The Roman comic playwright Terence wrote, "I am a man, I consider nothing that is human alien to me." There couldn't be a more apt description of essayist and reporter Gene Weingarten as he's revealed in this collection of 20 of his best Washington Post pieces. Ranging from the riotously humorous to the deeply emotional, Weingarten's work displays deep empathy for his subjects and a passion for penetrating to the sometimes elusive heart of a story.
Reflective of these qualities is Weingarten's fiercely honest account of his midwinter visit to Savoonga, Alaska, "a town so physically inhospitable it practically orders you to leave." Equally powerful are the moving tale of Leslie McFarlane, "a story about the soul of writing," in which a fine writer churns out the execrable prose and hackneyed plots of the Hardy Boys novels to keep his family fed and clothed during the Depression, and the brief stories of Weingarten's father's last years, brimming with humor and pathos.
The comic sensibility that's a feature of many of the pieces shines through in "The Armpit of America," where Weingarten's decision (amply documented) to award that title to the town of Battle Mountain, Nev., has hilarious, unintended consequences. "The Great Zucchini" clinically analyzes the public success and personal turmoil of a wildly popular children's party entertainer, and "Fear Itself," describing Weingarten's bus and train rides in Jerusalem and Madrid, reveals what it really means to live with the threat of terrorism. A 2006 profile of Garry Trudeau (the first of the cartoonist's career) and an investigation of the brief life of Bill Clinton's father, killed in a car accident at age 28, are revealing.
Not all of the pieces hit their target. Weingarten's attempt to plumb the psyche of a typical nonvoter who caused him to "rethink almost every assumption" he had made about those disengaged from public life never really conveys the reasons for that radical reconsideration. But the occasional lapse is more than compensated for by the two Pulitzer Prize–winning features included here. "Fatal Distraction" is an almost too painful to read glimpse into the lives of parents whose children died when left unattended in a vehicle. The book's title piece explores in a lighthearted but astute way violin virtuoso Joshua Bell's humbling 45-minute stint playing Bach and Schumann as an audience of indifferent commuters streamed past him at a Washington Metro stop. It's a gentle prod to all of us to stop and pay attention--a persistent, if unstated, theme of much of this collection.
If you haven't been a regular reader of the Washington Post for the past decade or so, give thanks for your good fortune in having this much accomplished writing, wit and insight into the human condition bound between covers.--Harvey Freedenberg
Shelf Talker: Reporter and essayist Gene Weingarten offers a diverse collection from more than a decade of essays and feature writing for the Washington Post.