A heady device

If done well, devices such as repeated (but varied) references to a particular thing in a story can make a piece of writing stronger.

I thought Bill Landauer did that in his story on people who were hoping to see Vice President Joe Biden in York. Bill kept referring to Biden's head/hair as, in a way, a symbol of what people were hoping to see. The reference starts in the the third graf -- "Now they all waited for the white haired dome in the black car to zip past ..." -- and reappeared a couple times:

Inside, behind tinted windows, white hair flashed.

and

The rear door opened and the coiffed white mop bobbed into daylight.

and

Then, to the back of Biden's head, "We voted for you!"

I thought by using one of Biden's most notable physical characteristics, Bill captured what it's like to try to catch a glimpse of someone famous in a crowd.

Mobster or kindly old man?

You may have heard that an accused organized crime leader named Whitey Bulger was caught yesterday by the FBI. I found this 1998 Boston Globe story about Bulger via longform.org. It caught my eye because of the way it introduces Bulger from a completely different point of view -- that of a family in Louisiana who he'd befriended and who could not be convinced he was an alleged violent criminal:

From Shelley Murphy's story:

     The Whitey Bulger who is accused of holding a knife to a mortgage broker's throat at a South Boston variety store while extorting $50,000 was driving around this remote island offering dog biscuits to strays from a bag in the trunk of his Mercury Grand Marquis.

The Whitey Bulger who was branded a reputed killer, crime boss, and bank robber by the 1986 President's Commission on Organized Crime often shut off the Gautreaux television, lecturing them on how bad it was to expose children to violent shows, including the local news.

This Whitey Bulger wept when a dying puppy was shot in the head to end its suffering. He went fishing once and tossed back all the small fish.

When two of the Gautreaux children came home from school with a note saying they had vision problems, Bulger and his girlfriend, Catherine Greig, bought them glasses.

Character sketch in reverse

A book of essays on sports by David Halberstam includes a piece he wrote in 2002 about getting an interview with Ted Williams, legendary as a hitter, fighter pilot in WW2 and fisherman, and for a loud, profane, over-the-top personality.

To capture Williams' character, you might craft the piece around it, for example, using description, word choice, tone and all those tools to give the whole piece the feel of being of Williams; or you might devote a couple of strong grafs near the top to a character sketch and let Williams' dialogue and actions flesh it out.

But in this piece, Halberstam does something fantastic: By careful use of the language and of sentence construction, he creates a formal, reserved, almost high-society world that Williams then crashes into without grace or finesse. Williams is the bull; the story is Halberstam's china shop. It's characterization in reverse.

An example:

My appointment with Mr. Theodore Williams of the Islamorada, Fla., Williams family had been agreed on well in advance, though we had not yet talked to each other. That is normal in matters of this gravity, and our earlier arrangements had been conducted through intermediaries.
My representative had been Mr. Robert M. Knight of Bloomington, Ind., who, in addition to being my occasional appointments secretary, is coach to the Indiana University basketball team. Mr. Knight, on occasion, has had troubles with members of the press himself, and was almost as celebrated as Mr. Williams in this regard. ....
I arrived well in advance at the motel where Mr. Williams would call on me, and I was told he would come by at eight the next morning to summon me to our meeting. The motel itself was not exactly memorable. Simpler America, vintage 1950s southern Florida, I would say, if architecture were my specialty, which it is not. But I do remember that the cost of it for the night was roughly what the cost of orange juice is at a hotel in the city in which I live, New York.
At exactly 8 o'clock in the morning there was an extremely loud knock on my door. I answered it, and there was Mr. Williams, and he looked me over critically and then announced, ''You look just like your goddamn pictures.''