Home stretch on "The 66 Kid." Daniel Harshberger handed in Signature 11 last Friday, before we headed off to the Tucson Book Festival and now we're on the final chapter of growing up on Route 66 and this is where the sadness and regret comes crashing in. Ha. Well, not entirely but some bummers are there-in.
Meanwhile, trying to go back and recapture some scenes that I want to make better. Among them, The Night Man spread where we talk about those graveyard dudes. Got up this morning and whipped this out before breakfast:
Daily Whipout: "The Night Man Smokes While Hosing Off The Driveway With Gasoline, Part II"
Then, before I went into work I decided I wanted to do a close up:
Daily Whipout, "The Night Man Close Up On A Hot, Neon Night"
On Sunday afternoon at the Tucson Book Festival, my book editor, Stuart Rosebrook dragged me to a panel on journalism featuring the self-styled Texas Mafia, "Stephen Harrigan, Glenn Frankel and S.C. Gwynne. All three are notable authors (Gwynne's "Empire of The Summer Moon" is being made into a movie by Warner Bros., I believe). Anyway, it was a tour de force on the integrity of non-fiction writing and the lessons of journalism and it was a total treat to hear the three talk about their backgrounds in journalism and how it has informed their writing and their books. At one point, Mr. Frankel summed up journalism with this quote:
"Journalism is what people do not want you to print. All the rest is advertising."
—Lord Northcliffe, circa 1986, and also attributed to W.R. Hearst among others