Playing Santa changed Bob Rutan profoundly
esquire.com
Playing Santa changed Bob Rutan profoundly
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Re: Playing Santa changed Bob Rutan profoundly
#2Re: Playing Santa changed Bob Rutan profoundly
#3Esquire writing is so weird. It’s genuinely like a relic from another age.
“ They drank tumblers of Irish whiskey filled to the brim, illicit pours they secured with ten-dollar tips to a curvy Dominican bartender.”
“ For the price of three beers, he told me his story.”
“ In the two decades since the show aired, a hundred thousand American Spirits had yellowed Bob’s fingers and turned his voice to gravel.”
When I read things like this I find it very hard to take the wider message seriously, because it feels like writing-as-cosplay, the writer inhabiting a caricature of “hard bitten” and inserting that at the forefront of the piece.
Very odd.
Re: Playing Santa changed Bob Rutan profoundly
#4Esquire writing is so weird. It’s genuinely like a relic from another age. “ They drank tumblers of Irish whiskey filled to the brim, illicit pours they secured with ten-dollar tips to a curvy Dominican bartender.” “ For the price of three beers, he told me his story.” “ In the two decades since the show aired, a hundred thousand American Spirits had yellowed Bob’s fingers and turned his voice to gravel.” When I read…
Everyone is just pretending to be something. The people writing in the 60s were also apeing a style in just the same way.
Personally, I liked the writing.
Re: Playing Santa changed Bob Rutan profoundly
#5Esquire writing is so weird. It’s genuinely like a relic from another age. “ They drank tumblers of Irish whiskey filled to the brim, illicit pours they secured with ten-dollar tips to a curvy Dominican bartender.” “ For the price of three beers, he told me his story.” “ In the two decades since the show aired, a hundred thousand American Spirits had yellowed Bob’s fingers and turned his voice to gravel.” When I read…
Why must it be a caricature? Many successful writers are some rather extreme people, which is probably part of the reason why they're successful. Reality is, as always, far stranger than fiction, and a lifetime of exceptional experience is the writer's palette.
Re: Playing Santa changed Bob Rutan profoundly
#6'Profound' and 'strange' have distinct meanings. I'd suggest the title be re-edited to either
Playing Santa did strange things to Bob Rutan
or just the first line of the Esquire title:
Playing Santa does strange things to a man
Re: Playing Santa changed Bob Rutan profoundly
#7Esquire writing is so weird. It’s genuinely like a relic from another age. “ They drank tumblers of Irish whiskey filled to the brim, illicit pours they secured with ten-dollar tips to a curvy Dominican bartender.” “ For the price of three beers, he told me his story.” “ In the two decades since the show aired, a hundred thousand American Spirits had yellowed Bob’s fingers and turned his voice to gravel.” When I read…
I could not for the life of me guess what in particular is wrong with at least the second example here, if not the others. Can you explain what you mean? Is it the very mention of beers and cigarettes that perhaps triggers this reaction?
Re: Playing Santa changed Bob Rutan profoundly
#8Esquire writing is so weird. It’s genuinely like a relic from another age. “ They drank tumblers of Irish whiskey filled to the brim, illicit pours they secured with ten-dollar tips to a curvy Dominican bartender.” “ For the price of three beers, he told me his story.” “ In the two decades since the show aired, a hundred thousand American Spirits had yellowed Bob’s fingers and turned his voice to gravel.” When I read…
Will gladly take this over the current tsunami of AI-written slop. “It’s not only a relic from a bygone era; it’s a rhetorical masterpiece”
Re: Playing Santa changed Bob Rutan profoundly
#9Esquire writing is so weird. It’s genuinely like a relic from another age. “ They drank tumblers of Irish whiskey filled to the brim, illicit pours they secured with ten-dollar tips to a curvy Dominican bartender.” “ For the price of three beers, he told me his story.” “ In the two decades since the show aired, a hundred thousand American Spirits had yellowed Bob’s fingers and turned his voice to gravel.” When I read…
So many are desperately wishing to be the next Tom Wolfe rather than striving to find their own voice and style (as Wolfe did).
Re: Playing Santa changed Bob Rutan profoundly
#10Esquire writing is so weird. It’s genuinely like a relic from another age. “ They drank tumblers of Irish whiskey filled to the brim, illicit pours they secured with ten-dollar tips to a curvy Dominican bartender.” “ For the price of three beers, he told me his story.” “ In the two decades since the show aired, a hundred thousand American Spirits had yellowed Bob’s fingers and turned his voice to gravel.” When I read…
> Esquire writing is so weird. It’s genuinely like a relic from another age.
I agree: but to me that's at least something kind of interesting and evocative, even if it's a trainwreck. (In fact, it might even be better when it's a trainwreck). A nice break from LLM's this-not-that. This one's not so bad IMO.