McCandlish Phillips, Times Reporter Who Exposed Jewish Klansman, Dies at 85
How could you not read the story that comes under this headline?
What a complex person this Mr. Phillips was. Arthur Gelb, a former managing editor of the NYT, called Phillips “the most original stylist" he had ever edited.
As a "general-assignment reporter" of the 1961 St. Patrick's Parade, he wrote:
“The sun was high to their backs and the wind was fast in their faces and 100,000 sons and daughters of Ireland, and those who would hold with them, matched strides with their shadows for 52 blocks. It seemed they marched from Midtown to exhaustion.”His article about the closing of the original Lindy's Delicatessen in 1969 opened like this:
"What kind of a day is today? It's the kind of a day that if you wanted a slice of cheesecake at Lindy's, you couldn't get it."This next quote is so obviously the work of a genius that it doesn't even need a context:
“It is impossible to tell a plainclothes detective from a mugger here. You just have to wait to see what they do”And yet, if you needed evidence that people are complicated creatures, Phillips was an evangelical Christian who kept a bible on his desk and who led prayer meetings for like-minded colleagues at the NYT. He left journalism in 1973 to devote himself to evangelical Christianity.
In 1962, he had helped found the New Testament Missionary Fellowship, a Pentecostal congregation in Manhattan. Its tenets, as Ken Auletta wrote in a 1997 New Yorker profile of Mr. Phillips, include the belief that “pornography, drugs, abortion and any form of fornication (including premarital sex and homosexuality) are sins.”
In the early 1970s, the New Testament Missionary Fellowship made headlines after the kidnapping or attempted kidnapping of several of its congregants by their families. The families maintained that the group had trained the congregants to repudiate them.If you want to read about the Jewish Klansman Phillips exposed, you'll have to click on the link.
5 comments:
Mr. Phillips demonstrated an extraordinary use of the English language, painting a vivid picture of events with his words as he wrote them. What else could a reader want? Mark Twain's way of using words in less expected combinations always amazes me. His writing style is so true to him that it would be almost impossible to imitate. When I read works by Twain, I sense there is more to writing than just learning it as a craft. Evidently, it also helps to inherit a gift for gab and a keen ability to view and interpret the world around you. Lucky are the ones who inherit both.
Diane-I couldn´t agree more with your comments about Twain. I have been such a contrarian ever since I was a child that my appreciation for Twain came later in life than it did for most people.
I agree also that writing is not merely a craft. The best ones somehow seem to be born with a talent.
I have ruminated a lot on what it is that makes, not necessarily a great writer, but one that I love. I have had various ideas over the years, but have never figured it out.
On my short list of favorite writers is Joseph Mitchell. I never tire of his voice. And, sadly, I only became aware of him after he died in 1996. (That doesn´t matter so much because he never published anything for the last 32 years of his life, even though he went to his office at the New Yorker every day.)
He is someone I never tire of recommending. If you don´t already know him, put his collection of essays from the New Yorker, "Up in the Old Hotel," on your list of things to read.
I'll do that. Thanks for the tip.
You have been the recipient of my many complaints or wishes that I could "turn a phrase." Just gimme one before I croak.
The one about the St. Patrick's parade, it oozes an Irish accent. What a writer.
Thanks for the tip on Joseph Mitchell.
I just read a book that had all kinds of unique similes and metaphors, but they were always just close...not quite there. For example, "...the way the trunks of the big trees were visibly cut off from the ground, so they appeared to be standing on top of the snow like elephant's feet rather than rooted beneath it." Unique, but it doesn't quite get there for me.
Keep writing. Good stuff.
No need to thank me for the Joseph Mitchell tip, because I never tire of recommending him. I have probably bought "Up in the Old Hotel" at least 4 times and have always ended up giving it away or loaning it out, which usually turns out to be the same thing.
The book has never been out of print, and yet for some reason I do not understand is not available as an ebook.
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