"Deadline Artists: America's Greatest Newspaper Columns" Worth Reading

One of the best books published in 2011, not only for those who enjoy reading newspapers but for anyone who enjoys good writing, is Deadline Artists:
America’s Greatest Newspaper Columns. As the editors write in the introduction to their book, “The improvisational nature of the newspaper column is what sets it apart, the near-miracle that stories composed on punishing deadlines can resonate with beauty and power decades later.” They correctly characterize the newspaper column as “an American art form,” and columnists as writers who “speak in a voice readers understand –their own, but a bit better.” I would say that the columnists in this book write much better than most of us.

Divided into ten sections of essays, the book is a comprehensive anthology of over 100 columns from American newspapers which go back to the nineteenth century. To summarize even one column from each section would make this essay too long, so I will write briefly about a representative sample. In a column from the section titled“War,” David Brooks writes about how “our men and women in Iraq are called upon to define a new sort of heroism” because in addition to fighting a war, they
are also asked to rebuild cities and stabilize areas of the country. “If anybody is wondering: where are the young idealists? Where are the people willing to devote themselves to causes larger than themselves? They are in Iraq, straddling the divide between insanity and order.”

In a column from the section “Civil Rights and Civil Liberties,” Dorothy Thompson wrote about the objection of people in Southbury, Connecticut, in 1937, to the purchase of nearly 200 acres of land in the village by the German American Bund to erect a camp “to further the interests of the German Reich,” a controversial situation in pre-WWII America. How far do civil liberties and rights extend?

In the section titled “Farewells,” George F. Will wrote a tribute to President Reagan, whose greatness can be measured in several ways, including this one: “By the time he dies the dangers that summoned him to greatness have been so thoroughly defeated, in no small measure by what he did, it is difficult to recall the
magnitude of those dangers or of his achievements.”

The most enjoyable section in this book, in my view, is the one with “Humor” columns, with essays by Mark Twain, Dave Berry, Ring Lardner, Art Buchwald, and Russell Baker, among others. “The Pursuit of Happiness” section includes Regina Brett’s “45 Life Lessons – and Five to Grow On,” and Mary Schmich’s graduation speech to the class of 1997, already a classic, which begins and ends with her advice to “wear sunscreen.”

One of my favorite columns, from the “Local Voices” section, is Kathleen Parker’s tribute to her eleventh grade English teacher, who “changed my life in a flicker of light.” Parker, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2010, credits this English teacher not only with giving her confidence in her writing but also in herself. He reprimanded those students who laughed at the young lady’s error in class one day.“I started that day to write as well as he said I could. I am still trying.” Obviously, Kathleen Parker succeeded.

A personal observation: many teachers cherish such moments as much as their students. A former student of mine recently contacted me by email to let me know she was now a fiction writer and had gone back to get an MFA degree at Southern Connecticut State University. Other former students now teach English, or another subject, on the secondary or college level. A few became journalists. It’s not too late for them to make the next edition of Deadline Artists, or a similar anthology of memorable columns or blogs or of the 21^st century.