lillian ross

1
lillian ross

• the girl with the built-in tape recorder
• - james thurber

louise wong feb 2004
2
in the beginning..

• born 1927 in Syracuse, NY
• reporter at the new yorker from 1945 to 1987,
  returning in 1993
• Talk of the Town columns, mostly profiles
• recent work includes a story about a
  post-September 11 self-defence class techniques
  of krav maga or contact combat, official
  self-defence system of Israeli defence forces.
• 2003 profile of abstract expressionist painter,
  agnes martin contemporary of mark rothko and
  neighbour of john hustons son, tony.

3
in the beginning..

• Hired during a time when most of the male
  staffers were at war.
• He didnt like her at first, believing her to be
  a communist.
• But they began an affair around the time after
  Picture which lasted for 40 years until his death
  in 1992.
• Writer and ego she was criticised for a piece
  she wrote about Katherine Hepburns discretion
  during her affair with Spencer Tracy which was
  seen as a pat on her own back for her
  relationship with Shawn.

4
portrait of hemingway the background

• two days in the life of Heminway during a visit
  to New York in late 1949 before he and fourth
  wife went to Europe.
• chronicles his ego, daily habits, propensity for
  alcohol, mood swings, conversation patterns
• When we drew up at the museum entrance, a line
  of school children was moving slowly. Hemingway
  impatiently led us past them. In the lobby, he
  paused, pulled a silver flask from one of his
  coat pockets, unscrewed its top, and took a long
  drink.
• Milton Hindus, NY Times Book Review The effect
  of her severely unadorned Portrait was to create
  an impression of an unpleasant egotist, a
  celebrity who, to a pathetic extent, had
  identified himself with his own public image.
  An image that Hemingway felt he had to uphold
  through his writing and defend the title again
  against all the young new ones, as he is quoted
  in the profile.

5
portrait of hemingway the background

• many hated the way Hemingway was depicted,
  including his third wife "Oh, that thing," she
  said. "It made Ernest look like such a fool that
  it's a wonder he didn't go and shoot himself ...
  which of course he did do a few years later."
• much has been said about the way in which he was
  depicted to be speaking in short-hand, a send-up
  of Native American speech.
• BUT consider "I learned to write by looking at
  paintings in the Luxembourg Museum in Paris,"
  and, he adds, from studying composers. "In the
  first paragraphs of 'Farewell,' I used the word
  'and' consciously over and over the way Mr.
  Johann Sebastian Bach used a note in music when
  he was emitting counterpoint."
• Joshua Green, Washington Monthly The problem
  with Ross's extended quotations is that one
  doubts whether anyone speaks quite so flawlessly
  at such great length.
• Ross says she substitutes her own words for her
  subject's if she feels it's more representative,
  a license that would cost many reporters their
  job.
• In her preface, Ross says
• "Hemingway had the nerve to be like nobody else
  on earth.

6
hemingway on portrait of hemingway

• Much better than most novels.
• Hemingway and Ross remained friends. He wrote
  this in of 80 letters to her
• They cant understand you meaning himself
  being a serious writer and not be
  solemn.
• "Please don't think you ever have to answer any
  jerks or ever defend me. I am self-propelled and
  self-defendable.
• All are very astonished because I don't hold
  anything against you who made an effort to
  destroy me and nearly did, they say. I always
  tell them how can I be destroyed by a woman when
  she is a friend of mine and we have never even
  been to bed and no money has changed hands?"
• "Actually good old Profile made me about as many
  enemies as we have in North Korea. But who gives
  a shit? A man should be known by the enemies he
  keeps."
• On writing, Hemingway had this advice for her
• "Just call them the way you see them and the
  hell with it."

7
portrait of hemingway the analysis

• Kramers idea of depicting routine events
  Hemingway has his glasses fixed, buys a coat,
  eats in a hotel room with his wife, son and a
  friend, avoiding the showoff places. He spends
  two hours studying the master painters at the
  Metropolitan Museum.
• Intimate voice, the defining mark Kramer says
  the narrator of LJ has a personality, is a whole
  person, frank, wry, puzzled, judgemental, even
  self-mocking. To what degree is Ross like this?
  Not much of her personality is injected into
  her pieces and shes known more for her gently
  mocking her subjects and being invisible. She
  allows scenes to play themselves out but there is
  a level of her personality she chooses which
  scenes and what dialogue.
• In the excerpt, Ross appears only at the
  beginning and the end. She reminds Hemingway
  about getting a coat and leaves WG and EH,
  observing their playful punching.
• Changes in Hemingways moods are tracked by
  description as much through dialogue and action.
  From being reluctant in buying a coat to
  happiness that his stomach is hard and smaller
  than expected. Seemingly trivial shows a great
  man and his vulnerabilities as well as his
  playfulness.

8
portrait of hemingway the analysis

• Not much appears to happen but a lot is conveyed
  in the dialogue with Hemingway
• His recounting of conversation with F. Scott
  Fitzgerald p44-45.
• His interaction with staff at AF.
• His conversation with Winston Guest.
• Is he really foolish or just eccentric and
  complicated?
• consider what Gene points out p57 when asked by
  Winston Guest how his book is. In spring of 1944,
  he went to Europe to cover the war. A car crash
  left him with a serious concussion and a gash in
  his head requiring over 50 stitches.
• Joined allied forces in northern France as they
  crossed into Germany. What he saw there was
  referred to in his next novel Across the River
  and Into the Trees. Critics hated it and he felt
  hed lost his standing as the worlds pre-eminent
  novelist.
• Instead he started work on Old Man and The Sea, a
  popular and critical success winning Pullitzer
  1953 and Nobel 1954 prizes.
• Is Hemingway referring to overcoming not only his
  own wounds but also the hurt from critics?

9
picture the background

• moved to California in 1950 to work on
  behind-the-scenes look at Hollywood
• Picture published as both novella and five-part
  series in The New Yorker 1951/2
• Regarded as tour-de-force and to this day, is
  considered one of the best inside scoops of the
  workings of Tinseltown.
• Follows director John Hustons making of The Red
  Bade of Courage, commercial flop but I thought
  it was the best picture I ever made
• Shows both heroic and foolish attitudes in
  Hollywood from deal to completion of film. Art vs
  commerce.

10
picture the background

• NY Times, Budd Shulberg if you value your
  privacy, if you do not want to be caught with
  your clichés down or your pretensions showing,
  Miss Ross is not the lady to ask into your home.
  She has explored Hollywood with a camera eye and
  a microphonic ear..is hardly the impartial and
  tactful treatment of Hollywood her publishers
  claim.
• Eavesdropping with a vengeance
• Quotations Miss Ross has millions of em
• Irving Wallace at the New York Times Book Review
  "Lillian Ross is the mistress of selectively
  listening and viewing, of capturing the one
  moment that entirely illuminates the scene, of
  fastening on the one quote that tells all. She is
  a brilliant interpreter of what she hears and
  observes.
• invisible reporter BUT calculating OR not wanting
  to assume anything?

11
picture the analysis

• a question about simplicity in writing the first
  sentence.
• complete detachment from story where is her
  presence?
• showing rather than telling the personality of
  characters, the atmosphere in which they were
  working as well as their mental mind-set. Huston
  hates the city and wants to be on a horse p52
• in what is essentially two conversations, she
  captures the tension between the artistic and
  commercial interests of Hollywood.
• DIALOGUE illustrates relationships
• between director and screenwriter
• Huston and Agee
• between director and producer
• Huston and Spiegel

12
guiding principles the tools

• dont use a tape recorder
• the machine distorts the truth
• lazy way of eliciting talk
• tape-recorded interviews are misleading
• and lifeless
• literal reality rarely rings true ie necessary
  for straight news stories but this is a different
  kind of journalism
• listening while writing but LISTENING takes
  priority
• key phrasing and words rhythm and context
• work with the facts
• reporter doesnt have right to say what subject
  is thinking or feeling
• thoughts, opinions and feelings including those
  of the reporter demonstrated in reporting quotes
  or actions
• build scenes into little story-films
• beginning, middle and end
• style
• no room for ambiguity in reporting
• clear, simple and straightforward

13
guiding principles the chemistry

• Of her subjects "I set them up, get out of the
  way, and let them go.
• Of her editorial voice "Everything is implied
  in the facts.
• Of writing topics "If I find it interesting to
  write, I naturally assume the reader will find it
  interesting to read.
• Write only about people, situations and events
  that appeal.
• I dont write about anybody who doesnt want me
  to and I dont write about anyone I dont like.
• I trust my response to a person in the first few
  minutes of meeting him. The first experience is
  the most significant and most memorable.
• If another person permits me to write about him,
  he is opening his life to me, and I have a
  responsibility to him. Even if that person is
  indiscreet about himself, or invades his own
  privacy, I use my own judgement in deciding what
  to write
• Just because someone "said it" is no reason for
  me to use it. My obligation to people I write
  about doesn't end once my piece is in print.
  Anyone who trusts me enough to talk about himself
  is giving me a form of friendship.

14
in her own words..

• What craziness!
• A reporter doing a story can't pretend to
  be invisible, let alone a fly he or she is seen
  and heard and responded to by the people he or
  she is writing about a reporter is always
  chemically involved in a story.

15
in her own words..

• The act of a pro is to make it look easy..
• Fred Astaire doesn't grunt when he dances to let
  you know how hard it is.
• If you're good at it, you leave no
  fingerprints.''

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the last word..
Ive had a sense of what the story should be
right away, and, as Id go along in writing it,
there has been a certain mystical force -
something outside of myself - that takes over
and the story seems to write itself. Once that
force takes over, it makes the work seem
delightfully easy and natural and supremely
enjoyable. Its sort of like having sex.
-lillian ross, 2002

• the end