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.
Continue reading “Episode 422: Thirty Years of “The Last Shot,” Lessons from Obstacles, and Old-School Note Taking with Darcy Frey”