Reading time: About 1 minute
This is my weekly installment of “writing about writing,” in which I scan the world to find websites, books and articles to help other writers. Today I discuss an article written by Saul Austerlitz.
I read a New York Times Opinionator column headlined “The Lost Art of the Condolence Letter,” last month. From the tone, the skillful use of figurative language and the sentiment — that we should all recognize the “art” of condolence letters — I assumed the writer, Saul Austerlitz, to be a gentlemen approaching the downward slope of late middle-age.
Imagine my surprise when, after a quick bit of research on the Internet, I discovered his website and his photo that, to my untrained eye, makes him look no older than 35, if that.
Here’s where his work has been published: the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Slate, the Village Voice, The National, the San Francisco Chronicle, Spin, Rolling Stone, Paste, and other publications. He’s also written a book about sitcoms that sounds interesting: Sitcom: A History in 24 Episodes, from I Love Lucy to Community.
The man clearly has a knack for figurative language. Here is my favourite paragraph from his piece on condolence letters:
My friend was irreplaceable, and her death left a jagged hole I will spend the rest of my life tiptoeing around the edges of. Writing about her loss — to her husband, now a widower, and her mother — was an opportunity to play geographer, and draw a map of the contours of our shared sorrow.
Isn’t that beautiful writing? But, more than that, I appreciated the thought he put into his essay. I wonder if I suspected he was older because his writing suggested the maturity and experience of someone who had lived a relatively long life?