“The Everlasting Stream: A True Story of Rabbits, Guns, Friendship, and Family”
“… This does for hunting what ‘A River Runs Through It’ did for fly-fishing.”
– Publishers Weekly
When his father-in-law first took him hunting on his Kentucky farm, Walt Harrington had never shot a rabbit. A high-profile Washington Post reporter with a taste for manicures and expensive suits, he felt silly in his borrowed hunting gear, not quite knowing how to hold the shotgun Alex had given him as a gift. And he worried about whether he would get along with Alex’s hunting buddies — three rough-edged African-American country men who seemed to have nothing in common with the white city slicker. Little did he know that over the next twelve years of Thanksgiving hunting trips, these four “good ol’ boys” would change not only his opinions about hunting, but his feelings about the things that mattered to him most.
In crisp, sometimes poetic prose that brings autumn mornings crackling alive, The Everlasting Stream shares the lessons that led Harrington to a new notion of the good life. Even as he enjoyed dinner at the White House with foreign leaders and political heavyweights, he found himself longing for the hills and hollows that Alex, Bobby, Lewis and Carl knew almost as well as the calls of their dogs. Over hard-won shots of bourbon and a steady stream of wisecracks (especially about the time he accidentally sprayed his father-in-law with shotgun pellets), Harrington came to appreciate the value of old-fashioned friendship and masculinity, the complexities of guilt and responsibility, and the enduring magic of a memorable moment. When his son turned twelve, Harrington began to take him hunting too, believing his suburban boy would benefit from spending time in the forests and fields, feeling the complex emotions of killing an animal for sport and food, and from seeing his grandfather with men whose idea of love and friendship always put actions before words.
By turns witty, revelatory and profoundly elegant, “The Everlasting Stream” reminds us of the small and not-so-small things we must treasure in lives.
“The Beholder’s Eye: A Collection of America’s Finest Personal Journalism”
“A collection of first-person journalism edited by former Washington Post reporter Harrington … here aims to dispel the old journalistic cliche: that a journalist writing about him/herself is always ’self-indulgent and, quite likely, narcissistic.’ He couldn’t have put together a better lineup of writers to make the point that it doesn’t have to be. Scott Anderson’s ‘Prisoners of War,’ a 40-page mini-opus about the thrill and horror of being a war reporter, depicts with astonishing honesty the almost limitless selfishness that moves danger-seekers. The author flickers back and forth between his quixotic, quite possibly insane search for a missing man in one of the most dangerous parts of Chechnya and his near-execution, along with brother Jon Lee Anderson (known for his reports from Baghdad), at the hands of Tamil Tigers.
“Anderson’s piece is almost matched by Davis Miller’s ‘My Dinner with Ali,’ in which the writer goes looking for the aged boxer and ends up practically getting adopted by the champ’s family, who are quite used to Ali bringing home strays. Even lesser pieces are well executed: ‘A Day at the Dogfights’ may be laden with tired hardboiled cliches, but Harry Crews crams it fit to burst with vivid imagery; and Mike Sager’s ‘Last Tango in Tahiti,’ the Apocalypse Now-esque story of hunting down Marlon Brando for an interview, is as funny as it is self-aggrandizing. ‘Her Blue Haven’ is a Sunday-magazine-style recollection by L.A. sportswriter Bill Plaschke of his meeting with a rabid Dodgers fan afflicted with cerebral palsy. It could have been the most sentimental piece of the bunch; instead, it is a crushingly painful story rendered with true beauty. Not just some of the country’s finest personal journalism, but some of its finest journalism, period.”
–Kirkus Reviews
“Walt Harrington … offers an anthology of first-person journalism. Although there is a rule that journalism must be written in the third person, great journalists such as Pyle, Orwell, Agee, Plimpton and Hunter S. Thompson have all, at one time or another, been characters in their own stories, people with personalities that shaped what they saw and reported, who were touched and changed by the experiences about which they wrote.
These pieces represent the very best of an increasing trend toward personal narrative: Mike Sager stalking Marlon Brando in the Tahitian jungle; J.R. Moehringer’s quest to discover the true identity of an old boxer; Bill Plaschke’s story about a woman with cerebral palsy who runs a Los Angeles Dodgers web site nobody reads; Scott Anderson’s story of his lifetime of covering war after war, Barbara Ehrenreich’s story of her struggle to understand the social and personal meaning of suffering with cancer; Adam Gopnik’s story of his relationship with his aging and oblique Freudian psychiatrist, and Harrington’s own tale of his family’s struggle to persevere.”
– Grove Atlantic
“Crossings: A White Man’s Journey into Black America”
“Honest and devoid of flackery … so different from what we’re used to reading about blacks that it seems almost subversive.”
– Atlantic Monthly
“A message in a bottle floated out to white America about black America’s remarkable diversity and resilience.”
– New York Newsday
One day in the dentist’s office, journalist Walt Harrington heard a casual racist joke that left him enraged. Married to a black woman, Harrington is the father of two biracial children. His experience in the dentist’s office made him realize not only that the joke was about his own children but also that he really knew very little about what it was like to be a black person in America.
After this rude awakening, Harrington set off on a 25,000-mile journey through black America, talking with scores of black and white people along the way, including an old sharecropper, a city police chief, a jazz trumpeter, a convicted murdered, a welfare mother and a corporate mogul. In “Crossings,” winner of the Gustavus Myers Award for the Study of Human Rights, Harrrington shares what he learned as he traveled and listened.
“Intimate Journalism”
An exemplary text for courses in feature writing, magazine, and literary journalism, “Intimate Journalism” introduces students to the cutting-edge art of combining traditional feature writing with deep journalistic inquiry. This collection of award-winning articles elevates human interest reporting to new heights in the literary journalism field. In a detailed, hands-on, practical primer on in-depth human interest reporting, editor Walt Harrington prefaces this outstanding collection by sharing the trade secrets from his nearly 15 years as a staff writer for The Washington Post Magazine. Fifteen articles follow, each containing fascinating examples of evocative human reporting by some of the most artful journalists in America. Each article is followed by an invaluable afterword from each journalist describing how he or she conceptualized, reported and wrote their particular story.
In this passionate and intense volume, Harrington gives journalists inspiration and guidance on how to turn ordinary life into extraordinary journalism. A must for students and teachers of journalism, for budding magazine and newspaper writers, and for professional journalists who wish to be re-inspired by the superb reporting, distinctive writing and sound advice found in this text.
“At the Heart of It”
“What’s extraordinary about these people isn’t so much their lives as the way Harrington profiles them. In 16 pieces originally published in the Washington Post Magazine, the award-winning journalist and author of ‘Crossings: A White Man’s Journey into Black America’ displays a storyteller’s ability to find the drama and pathos in seemingly mundane materials. Yet unlike Oprah, Rickie, Geraldo and other electronic purveyors of what oozes its way under the rubric of ‘human interest,’ Harrington neither demeans nor trivializes. Readers will sense the respect he feels for the young father and mother living ‘in the American netherworld between poverty and the middle class’ as they celebrate a new job with a bottle of Manischewitz Concord Grape wine and a dinner of grilled hot dog and cheese sandwiches, macaroni and cheese and a tossed salad. The same is true of his compassion for a group of suburban 13-year-old girls learning to play soccer ‘with the abandon of boys,’ as they ’sweat like roadside ditchdiggers, their T-shirt sleeves rolled up over their shoulders.’ Although his subjects include a few better-known sorts (including poet Rita Dove), most of the people here are the sort that the media tends to overlook. It is Harrington’s gift as a writer that makes their stories equally compelling and unforgettable.”
– Publishers Weekly
“When I picked up Walt Harrington’s collection of his profiles from The Washington Post Magazine, I’ll admit it was rather dutifully (he’s going to be speaking at a conference I’m attending), and I didn’t expect to become such a fan. I brought a prejudice of ‘just a newspaper article,’ not expecting the impact of anything born of a such a transient outlet (today’s news, tomorrow’s fishwrap) to outlast the day, or at best a week. But Harrington raises his sights higher — and lower. With one exception (the sensitive portrait of U.S. poet laureate Rita Dove, so evocative of a poet’s thought process that I made copies for all my poet friends), he writes about people not normally considered ‘important’ enough to make it into mass circulation. For example, Harrington’s humane curiosity portrays the real-world struggles between an elderly African-American minister, once strong and dominant, and his daughters who now take care of him, portraying without judgment their struggles with anger, their seeking compassion and not always finding it. Harrington’s psychology and insight are amazing as he examines the ‘ordinary people, extraordinary lives’ of his subtitle, such as a couple who has managed to create a marriage in which they equally share the childrearing, or of another couple who have slid into near poverty, or the life-changing experience for girls who participate in a competitive high school soccer team.
“Each of Harrington’s subjects seems fascinating from a different vector: the tough streets of D.C. and how they are pulling down a once-stoic vice detective (part thriller, part sociological portrait of an impoverished neighborhood); the life of a man who works tirelessly for the release of death row inmates (an inspiring example of humanity at its best); a study of three generations of women (the groundwater basic impact of family, plus a feminist perspective of the changing attitudes and opportunities for women). With almost every portrait, we both learn about a few individual people we’d likely never have had the opportunity to meet, and we also learn a larger lesson — about the sociology of a section of people, or about the dynamics of family.”
– Ann Sieber
“American Profiles”
“Walt Harrington is a clear, lucid, sometimes quite compelling writer. He touches on the important social, cultura, and racial issues of our time. He is not only a good essayist, but a clear-headed, thoughtful observer of people and their manner of being with one another.” — Robert Coles
