By Brendan O’Meara
Darcy Frey’s The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams (Mariner Books, Spiegel & Grau audio) is a masterpiece in writing, structure, and immersive journalism — not participatory — but true immersion. It’s also a master class in how best to use the first person in a work that predominantly focuses on its core group of central figures.
Darcy’s essays and journalism for Harper’s and the New York Times Magazine have received numerous awards, including a National Magazine Award, a Livingston Award, and an Award for Public Service from the Society for Professional Journalists. His work has been adapted for stage and screen, and anthologized in The Best American Essays, Best American Science Writing, and the Library of America series. He teaches in the English department at Harvard.
The Last Shot was recommended to me by the late great Dick Todd, who worked on this book with Darcy. So we talk a little bit about Dick and how Darcy came to know and work with him.
It’s a narrative of revelation, and it wasn’t until the book in Darcy’s head gave way to the book that emerged after many, many nights of despair. The book taught him that the obstacles were the way, to borrow a term from stoic-maven Ryan Holiday.
Great chat about note taking vs. recorders (a perennial fave topic of mine), Dick Todd, how he selected his core group of kids to follow, and how he arrived at the idea for the book in the first place.
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Parting Shot from Episode 422: Coming to the End?
458 Words
Getting to the end, CNFers, getting to the end. I’ve finished a very late round of edits from my big book editor, and I’m combing through edits my very astute wife has given me. I know I’ve written that handing your spouse your WIP is cruel and unusual punishment in that it can lead to marital discord. Either they won’t be critical enough, which sucks for the work, or they are too critical, and then you don’t talk until the pipes burst.
I held off giving her a draft until it was nearly complete, so three very skilled sets of eyes have been on this book. Glenn, poor guy, he got the worst of it; Matt, he got the second worst of it; and Melanie, she got the third worst of it. Thing is, her goal is to focus on transitions and cohesion, to make sure the chapters are doing the work.
Had to cut a scene that I loved, gosh, did I love this scene, so weird, funny, quirky, but when word real estate is at a premium — I think it’s at 109,000 words, down from the first draft of 160,000, and working drafts of 120,000 — it’s one of the many gems that needs to go because it doesn’t wholly inform the arc of this biography. Make no mistake, biography is about selection. What are the moments in the life of a person that feed a point of view, mine being, I think, how Steve Prefontaine is the last amateur and the dawn of the paradigmatic modern athlete? ANYthing else that doesn’t serve the forward propulsion of that framework has to get shaken out of the tree.
That’s what’s happening now. In the 6,000th read of this book, what you’re doing is shaking out the tree for dead leaves, addition by subtraction. Cool things are falling off the tree. Real snappy sentences are falling to the floor.
And when it sounds like writing, your writing is off. The best compliment I get from Melanie is when she forgets about the writing. That means the writing is on point. That brings up a whole other can of worms about style and voice. You know when you’re watching a Wes Anderson movie, or reading a David Foster Wallace essay, or a Hanif Aburraqib essay. The ego side of any writer is like: I want to be distinct and I want people to buckle up, strap in, you-must-be-this-tall to read my essay.
In any case, next week might be the last time I send this book off because we’re getting down to it. What are we? 9.5 months away from publication? Holy shit …
Stay wild CNFers, and if you can’t do, interview, see ya.
