Writing Places
William Zinsser
Language: English
Pages: 210
ISBN: B0029PBVCK
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
“William Zinsser turns his zest, warmth and curiosity—his sharp but forgiving eye—on his own story. The result is lively, funny and moving, especially for anyone who cares about art and the business of writing well.”
—Evan Thomas, Newsweek
In Writing Places, William Zinsser—the author of On Writing Well, the bestseller that has inspired two generations of writers, journalists, and students—recalls the many colorful and instructive places where he has worked and taught. Gay Talese, author of A Writer’s Life, calls Writing Places, “Wonderful,” while the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette praises this unique memoir for possessing “all the qualities that Zinsser believes matter most in good writing—clarity, brevity, simplicity and humanity.”
into sentences. Afterward I asked Caroline, who was sit ting nearer, what Warren had talked about. “I didn’t understand a word,” she said. On another occasion Lewis arranged for Hunter S. Thomp son, author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, one of the totemic books of the 1960s drug culture, to give a public lecture at Yale. Calhoun would be the sponsor, and Thompson would stay in the college’s guest suite. The problem was how to get him there; the Gonzo journalist was then living in California
gym nastics, diving and horse-show jumping. Another chance discovery was a blue-eyed Irish kid named John Tierney, whom I met one night in 1972 at a student social hour. Calhoun’s freshmen had been exiled to a remote annex during a renovation of the Old Campus, and fellows were en couraged to drop in and make them feel less forsaken. I got to talking with Tierney, who told me he had come to Yale to major in mathematics. But as he talked I detected a most unmath ematical vein of humor. He asked
That connection, he taught us, should be honored. The Yale English Department, acting with a speed wholly uncharacteristic of college English departments, saw what was happening and jumped aboard the train. As a stopgap it hired several New York editors to come to New Haven and teach courses that roughly replicated mine. Then it went about es tablishing its own strong program of expository writing. What all of us learned was that organizing and writing a nonfiction paper is largely untaught in
foothills. The other fellows’ meeting, on the third Thursday, was a so-called business meeting, held in the Fellows’ Lounge after dinner, at which fellows discussed some current Yale issue or heard one of their colleagues describe his or her current ac ademic work. Quite a few associate fellows attended those 110 College Master meetings, some of them old guard alumni still living in Yale’s homogeneous past. I recall one white-haired alumnus whose florid face suggested a lifetime of Saturday
thought about is how to actually write the book. Nobody has told them they will only discover its shape and content in the process of writing it—and that the finished book won’t much resemble the one they have in mind. To focus them on the process, rather than on the finished product, I invented a writing course that doesn’t require any writing. I only ask my students to talk about their hopes and 150 Ta k i n g I t o n t h e R o a d intentions for the book and about the possible ways of