{"id":1215,"date":"2014-06-26T15:31:20","date_gmt":"2014-06-26T15:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2014\/06\/26\/upon-gary-smiths-retirement-the-venerated-sports-illustrated-writer-on-longform-immersion-and-intimacy\/"},"modified":"2024-03-04T20:20:26","modified_gmt":"2024-03-04T20:20:26","slug":"upon-gary-smiths-retirement-the-venerated-sports-illustrated-writer-on-longform-immersion-and-intimacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2014\/06\/26\/upon-gary-smiths-retirement-the-venerated-sports-illustrated-writer-on-longform-immersion-and-intimacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Upon Gary Smith’s retirement: The venerated Sports Illustrated writer on longform immersion and intimacy"},"content":{"rendered":" \n
\n
\n It isn’t often that a narrative journalist’s retirement makes the news, but when Sports Illustrated <\/em>announced this spring that longtime writer Gary Smith<\/strong> would be leaving the business<\/a>, the public eulogies \u2014 and the “Best of Gary<\/a>” lists \u2014 began immediately. Smith, who spent 32 years at SI<\/em>, wrote celebrated stories “that weren’t so much about sports as they were about life,” as S.L. Price<\/strong> writer put it<\/a>. Four of Smith’s stories won a National Magazine Award, and 13 were anthologized in Best American Sports Writing<\/em>. In honor of his retirement, here’s a Storyboard piece from August 2010. Smith appeared that year at the Mayborn Conference<\/a>, a narrative nonfiction event in Texas, and talked about \u201cShadow of a Nation<\/a>,\u201d the story of a Crow basketball player named Jonathan Takes Enemy. Smith is “known for his ability to connect with his subjects,” former Storyboard editor Andrea Pitzer<\/strong> wrote in that post<\/a>, “and so we were very interested in the answer he gave to a question about how he enters others\u2019 worlds as an outsider and develops intimacy.”

\"Gary<\/a>
Gary Smith<\/figcaption><\/figure>

Gary Smith<\/strong>: To become a longform writer and to kind of immerse yourself in different worlds, it\u2019s almost like a double-railed track. Not only do you grow as a writer, but that other rail of the track is huge. Part of it is something you\u2019re developing \u2013 some sense of self, getting a little more at ease in your own flesh and bones. So much of what happens in the interactions between you as the writer and the subject hinges on their trust in you, their confidence in you. And so much of that hinges on how comfortable you are. Any uneasiness you bring is going to cost you dearly.

I\u2019ve sensed that and felt it and seen it as the years go by. The more at ease I became, the more the trust grew in that interaction, the more goods, the more treasure came back. It\u2019s almost like you need to be very aware of both sides of that railroad track. If one is lagging behind the other, you\u2019re going to really shortchange yourself in everything you get as a writer. That\u2019s not the reason to do it \u2014 there are a zillion other better reasons to go on that trip. But that\u2019s one of the biggest benefits of it.

As you\u2019re walking as an outsider into these worlds all the time, how comfortable are you in doing that? If they feel your uneasiness, how easy are they going to feel about handing you their most intimate stuff to write about?\"\"

There\u2019s almost an equivalence to that interaction, so the more they sense that you\u2019re really there just to understand rather than judge is huge in how much they\u2019re going to start giving \u2026 When you\u2019re more relaxed, you listen, and you\u2019re ready to flow with what\u2019s being said and to hear something that\u2019s sparking off three or four other questions in your mind. It\u2019s because your mind is more relaxed; it\u2019s not tense and tight and worried about getting that next question on your checklist.

When it goes from an interview to a conversation, that\u2019s when things really start to happen in that interaction \u2026 but it\u2019s not there at the beginning, I can guarantee you. When I was 25 years old doing this, I was nervous as a cat and worried and sometimes in awe of the person I was interviewing. It\u2019s all just time, putting in time, and also really, you wanting to grow as a person and to throw yourself into circumstances that aren\u2019t always the most comfortable right off.

…

Pitzer: Smith\u2019s ability to get inside his subjects\u2019 lives and ways of seeing the world is legendary, and so I found myself curious if he\u2019d ever encountered a subject with whom he felt unable to connect, and if so, how he had handled writing the story. I caught up with him the night before his talk and put the question to him. He mentioned that Tiger Woods had spent a good part of their interview time<\/a><\/em> watching <\/em>Sports Center, but seemed unable to recall anyone for whom he just hadn\u2019t felt empathy. Here\u2019s what he had to say about it:<\/em>

If I can\u2019t get there, I shouldn\u2019t even start writing. There should be some feeling for the human condition, in a way, and so if I can\u2019t get there at all, then it\u2019s like trespassing to write. If I\u2019m going to write about pretty intimate stuff, I shouldn\u2019t go there unless I can treat it with that kind of feeling.

I\u2019ve started into stories and done a lot of research and then pulled out. But once I meet the person, I\u2019m pretty dogged about just thinking “I\u2019m going to find some connection and find my way into this person\u2019s world and understand it and try to grasp it and render it.” Even if there\u2019s a lot of banging my head against the wall, I\u2019ll just keep coming back at it and at it. That\u2019s what I\u2019ve found. Maybe it\u2019s not smart, but that\u2019s what I\u2019ve done.

It\u2019s funny, because that whole idea of crossing that abyss to the other, there\u2019s something under it that\u2019s compelling to me, I would have to guess. Why else would I be doing this so much, so long, and so feverishly for so many years?\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It isn’t often that a narrative journalist’s retirement makes the news, but when Sports Illustrated announced this spring that longtime writer Gary Smith would be leaving the business, the public eulogies \u2014 and the “Best of Gary” lists \u2014 began immediately. Smith, who spent 32 years at SI, wrote celebrated stories “that weren’t so much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5023,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,12],"tags":[],"topics":[],"authors":[61],"issue":[],"class_list":["post-1215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-narrative-news","category-essays-on-craft","authors-paige-williams"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nUpon Gary Smith's retirement: The venerated Sports Illustrated writer on longform immersion and intimacy - Nieman Storyboard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2014\/06\/26\/upon-gary-smiths-retirement-the-venerated-sports-illustrated-writer-on-longform-immersion-and-intimacy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Upon Gary Smith's retirement: The venerated Sports Illustrated writer on longform immersion and intimacy - Nieman Storyboard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It isn’t often that a narrative journalist’s retirement makes the news, but when Sports Illustrated announced this spring that longtime writer Gary Smith would be leaving the business, the public eulogies \u2014 and the “Best of Gary” lists \u2014 began immediately. 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