The Death of a Journalist
(Page 2 of 11)
September/October 1996
Lynda Schuster, Granta (www.granta.com)
During my interview with the Journal's editors, I earnestly explained that I wasn't interested in working domestically, I wanted to be a foreign correspondent. They nodded understandingly and dispatched me to their Dallas bureau. It was a severe shock, going to a place where I was addressed, with true Texan courtesy, as 'little lady.' My beat was agriculture: For months I covered sheep auctions in Oklahoma, wheezed in wheat fields in Kansas, hitched rides on harvesters in Arkansas.
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Then -- as usually happens in this type of tale -- I got a break. The Journal's Dallas bureau was responsible for reporting on Central America. The correspondent was suddenly transferred to Los Angeles and the other reporters in the bureau were engrossed in business beats they didn't want to relinquish, so it fell to me to cover one of the hottest foreign stories of the decade. (These were the early days of Ronald Reagan's administration, when the United States was becoming deeply involved in the region.)
That was why I found myself in a hotel coffee shop in Costa Rica: The country was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, and the Journal's 2 million readers back home were waiting to read about it. I knew how to write about winter wheat, but an entire nation? To calm myself I was taking deep breaths through my mouth when my stringer, a brash kid from the States who did odd jobs for several newspapers and boasted an extravagant body odor, suddenly appeared among the potted plants. He explained that today he was working for Dial Torgerson of the Los Angeles Times. Did I want to meet him?
Of course I did. I had read about Dial's exploits and remembered in particular how he had foiled the Israeli military censors' attempt to quash a report of war atrocities by flying to London and filing his story there. It caused a huge furor, and his subterfuge seemed to me a noble thing. I expected to be introduced to a quintessential foreign correspondent -- tall, handsome, trench-coated. Instead, I was shaking the hand of a small, wiry, middle-aged man in a blue seersucker suit and ugly, squared-off black shoes. What hair he had left was silver, and he walked with a peculiar, slightly rolling gait.
His voice was deep and resonant and lingered over each syllable like a radio announcer's. 'So,' he said, 'what's a nice Jewish girl like you doing in a place like this?'
'Woman,' I replied, rather irked. He looked confused. 'We're called women nowadays.'
Not exactly a transcendent moment.
After I had finished my interviews for the day, and Dial had been taken around town by the stringer, we all met for supper in a pseudo-French restaurant near the hotel. We ordered food -- steaks for them, snapper for me -- and wine and settled into the cushiony chairs. Then Dial and I began to talk -- and I was utterly transfixed. He bewitched me with tales from the Middle East, Africa, the Maghreb. He was a hypnotic storyteller with an actor's phrasing and a Southerner's ear for language (his mother's people came from North Carolina). Platters of food came and went, untouched. Never had I encountered such a union of wit, intelligence, charm.
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