Wellian Rebuttal

Since Paul Wells' comment on my blog, we've had an interesting email exchange about the tone and style of his book. I thought (and with Mr. Wells' permission), that I'd share the emails with you. In the end, I think that you’ll find he offers a cogent argument for his narrative style and ultimately provides me with what I asked for in the first place: i.e. perhaps some motivation to get over my reader’s block and get past page 6.

To recap, in response to my post critiquing his book, he commented:

“It doesn't get any better. Thank god you didn't buy it.”

To which I emailed back:

From: jasminejohansson@yahoo.com
Sent: Mon 11/20/2006 11:16 AM
To: Paul Wells
Subject: Re: Drowning in the Wells
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I actually got to page 14 last night. It got better. Till the part about not noticing Harper in the bar... Maybe it just comes and goes in waves...

Hope I didn't offend. Maybe my comments just stem from slight disappointment cause I have an extemely high regard for your journalistic ability.

And you must realize that all of us who criticize are just jealous anyway...

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile
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To which he responded:

Message from "Paul Wells" on Mon, 20 Nov 2006 11:30:01 -0500 -----
To:
RE: Drowning in the Wells Subject:
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Please don't worry about being critical or not liking my style. There's nothing wrong with your reaction. It is my style; it's highly personalized; and people who want an authoritative account are often put off by it. I'll be fine. The overwhelming reaction has been extraordinarily positive. I'd cite some of the people who've said nice things, but that would only confirm what Frank says about my ego.

One thing, though. I put myself in my book to *emphasize* that it's only one person's experience and account. To me, being in the book isn't self-aggrandizing, it's coming clean with the reader. I wrote the long Maclean's article on which the book is based in the antiseptic third person. It wasn't any harder or easier. But the voice of authority I affected in that piece was much *more* of an artificial construct than the I-was-over-here-and-I-spotted-this narrative. Also the Macleans' article was a hell of a lot less funny, and I'm happy to alienate readers who don't want a political book to be funny.
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And then he added:

To:
RE: Drowning in the Wells Subject:
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If you ever get your hands on a copy of an obscure book called Trail Fever by a famous writer named Michael Lewis, you'll find a book that (a) is allllllll about the author (b) contains extraordinarily rich insights into politics (c) is side-splittingly funny (d) obviously influenced me more than you would like.