 

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Vanity Fair shows old excellence with 29th Hollywood issue

Vanity Fair's excellent Hollywood issue proclaims that film glamour lives on in a new generation.

The 29th annual celebration of the movies sizzles with the magazine's old flair, a triumph for Editor Radhika Jones, beset by seismic cultural shifts and falling circulation, news-stand sales and advertising since she took charge in late 2017.

Jones' compelling mix of Hollywood features and in-depth journalism recalls the great issues of  predecessors Graydon Carter and Tina Brown.

Disputing a prevailing belief that the film star is dead, a photographic gallery of Hollywood's rising generation glows with film magic.

Photographer Steven Klein and stylist Patti Wilson capture the charisma of Selena Gomez, Jonathan Majors, Austin Butler, Ana De Armas, Florence Pugh, Keke Palmer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Julia Garner and Rege-Jean Page.

Hollywood's glorious past is honored with Mark Seal's history of the 100-year-old Hollywood sign and Wayne Lawson's reminisces of co-writing Gloria Swanson's autobiography.

Magazine staff writer Joe Pompeo examines a new media update of the film gossip publications of the past with a feature on Ankler, a movie industry news site.

Writer Richard Rushfield, a fedora-wearing throwback to newspaper entertainment columnists of the past, started the popular news source, and now seeks to expand it on Substack in partnership with media entrepreneur Janice Min.

Washington politics receives attention with Abigail Tracy's profile of Maxwell Frost, the first Gen Z congressman.

Writer James Pogue in a disturbing article investigates the "New Right's" desire to withdraw from American society and live in isolated communities, hoping to survive the collapse of civilization they foresee.

Pogue gives a soberting portrait of wealthy American "preppers" who have colonized rural areas of Montana, driving up property values and forcing longtime residents to  flee. The revealing article is one of the most important the magazine has published in several years.

Like Hollywood, Vanity Fair shines on.

LSU's "Booger" McFarland, Ryan Clark and Marcus Spears stand tall during Damar Hamlin emergency

LSU, once acclaimed as the Old War Skule and Huey Long's shining university, is best known these days as a football factory.

The school where Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks launched the prestigious Southern Review, world-renowned professors produced ground-breaking research and historian T. Harry Williams wrote nationally lauded books has suffered from the GOP 's stringent budget cuts.

While LSU has won several national football championships, the university's academic standing has fallen. Yet LSU programs like journalism have national reputations, and LSU students receive quality educations. The LSU Press and Southern Review remain at the forefront of academic publishing.

College football programs like LSU's are frequently criticized for not giving their players good educations. They are perceived as training grounds for the NFL.

Three former LSU and NFL players - "Booger" McFarland, Ryan Clark and Marcus Spears - have shown the benefits of their college experience this week following Buffalo Bills defensive back Damar Hamlin's horrifying medical emergency Monday night during the Bills game against the Cincinnati Bengals.

After Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest and received CPR following a seemingly routine tackle of Bengals receiver Tee Higgins and was rushed by ambulance to a Cincinnati hospital, where he remains in critical condition, McFarland, Clark and Spears have given passionate commentary on ESPN about why players risk serious injury, even death, to play pro football.

McFarland appeared with ESPN host Suzy Kolber and reporter Adam Schefter immediately after Hamlin's injury, pressed into extraordinary service when the game was halted. Summoned from the 'green room, where they were awaiting their usual half-time appearances, Kolber, Schefter and McFarland were asked to give impromptu responses to Hamlin's injury.

Fighting through his own shock and grief, McFarland spoke about how the event's rare life-threatening nature horrified the players. After a disputed report that play was to resume after five minutes, he gave the first call for the game's postponement. Kolber and Schefter effectively expressed their stunned reactions, but McFarland gave special insight based on his NFL career, during which he received several serious injuries.

In an appearance Wednesday on ESPN's "Pardon the Interruption" with Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon, the nine-year NFL star gave a passionate explanation of why players risk injury or even death to play in the NFL. Like many black NFL players, McFarland grew up in poverty. He told Kornheiser and Wilbon that football offered him the opportunity to leave destitute Winnsboro, a small town in north Louisiana, and provide a better life for his mother.

Clark, appearing on Scott Van Pelt's Sports Center Monday night after Hamlin was rushed to the hospital and the game postponed, spoke of how  the athletes' thrill at competition is balanced by the risk of injury. While the players fiercely battle each other, with terrifying hits that are a big part of the NFL's appeal, they share a brotherhood of overcoming pain and fear to achieve amazing athletic feats, he said.

Former Dallas Cowboys star and LSU All-American Marcus Spears in his regular role on ESPN's "NFL Game Day" Wednesday noted the millions of dollars that Americans have donated to Hamlin's toy fund following his injury. Spears passionately asserted that the outpouring of love and concern for Hamlin reflected the basic goodness of Americans, no matter their political philosophy.

McFarland, Clark and Spears have shown football's best qualities with their thoughtful,  poignant reflections. As an LSU alum, I've never been prouder of Tigers.

 

 

ESPN answers the bell in covering Damar Hamlin crisis

ESPN performed admirably in covering Buffalo Bills cornerback Damar Hamlin's frightening medical emergency Monday night.

The 24-year-old safety collapsed in the first period of the Monday Night Football game between the Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals after making an apparently routine tackle.

Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest, and ,edical personnel had to perform CPR  for nine minutes and use a defibrillator to restore Hamlin's heartbeat. The sixth round draft choice was rushed by ambulance from the field to a Cincinnati hospital, where he reamined in critical condition Tuesday afternoon.

As ESPN's Joe Buck told the network's Scott Van Pelt, the ESPN Monday night football crew was thrust from covering a football game to reporting  news about a life and death situation.

Overcoming their own sadness and distress, the ESPN team balanced deep emotions and strong communication skills. Along with powerful personal  reflections, they delivered timely reporting of essential facts.

Showing her extensive experience in gathering information during games and interviewing coaches and players, veteran sideline reporter Lisa Salters stood out with her observations of the tragedy, including disclosing that CPR was administered to Hamlin, that he received oxygen when placed in the ambulance on the field, and that Hamlin's mother rode with him to the hospital.

After an early report that the teams were told to warm up for five minutes before resuming play, the ESPN team forcefully called for the game to be postponed.

Former NFL player Booger McFarland was particularly effective in asserting that Hamlin's critical injury and the shock and grief of his fellow players were paramount.

Hall of Fame quarterback and color analyst Troy Aikman also spoke out strongly against the competition resuming.  At last, after an agonizingly drawn out hour, the NFL "postponed" the game.

Speaking on Van Pelt's Sports Center, former NFL player Ryan Clark gave moving testimony to the NFL players' balancing of gridiron glory with the fear of injury. Clark spoke of the players as a brotherhood bound by pain and athletic achievement.

NFL host Suzy Kolber, ace reporter Adam Schefter, rules analyst Joe Parry and Buck also displayed grace under extraordinary pressure.

Hamlin's collapse was one of those mesmerizing TV moments when the unexpected turns real. The ESPN journalists met the test, going beyond the familiar parameters of sports. They gave a national TV audience necessary facts, and expressed our shared disbelief and sorrow.

Farewell George Lois, creator of provocative Esquire magazine covers

George Lois' covers for Harold Hayes' Esquire magazine showed that the 1960s counterculture had become the nation's culture.

An innovative ad man who brought a hip insouciance to TV commercials and magazine ads, Lois' audacious covers trumpeted the magazine's New Journalism inside the magazine. The dazzling supernovas of Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Norman Mailer, John Sack, Michael Herr, Susan Sontag, Rex Reed. Bruce Jay Friedman and Terry Southern revolutionized American literature.

Hayes' magazine under fiction editors Rust Hills and Gordon Lish also published ground-breaking short stories by Raymond Carver, Philip Roth, James Salter, Jim Harrison and Truman Capote. Hayes gave voice to columnists Timothy Crouse, Peter Bogdanovich and the young Mikc Lupica, and, from an older generation,Dwight MacDonald. and Dorothy Parker.

Lois, who died Friday at his Manhattan home at age 91, defined the magazine's provocative style, reflecting and influencing the consciousness of the baby boomer generation that came of age in the 1960s and 1970s. While the conservative "silent majority" triumphed in politics, Lois' irreverent style remains prevalent in advertising and journalism.

The collaborative Esquire covers, eventually collected at New York's Museum of Modern Art, ranged from Sonny Liston as Santa Claus to Muhammad Ali as the arrow-riddled martyr St. Sebastian and Andy Warhol swirling into the maelstrom of one of his soup cans. One of my favorites was a beautiful model, her face covered with shaving cream.

Lois' concepts, expressing complex ideas in simple images, gave readers the sense they were part of a hip, insider community understanding a secret code.

Hayes produced a trumpet blast with each monthly issue. Lois covers' were a vibrant fanfare for the brilliant writing within.

 

 

It's only October, and I'm already following the NBA

I'd planned to spend Tuesday evening reading, but turned instead to the wise basketball philosopher Dominique Wilkins.

Opening night for the Hawks, and new sensation Dejounte Murray, drew me to the vaudeville routine of  'Nique and play-by-play partner Bob Rathbun, one of my favorite TV pastimes over the years. Bob and 'Nique were in good form, pausing for a reflective moment in which 'Nique recalled his close friendship with the late Boston Celtics great Bill Russell.

After the quick demise of the Braves, I was happy to see Murray, Trae Young and John Collins hold off the Houston Rockets. I also enjoyed spirited sideline reporter Lauren Jbara joining an impromptu dance with joyous Hawks fans.

Murray scored 20 points, with an admirable 11 assists. The most promising sight for the long defensive-challenged Hawks was Murray dashing down the court for uncontested dunks after making steals - he finished with five. The Hawks could contend for the NBA finals, if Murray and Young can keep working together.

Oh my goodness, I even found myself watching the end of the Memphis Grizzlies-New York Knicks game on ESPN. The devil-may-care Ja Morant pulled the Grizzlies to an overtime win.

Guess who scored 20 points for the Knicks, including the three-pointer that put them into overtime? It was Cam Reddish, for whom I had high hopes when he played for the Hawks and has been a dud for the Knicks until he awakened on the banks of the Mississippi. Now Knicks fans hope he'll be the second coming of Linsanity.

Switching to Ted Turner's old station TBS, I watched my childhood team Houston Astros beat the Yankees. The familiar voice of Braves color analyst Jeff Francoer, mercifully free of the irritating tics that mar his Braves broadcasts, described the action along with play-by-play announcer Brian Anderson and color analyst Ron Darling. Francoeur, called "Frenchy" by Anderson, held his own in the crowded booth.

Bob Costas, who annoyed some critics with his verbose play-by-play work during the Yankees' win over the Cleveland Guardians, was relegated to studio hosting duties, replacing Atlanta favorite Ernie Johnson Jr., who returned to the TNT NBA desk. It'll be another long winter and early spring with Johnson and Shaquille O'Neal, Charles Barkley and Kenny "the Jet" Smith.

Just when I think I've cured my sports addiction, it keeps pulling me back in.

 

Respected anchorman John Pruitt's "Tell It True" explores 1960s racial violence, Atlanta's emergence

Longtime Atlanta news anchor John Pruitt's debut novel "Tell It True" examines Atlanta's rise as a major American city in the early 1960s, prevailing against Georgia's ingrained racial violence.

Published by Mercer University Press, the book hinges upon the brutal Klan slaying of a black Army reserve officer and Baltimore businessman. Driving through rural Georgia on his way home from his annual tour of duty at Fort Benning, Jarvis Pendry is killed late at night by a father and son consumed by racial hatred.

The fictional murder is loosely based upon the 1964 killing of Washington educator and Army officer Lemuel Penn, slain by a shotgun blast from a passing car while driving through Madison County, Ga, just outside of Athens. Pruitt as a young TV newsmen covered the Penn murder case and trial, in which three Klansmen were acquitted by an all-white jury.

Pruitt's crime takes place in the fictional Pickett Country, named for the Confederate general who led the failed Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, known as the high-water mark of the Confederacy. That historical echo of the South's "lost cause" effectively sets the stage for Pruitt's exploration of white resistance to the civil rights movement, black demands for equal rights and Atlanta's emergence as the leading Sun Belt city.

Drawing upon his career as a TV journalist, Pruitt views the novel's key events following the murder through the eyes of his alter-ego, the young TV cameraman Gil Matthews. Gil is joined in his dangerous pursuit of the truth by Mindy Williams, an AP reporter eventually hired by Mathews' WDX TV station, modeled after Atlanta's WSB. 

Gil and Mindy's partnership and perhaps budding romance provide an entertaining rom-com counterpoint to the book's dramatic moments. The young journalists encounter a rich cast of fully imagined characters.

An Atlanta executive resembling business leader Robert Woodruff works behind the scenes to influence a fictional 1964 gubernatorial election, seeking to engineer the victory of a moderate candidate over an avowed segregationist. In another insider reference, the wealthy Buckhead power broker bears the name Devereaux Inman, echoing the real-life names of two old Atlanta families.

The fictional gallery based on historical models includes a black minister and civil rights leader, a satirically flamboyant defense attorney, young black radicals at Morehouse College who reject the slow pace of change accepted by the older generation, a respected TV anchorman and Georgia politicians, prosecutors, journalists and law officers.

As in the Penn trial, the Klansmen accused of killing Pendry are acquitted by an all-white male jury. Showing an impressive talent for dramatic set-pieces, Pruitt brings alive the rural courthouse and the trial's testimony, judge's directions and closing arguments. In a historical parallel to the Penn case, the first in which those accused of racial murders could face federal charges of violating the victim's civil rights, the book foreshadows a federal probe of the Pickett County murder.

Pruitt ends the book with a poignant racial reconciliation between the white Pickett County sheriff and Pendry's widow, a memorable minor character. Sheriff Lucas McSwain overcomes his white supremacist heritage in an uplifting subplot.

"Tell It True" closes with the moderate candidate's election and a foreshadowing of Atlanta's vibrant future as "the City Too Busy to Hate." Tragically, the rest of Georgia and the South found plenty of time for racial hatred. Pruitt's message of racial healing appears fragile after the Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd killings, and retreats on black voting rights.

Like the best historical novels, "Tell It True"  reveals hard truths of the  present and future through the lens of the past.

 

Tour Championship to again highlight revival of Bobby Jones' East Lake course

The PGA's season-ending Tour Championship returns this weekend to the East Lake Club, one of Atlanta's success stories.

Bobby Jones' home course, originally called the Atlanta Athletic Club, barely survived the surrounding neighborhood's urban deterioration during the 1950s and 1960s. The club's members voted to move to a new course in suburban Duluth, taking Jones' trophies with them.

One of famed course architect Donald Ross' masterpieces, the old course remained open, held on life support by a dedicated core of Jones admirers. The adjacent East Lake public housing project and surrounding neighborhoods were ravaged by drugs and crime.

Atlanta businessman Tom Cousins stepped in to revive the course, and the desolate streets nearby. The East Lake Foundation led the urban revitalization.

The refurbished course, once surrounded by barbed wire, is now the home of the Tour Championship. Like the Masters, the championship pays homage to Bobby Jones, who grew up playing East Lake. The world-renowned amateur in 1930 won what was then considered golf's "grand slam," the U.S. and British opens and the U.S. and British amateurs. After retiring from tournament golf,  Jones founded the Masters and co-founded Augusta National, some of its holes inspired by East Lake.

Jones' boyhood course again will be packed with golf fans this weekend. East Lake's sweeping fairways, lakeside vistas and elegant clubhouse are again at the center of the golf world.