
The Accidental Life
An Editor's Notes on Writing and Writers
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Narrated by:
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Jason Culp
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By:
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Terry McDonell
About this listen
A celebration of the writing and editing life as well as a look behind the scenes at some of the most influential magazines in America (and the writers who made them what they are).
You might not know Terry McDonell, but you certainly know his work. Among the magazines he has top-edited: Outside, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Sports Illustrated. In this revealing memoir, McDonell talks about what really happens when editors and writers work with deadlines ticking (or drinks on the bar). His stories about the people and personalities he's known are both heartbreaking and bitingly funny - playing "acid golf" with Hunter S. Thompson, practicing brinksmanship with David Carr and Steve Jobs, working the European fashion scene with Liz Tilberis, pitching TV pilots with Richard Price.
Here, too, is an expert's practical advice on how to recruit - and keep - high-profile talent; what makes a compelling lede; how to grow online traffic that translates into dollars; and how, in whatever format, on whatever platform, a good editor really works and what it takes to write well.
Taking us from the raucous days of New Journalism to today's digital landscape, McDonell argues that the need for clear storytelling from trustworthy news sources has never been stronger. Says Jeffrey Eugenides, "Every time I run into Terry, I think how great it would be to have dinner with him. Hear about the writers he's known and edited over the years, what the magazine business was like back then, how it's changed and where it's going, inside info about Edward Abbey, Jim Harrison, Annie Proulx, old New York, and the swimsuit issue. That dinner is this book."
©2016 Terry McDonell (P)2016 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
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author has an internal need for Hunter to be Jesus
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Avid Reader
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- Unabridged
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Story
After editing The Columbia Review, staging plays at Cambridge, and a stint in the greeting-card department of Macy's, Robert Gottlieb stumbled into a job at Simon & Schuster. By the time he left to run Alfred A. Knopf a dozen years later, he was the editor in chief, having discovered and edited Catch-22 and The American Way of Death, among other best sellers. At Knopf, Gottlieb edited an astonishing list of authors, including Toni Morrison, John Cheever, Doris Lessing, and John le Carré - not to mention Bruno Bettelheim and Miss Piggy.
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A Lifetime of Reading and Editing
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Adventures in the Screen Trade
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- Unabridged
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Performance
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No one knows the writer's Hollywood more intimately than William Goldman. Two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter and the best-selling author of Marathon Man, Tinsel, Boys and Girls Together, and other novels, Goldman now takes you into Hollywood's inner sanctums...on and behind the scenes for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men, and other films...into the plush offices of Hollywood producers...into the working lives of acting greats such as Redford, Olivier, Newman, and Hoffman...and more.
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Classic in the field stands up
- By Jenny Jenkins on 01-01-24
By: William Goldman
Critic reviews
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- Joan
- 11-01-16
interesting, great stories
surprisingly good and very entertaining about well known personalities. Those interested in journalism will enjoy.
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- Anthony
- 11-21-16
Great autobiography of a magazine editor
Fantastic overview of where the magazine industry have come in the last decades and where it's going. Very interesting anecdotes of famous writers within.
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