The Fiddler in the Subway: The Story of the World-Class Violinist Who Played for Handouts. . . And Other Virtuoso Performances by America's Foremost Feature Writer
GENE WEINGARTEN IS THE O. HENRY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM
Simply the best storyteller around, Weingarten describes the world as you think it is before revealing how it actually is—in narratives that are by turns hilarious, heartwarming, and provocative, but always memorable.
Millions of people know the title piece about violinist Joshua Bell, which originally began as a stunt: What would happen if you put a world-class musician outside a Washington, D.C., subway station to play for spare change? Would anyone even notice? The answer was no. Weingarten’s story went viral, becoming a widely referenced lesson about life lived too quickly. Other classic stories—the one about “The Great Zucchini,” a wildly popular but personally flawed children’s entertainer; the search for the official “Armpit of America”; a profile of the typical American nonvoter—all of them reveal as much about their readers as they do their subjects.
Simply the best storyteller around, Weingarten describes the world as you think it is before revealing how it actually is—in narratives that are by turns hilarious, heartwarming, and provocative, but always memorable.
Millions of people know the title piece about violinist Joshua Bell, which originally began as a stunt: What would happen if you put a world-class musician outside a Washington, D.C., subway station to play for spare change? Would anyone even notice? The answer was no. Weingarten’s story went viral, becoming a widely referenced lesson about life lived too quickly. Other classic stories—the one about “The Great Zucchini,” a wildly popular but personally flawed children’s entertainer; the search for the official “Armpit of America”; a profile of the typical American nonvoter—all of them reveal as much about their readers as they do their subjects.
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Community Reviews
This is a book of short stories, or really selected pieces from columns that Weingarten wrote for The Washington Post.
I think most people by now know about the title story, which I first saw on YouTube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=hnOPu0_YWhw
The premise was, what would happen if you took a world-class violinist, Joshua Bell, and put him inside the bowels of a DC Metro station, during the morning rush hour??? Will anyone take notice that something different is happening here, that genius (Joshua Bell doesn't like to be referred to that way) is being witnessed? It was a great little experiment, and he actually got to speak to some of the commuters about what was going on in their head when they stopped to listen - or didn't.
Weingarten is obviously a great journalist. He has a gift for taking any person, any topic, and making a great story out of it, and taking you someplace you don't expect when you first start reading.
"The Ghost of the Hardy Boys" starts out as a hilarious piece about the hack writer who was responsible for all of that lame dialogue and those improbable scenarios, but then as we learn more about the man who authored many of those books, it becomes a heart-wrenching story about a truly good writer who was desperate for money.
I won't go into all of them, but there's a very entertaining one about his search for the real Armpit of America, one about Garry Trudeau's unexpected role as injured war veterans' advocate, and one about a young girl in a coma who becomes one of those freaky religious icons and believed giver of miracles because she supposedly cries tears of some kind of holy oil...
I have to admit there was one piece I just couldn't bring myself to read - called "Fatal Distraction." Just reading the intro brought me to tears and I knew I couldn't handle the story. It's already haunting me - stories like that always do.
I think most people by now know about the title story, which I first saw on YouTube: http://youtube.com/watch?v=hnOPu0_YWhw
The premise was, what would happen if you took a world-class violinist, Joshua Bell, and put him inside the bowels of a DC Metro station, during the morning rush hour??? Will anyone take notice that something different is happening here, that genius (Joshua Bell doesn't like to be referred to that way) is being witnessed? It was a great little experiment, and he actually got to speak to some of the commuters about what was going on in their head when they stopped to listen - or didn't.
Weingarten is obviously a great journalist. He has a gift for taking any person, any topic, and making a great story out of it, and taking you someplace you don't expect when you first start reading.
"The Ghost of the Hardy Boys" starts out as a hilarious piece about the hack writer who was responsible for all of that lame dialogue and those improbable scenarios, but then as we learn more about the man who authored many of those books, it becomes a heart-wrenching story about a truly good writer who was desperate for money.
I won't go into all of them, but there's a very entertaining one about his search for the real Armpit of America, one about Garry Trudeau's unexpected role as injured war veterans' advocate, and one about a young girl in a coma who becomes one of those freaky religious icons and believed giver of miracles because she supposedly cries tears of some kind of holy oil...
I have to admit there was one piece I just couldn't bring myself to read - called "Fatal Distraction." Just reading the intro brought me to tears and I knew I couldn't handle the story. It's already haunting me - stories like that always do.
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