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Summary
Summary
GENE WEINGARTEN IS THE O. HENRY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM
Simply the best storyteller around, Weingarten describes the world as you think it is before revealing how it actually is--in narratives that are by turns hilarious, heartwarming, and provocative, but always memorable.
Millions of people know the title piece about violinist Joshua Bell, which originally began as a stunt: What would happen if you put a world-class musician outside a Washington, D.C., subway station to play for spare change? Would anyone even notice? The answer was no. Weingarten's story went viral, becoming a widely referenced lesson about life lived too quickly. Other classic stories--the one about "The Great Zucchini," a wildly popular but personally flawed children's entertainer; the search for the official "Armpit of America"; a profile of the typical American nonvoter--all of them reveal as much about their readers as they do their subjects.
Author Notes
gene weingarten is a nationally syndicated humor columnist and writer for The Washington Post. He is the only two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. With his son, Dan Weingarten, and cartoonist David Clark he is the author of Barney Clyde, a daily newspaper comic strip launched in June 2010. He lives in Washington, D.C.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
What happens when you set one of the world's most renowned violinists at the entrance to one of the nation's busiest subway stations during rush hour to play some of the world's most beautiful and haunting music? Will harried commuters, enchanted by the music, linger for a few moments and let the music wrap their souls in peace? Will they appreciatively toss a few coins or dollars in the violinist's case? Conspiring with violinist Joshua Bell, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Weingarten discovers that Bell's virtuoso performance of several classical pieces does little to stop commuters in their tracks, and he reports on this conundrum in the column from which this collection of previously published newspaper columns takes its title. With his incisive wit, Weingarten ranges over other topics, from the possible affair of Woodrow Wilson and Mary Hulbert to the children's entertainer, the Great Zucchini, whose often squalid personal life contrasts dramatically with his life on stage entertaining three- and four-year-olds at Washington, D.C., area birthday parties. Weingarten travels in search of a town worthy of being called the "armpit of America" and discovers it in Battle Mountain, Nev., a town whose defining image for the journalist is a 40-foot-high neon Shell gas station sign with the "S" burned out. Entertaining and funny, Weingarten's stories depict the poignancy of the human condition. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A sparkling collection of features by the Pulitzer Prizewinning Washington Post columnist.For readers who come to Weingarten (Old Dogs: Are the Best Dogs, 2008, etc.) for humor, there are plenty of smiles and laughs scattered throughout the uniformly strong pieces assembled here. But the author is about more than grins and giggles. In even the slightest of the essaysseeing his daughter off to college, honoring the memory of his childhood baseball herohis storytelling, keen observation and deft reporting startle and amaze. Whether profiling cartoonist Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau or The Great Zucchini, a little-known children's entertainer whose messy personal life belies his talent for beguiling preschoolers, Weingarten reliably delivers the goods. He's equally adept at exhuming quirky stories of the dead, including that of Leslie McFarlane, who as "Franklin W. Dixon" spent a good portion of his frustrated writing career churning out the Hardy Boys mystery series, Mary Hulbert, who died never disclosing the details of her intimate relationship with Woodrow Wilson; and William Jefferson Blythe, killed in a 1946 car crash, who left behind a pregnant wife whose son would grow up to be President Bill Clintonneither he nor his mother ever knew about Blythe's previous two marriages (to sisters!) or of the stepbrother one union produced. Weingarten shines especially when he sets himself a puzzle. Which among this country's many worthy towns merits the distinction as "The Armpit of America?" What's it like living daily with terror? Is what's happening at the bedside of a brain-dead girl in Worcester, Mass., a miracle or a hustle? If you pick a place on the map and travel there, will you find a good story? So we journey with him to blighted Battle Mountain, Nev.; ponder communion wafers that allegedly contain blood and icons that weep oil; explore Savoonga, the Bering Sea island where the native Yupiks weather a teen-suicide epidemic; and watch world-class violinist Joshua Bell playing in a train station before thousands of mostly oblivious commuters.Every page is a pleasure. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
It's no surprise that a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner would have something useful to say about writing, but Weingarten exceeds expectations in his passionate, irreverent, and instructive introduction to this superb retrospective collection. And the essays themselves prove that this former editor and feature writer turned columnist and investigative humorist is one helluva storyteller and a master stunt reporter. A troublemaking truth-seeker, Weingarten set out to determine which town truly deserves to be designated the Armpit of America. He tracked down the girl he had a crush on in second grade, rode a bus in Jerusalem to get a sense of what it feels like to live with terrorism, and convinced virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell to pose as a street musician in the Washington, D.C., subway. But Weingarten is more than a provocateur. Each of his cockeyed adventures, thanks to his narrative skills and intellectual ethics, yields genuine feelings and discoveries. And for all his daggered humor, Weingarten never condescends. His curiosity is a form of empathy, his cadenced writing testimony to his caring about life, clear thinking, and beauty.Per Simon & Schuster's Web site, change title and subtitle in bib data to: The Fiddler in the Subway: The Story of the World-Class Violinist Who Played for Handouts. . . AndOther Virtuoso Performances by America's Foremost Feature Writer?--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist
Table of Contents
| Introduction | p. xi |
| The Great Zucchini | p. 1 |
| The First Father | p. 31 |
| The Ghost of the Hardy Boys | p. 50 |
| Roger and Me | p. 66 |
| The Armpit of America | p. 69 |
| My Father's Vision, Part I | p. 94 |
| Snowbound | p. 99 |
| A Wing and a Prayer | p. 129 |
| Tears for Audrey | p. 132 |
| If You Go Chasing Rabbits... | p. 155 |
| Fear Itself | p. 173 |
| Yankee Doodle Danny | p. 202 |
| Pardon My French... | p. 206 |
| Doonesbury's War | p. 231 |
| You Go, Girl | p. 260 |
| None of the Above | p. 265 |
| Fatal Distraction | p. 291 |
| An Honorable Affair | p. 321 |
| My Father's Vision, Part II | p. 334 |
| The Fiddler in the Subway | p. 337 |
