The Detective - (The Stacks Reader) by Walt Harrington (Paperback)

About the Book

Walt Harrington has been one of the most impactful journalists in the modern wave of long-form creative nonfiction. The Detective: And Other True Stories features eight of the best stories of his long writing career.

Book Synopsis

Walt Harrington has been one of the most impactful journalists in the modern wave of long-form creative nonfiction. The Detective: And Other True Stories features some of the highlights of Harrington's long career as an award-winning author, Washington Post Magazine writer, journalism professor/university administrator, and mentor to several generations of writers that have followed him in the practice of his Intimate Journalism, codified in a much-assigned university textbook he wrote to codify his practice and philosophy of the craft.

Over 30 years, Harrington did scores of profiles of people both famous and obscure. His goal: "To make ordinary people extraordinary and extraordinary people ordinary." A selection of the best stories in both categories-eight articles-are collected here.

In the title piece, Harrington embeds with a homicide detective during the height of the crack and murder epidemic of the 1990s. In "A Narrow World Made Wide," he embeds in quite a different environment, the writing studio of U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove. From there he takes the reader through the looking glass of the exacting, protracted, ritualized, and intimate process of writing a single poem-becoming in the process a story about the ethereal act of creativity itself.

Other stories include: a Harvard Law School grad who eschews a big-bucks job to make $24,000 a year trying to save convicted felons from death sentences; the trials and joys of a pair of sisters as they do their best to care for their aged, once-powerful father; an insider's look at the extraordinary life of civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks; a deeply reported profile of the 41st president of the U.S., George Herbert Walker Bush, followed by an account of the unlikely friendship Harrington developed with the 43rd president, George W. Bush, known as Dubya. Finally, Harrington turns his thoughts inward with an essay about his own father and son, and the bridge between the generations.

Each Harrington story is a precious gem, mined, cut, polished, and set by a master craftsman. Like a valuable piece of woodwork or a beautiful song, they stand alone as totems of thought and ideas, artful and full of insight. By chronicling the ordinary lives of the famous and obscure with hard-eyed compassion, Harrington reveals not only the true natures of his subjects but also the values they hold within the cultures they inhabit. In this way, his stories are as much about his readers as his subjects, a clue to understanding the conditions of others, something that could well serve our divided world of today.

Review Quotes

"I could not have known, when I met Walt Harrington more than forty years ago, that he would become one of the foundational touchstones for the genre writers now known as "literary journalism," "narrative journalism," and "long-form narrative nonfiction." An acutely rigorous observer and charismatic listener, he has spent a career crafting unforgettable narratives that grow organically from his reporting. A writer's writer whose words sing of human truth, Harrington's own writing-along with his teaching, speaking and textbooks-have helped to shape the form as we know it today." - Steve Weinberg is the author of 10 nonfiction books, a professor emeritus of the Missouri School of Journalism, and a former executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc.

"As a newspaper reporter, and later, during the late 1980s and into the 1990s, as a staff writer for the Washington Post Magazine, Walt Harrington found his lane and flourished, creating his own brand of New Journalism, which would later be codified in a popular textbook. Authored by Harrington and published in 1997, Intimate Journalism has been assigned for more than 20 years to thousands of undergraduate and graduate journalism students. Generations of long-form writers working today have spent time studying the advice and techniques of this master craftsman." -Alex Belth, curator of EsquireClassic.com and editor of The Stacks Reader Series.

"For years, I've been marveling at Walt Harrington's work and wondering how he did it. Not only is he a brilliant writer; he's a true master of the craft." - David Finkel, Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Award winner.

"A compelling and important book . . . It's been a long time since I have read anything as moving, and inspiring, as the passages about the relationship between Harrington and his father." -The Washington Post on The Everlasting Stream

"This beautifully written book is about life's true values . . . Read it and count your blessings."-President George H. W. Bush on The Everlasting Stream

"A message in a bottle floated out to white America about black America's remarkable diversity and resilience." -New York Newsday on Crossings

"Mr. Harrington adds the skill of an engaged reporter, a personal stake in his subject and the ability to find fresh voices to talk openly about themselves and multi-racialism."-The New York Times on Crossings

"This book is an example of what happens when a top-notch writer, laboring in solitude with purity of purpose, puts the right words in the right order." - Madeleine Blais, Pulitzer Prize winner, author, Uphill Walkers: Portrait of a Family on Acts of Creation

"Walt Harrington's gracefully nuanced prose, full of feeling and finely observed detail, wonderfully conveys the world of craftsmen in all its artful integrity. In the grand tradition of Tracy Kidder, John McPhee and Joseph Mitchell, Harrington offers us a fascinating and enduring homage to men at work." - Barry Siegel, Pulitzer Prize winner, director of the Literary Journalism Program, University of California, Irvine on Acts of Creation