A No Prize Winning Review of a Pulitzer Prize Winning Article

The assignment for today was to read the Pulitzer Prize winning stories of the Wall Street Journal--the guys who won Pulitzer's for thier breaking news of the September 11 terrorist attacks on America. After reading we were supposed to write about how these award winning journalism articles related to fiction.

The article I read for this project was "I Saw It All. Then I saw Nothing" by Daniel Henninger. Let's stop there. The title even sounds like fiction. I put it up there with The Sound and the Fury. I mean damn, that is a loaded title.

I always learned that good fiction starts in the middle of the story, and then gives you background, goes back to the middle, and ends with an open but understandable conclusion. Henninger does a great job of this. He opens in the middle of the story, not only is this interesting but it is the information the reader came for.

"I saw the airliner at the instant it hit the north tower of the World Trade Center. A little later I saw the flames burst out of the south tower when the second airliner hit it. I saw people fall from the top of the World Trade Center. I saw the south tower fall down. A little later, I saw the north tower fall down. I have, in the past several hours, looked into lower Manhattan, and each time, where the World Trade Center stood, there is absolutely nothing."

What Henninger also does in this opening graph is introduce us to his hero--himself. We see the entire incident through Henninger's eyes, and we know that. We follow his path through September 11 and live his experiences. (Read this and try to take the I off my keyboard.) Also Henninger has a great Anaphora with him. The repitition of "I saw" really gets the reader into what he in fact saw.

Now lets talk about setting. Ok, in the first draft we understood that the events take place in New York. To me, New York is a television set. I don't know what it's like. I just know that they have a really nice ball that they drop every New Year's Eve. Henninger does a great job showing us the area around the towers, before the attacks. He makes everything seem real to those who have never been there, and probably makes it concrete for those who have.

"There is a small coffee shop, with very good cinnamon-raisin croissants, across from American Express in the northern tower of the World Financial Center. Dow Jones is in the WFC's southern tower, and the whole complex sits in the shadow of the World Trade Center."

As for dialogue, Henninger does a good job tracing his internal monologue throughout the entire article. As for external dialogue, Henninger does not have much, but the bit that he does have really hits the spot. Its poignant in how it characterizes New Yorker's speech and the insantity that was the disaster.

"He got out and cops were telling people to 'make for the water.'"

There are alot of good things about how this article is written. Henninger is constantly pulling out little sides that really make the story flow. From his quick anecdote about his collegue, to his side about it seeming calm and crickets chirping, he makes the experience come alive.

Near the end of the story Henninger gets a little to artsy and deep for my personal tastes. He really wants the reader to feel the same sense of emptiness that he does. I really didn't feel it, but whose to say that means other people won't?