The summer of 2011 was a special one. For the first time, I got paid to work in New York City, albeit as a lowly intern. It was also the first time I picked up an issue of the New Yorker. That particular issue, published on July 25th, was remarkable. It featured Ray Dalio, the founder of the largest hedge fund in the world, Bridgewater. The piece danced gracefully between the eccentric, larger than life persona of Dalio, the unique culture at Bridgewater and the history of the hedge fund industry. The long form, descriptive and informative non-fiction style was unlike anything I have read before. I have been hooked ever since.
What makes a New Yorker profile so enthralling? Having reread a few of the profiles that I particularly enjoyed, there seems to be a few pieces to the puzzle. The first is the human character - some characters are larger than life and therefore automatically intriguing. Others are interesting because they come from more esoteric corners of the world. The second protagonist is the context. Often, there is an ongoing societal trend or issue that sweeps through an organization or a cross section of society. Often, there is a third protagonist lurking in the shadows. This is usually an idea or a theme that the writer keeps coming back to. Usually, the character and context stories have enough substance to stand on its own. However, when you add the two together, the end product is more engaging than the sum of its parts.
A piece that really captured my attention recently is Peter Hessler’s Village Voice, which follows the framework outlined above closely. In the piece, the character story is that of Rajeev Goyal, a second generation Indian American who was a Peace Corp member in Nepal and subsequently a lobbyist for the Peace Corps. His story is about grit and the unorthodox, aggressive approach that he applies to lobbying, including ambushing senators during bathroom breaks. The context / non-human story of Village Voice is that of the Peace Corps movement itself - how it all started, the peak of its popularity and its slow decline. Sandwiched between the character and the context is the idea that politics require one to be ruthless and Machiavellian. What I particularly enjoy about this style is that you are simultaneously learning about a personal story and the development of a societal trend.
In Peter Hessler’s work, as is the case in many classic New Yorker profiles, the story seamlessly moves among that of the background, the character, and the idea. Stripped down to its core, a New Yorker profile is a collection of mini stories with three interlinked foci. Given that the work is a blend of the three, the stories that the authors choose are often interrelated. For instance, in Village Voice, the stories chosen to illustrate Rajeev’s character come from his time as a Peace Corp building a water pipeline for a Nepalese community, which produces a nice segway into the Peace Corp “background” story.
This is not to say that all New Yorker profile are cookie cutter and formulaic. The magic that the contributors bring lies in how they play with a basic template and bring out different flavors. One parameter that varies greatly from article to article is the weighting of the three narratives. For instance, the Bridgewater story is heavily skewed towards that of Dalio, probably because he is a remarkable enough character on his own; in others, such as Village Voice, equal weight is given to the background and the character. Another layer of complexity is the staging of individual stories. Selecting stories, deciding upon the point of a story and balancing between providing context and getting to the point require exceptional skill. Like a blues solo, when done well, these articles are hair-raisingly moving and informative.
Since college, I have always been drawn to (or if I am being honest, jealous of) people who have great stories to tell. Those people always seem to have an endless supply of strange encounters and close calls at hand for the next conversation over a beer. I used to think that these people are just cooler than I am and are destined to run into story-worthy situations. While that is probably still somewhat true, I am starting to notice the difference that the story telling technique makes.
Further reading:
1. Alice, off the page: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/03/27/alice-off-the-page
2. Village Voice: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/12/20/village-voice
3. Mastering the Machine: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/07/25/mastering-the-machine
4. Dr. Don: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/09/26/dr-don
5. A sense of where you are: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1965/01/23/a-sense-of-where-you-are
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"This is a work of nonfiction, and I have used real names with one exception: Polat. The pseudonym is used at his request, because of political sensitivities in the People's Republic of China.
Polat means "steel" in the Uighur language, and he chose that name because of the qualities that he believed are necessary for anybody far from home."
