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222 ON WRITING WELL Singer s lethal potion is concocted of hundreds of outlandish facts and quotes—he is a tenacious reporter—and a style that barely suppresses his own amusement. It works particularly well on the egregious buccaneers of the late 1990s who have long tried the patience of the citizenry, as proved by his profile in The New Yorker of the developer Donald Trump. Noting that Trump "had aspired to and achieved the ultimate luxury, an existence unmolested by the rumbling of a soul," Singer describes a visit to Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach spa converted by Trump from the 118-room Hispano-Moorish-Venetian mansion built in the 1920s by Marjorie Merriweather Post and E. F. Hutton: Evidently, Trump s philosophy of wellness is rooted in a belief that prolonged exposure to exceptionally attractive young spa attendants will instill in the male clientele a will to live. Accordingly, he limits his role to a pocket veto of key hiring decisions. While giving me a tour of the main exercise room, where Tony Bennett, who does a couple of gigs at Mara-Lago each season and had been designated an "artist-inresidence," was taking a brisk walk on a treadmill, Trump introduced me to "our resident physician, Dr. Ginger Lee SouthalT—a recent chiropractic-college graduate. As Dr. Ginger, out of earshot, manipulated the sore back of a grateful member, I asked Trump where she had done her training. "I'm not sure," he said. "Baywatch Medical School? Does that sound right? I'll tell you the truth. Once I saw Dr. Gingers photograph, I didn't really need to look at her résumé or anyone else's. Are you asking, 'Did we hire her because she trained at Mount Sinai for fifteen years?' The answer is no. And I'll tell you why: because by the time she's spent fifteen years at Mount Sinai, we don't want to look at her." Of all the current humorists, Garrison Keillor has the surest eye for social change and the most inventive mind for making
Humor 223 his point obliquely. Again and again he gives us the pleasure of finding an old genre dressed up in new clothes. Americas current hostility to cigarette smokers is a trend that any alert writer might have noticed and written about with due sobriety. This approach, however, is pure Keillor: The last cigarette smokers in America were located in a box canyon south of Donner Pass in the High Sierra by two federal tobacco agents in a helicopter who spotted the little smoke puffs just before noon. One of them, the district chief, called in the ground team by air-to-ground radio. Six men in camouflage outfits, members of a crack anti-smoking joggers unit, moved quickly across the rugged terrain, surrounded the bunch in their hideout, subdued them with tear gas, and made them lie face down on the gravel in the hot August sun. There were three females and two males, all in their mid-forties. They had been on the run since the adoption of the Twenty-eighth Amendment. The genre that's in Keillor s head has been a staple of American newspapers since the Dillinger era of the 1930s, and his enjoyment of that form, with its echoes of gangsters and G-men, of stakeouts and shootouts, is obvious in his writing. Another situation that Keillor obviously enjoyed having found a perfect framework for was the Bush administrations bailout of the savings-and-loan industry. This is how his piece "How the Savings and Loans Were Saved" begins: The President was playing badminton in Aspen the day vast hordes of barbaric Huns invaded Chicago, and a reporter whose aunt lives in Evanston shouted to him as he headed for the clubhouse, "The Huns are wreaking carnage in Chicago, Mr. President! Any comment?" Mr. Bush, though caught off guard by news of the inva-
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On Writing Well
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On Writing Well cssao THE CLASSIC G
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C O N T E N T S osso INTRODUCTION 1
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INTRODUCTION CSSQ When I first wrot
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INTRODUCTION xi writers worse. Good
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P A R T I -esee- Principles
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4 ON WRITING WELL Absolutely not, h
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6 ON WRITING WELL of gimmicks to "p
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8 ON WRITING WELL struction that le
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10 ON WRITING WELL is too dumb or t
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12 ON WRITING WELL Faced with such
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14 ON WRITING WELL typical of hundr
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16 ON WRITING WELL think there's mu
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QSSSO Style So much for early warni
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20 ON WRITING WELL unique. The read
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22 ON WRITING WELL I realize that t
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24 ON WRITING WELL aging boxers don
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26 ON WRITING WELL tion or sleep. N
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28 ON WRITING WELL who fill the air
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30 ON WRITING WELL religion and the
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32 ON WRITING WELL and it allows fo
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34 ON WRITING WELL someone is forev
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36 ON WRITING WELL instance, and yo
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CSSSO Usage All this talk about goo
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40 ON WRITING WELL Mumford that the
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42 ON WRITING WELL Just where Webst
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44 ON WRITING WELL Meanwhile the ba
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46 ON WRITING WELL back, though I'd
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8 CSS30 Unity You learn to write by
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Unity 51 Such fatal mixtures are co
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Unity 53 When your zest begins to e
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csso The Lead and the Ending The mo
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The Lead and the Ending 57 I've oft
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The Lead and the Ending 59 One reas
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The Lead and the Ending 61 warehous
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The Lead and the Ending 63 general
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The Lead and the Ending 65 (lia and
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The Lead and the Ending 67 Somethin
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Bits & Pieces 69 sive-voice writers
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Bits & Pieces 71 tences become long
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Bits & Pieces 73 pistol might be lo
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Bits & Pieces 75 go." Look for all
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Bits & Pieces 77 The common reactio
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Bits & Pieces 79 who are so busy th
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Bits & Pieces 81 of thought. Compar
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Bits & Pieces 83 This still leaves
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Bits & Pieces 85 eral different way
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Bits & Pieces 87 which sick people
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Bits & Pieces 89 It's no longer nec
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Bits & Pieces 91 know that about ho
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P A R T I I I OBSO Forms
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96 ON WRITING WELL midst, and none
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98 ON WRITING WELL Magazines were s
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1 2 CSSO Writing About People The I
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102 ON WRITING WELL building turned
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104 ON WRITING WELL roommate. With
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106 ON WRITING WELL Obviously the t
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108 ON WRITING WELL used words and
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110 ON WRITING WELL call the person
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112 ON WRITING WELL revelation by J
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114 ON WRITING WELL Now, nobody thi
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1 3 -esee- Writing About Places The
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118 ON WRITING WELL rency. Half the
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120 ON WRITING WELL Bernardino out
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122 ON WRITING WELL American spore.
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124 ON WRITING WELL hood of the wri
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126 ON WRITING WELL to 110 degrees
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128 ON WRITING WELL with a hawk tha
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130 ON WRITING WELL Nine of my site
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132 ON WRITING WELL recalled that u
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134 ON WRITING WELL want to see pop
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136 ON WRITING WELL to the roots of
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138 ON WRITING WELL My father loved
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140 ON WRITING WELL Row overlooking
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142 ON WRITING WELL chagrin was acc
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144 ON WRITING WELL Johnson, who gr
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146 ON WRITING WELL tors on adulter
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1 5 OSSO Science and Technology Tak
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150 ON WRITING WELL ing it up—but
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152 ON WRITING WELL Good. I could h
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154 ON WRITING WELL sleeping, for e
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156 ON WRITING WELL The nautilus ha
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158 ON WRITING WELL really belt it
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160 ON WRITING WELL constant relati
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162 ON WRITING WELL Constructed lik
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164 ON WRITING WELL Even a child kn
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1 6 csso Business Writing Writing i
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168 ON WRITING WELL First notice ho
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170 ON WRITING WELL During this yea
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Page 222 and 223: 1 9 csso Humor Humor is the secret
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Page 245: PART IV Og&O Attitudes
Page 248 and 249: 234 ON WRITING WELL There is a kind
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Page 270 and 271: 256 ON WRITING WELL failure—aren'
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272 ON WRITING WELL a certain way a
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274 ON WRITING WELL always feel tha
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276 ON WRITING WELL acter. As a tee
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278 ON WRITING WELL knew nothing ab
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280 ON WRITING WELL within a hundre
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282 ON WRITING WELL happened to fin
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284 ON WRITING WELL When you get su
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24 -esse- Write as Well as You Can
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288 ON WRITING WELL erosity and wis
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290 ON WRITING WELL submit an artic
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292 ON WRITING WELL repeated, and h
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294 ON WRITING WELL moving in grace
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296 SOURCES 66 "Coolidge," by H. L.
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298 SOURCES 188-90 Confessions of a
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I N D E X osao Aciman, André, 136
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Index 303 Eisenhower, Dwight, 239 E
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Index 305 Lin, Maya, 130 Lincoln, A
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Index 307 Satire, 209 Saturday Even
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