Reading Response, Week 7

When I read Stanley Nelson's "Developing Character" essay in Telling True Stories, I immediately thought back to Ted Conover's article. Nelson says, "It's important to hint at richer character, but let audience members decide for themselves" (129). Then he went on to talk about the process of character discovery that the audience will go through as the film (article) progresses. I thought that Conover did a wonderful job of facilitating this kind of gradual character discovery in "The Road is Very Unfair." We see little snatches of Obadiah's intelligence and personality in the beginning of the article, but Conover keeps a pretty neutral stance towards him until the end of the article when he reveals details about his compassion (chicken scene), his prudence with money, his health concerns, and his writing. On top of this building sense of discovery, and the attachment that comes with it, Conover piles that horrible revelation: even someone as intelligent, sensible, and well-educated as Obadiah still doesn't see the necessity of protecting himself and others against AIDS.

In "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," the character of Sinatra seems to be fully-developed from the start. He's mysterious and unpredictable, but he is consistently mysterious and unpredictable. It's not until the end of the article that Talese drops the question: does anyone really know this man? I love this approach. With someone as famous as Sinatra, there's not much about him that's unknown, that can be discovered, until you dig to a deeper level. I thought the section with all of the quotes about him by other people was really effective: all of these definitive statements about who Sinatra is, followed by the truth: "Frank Sinatra was tired of all the talk, the gossip, the theory -- tired of reading quotes about himself, of hearing what people were saying about him all over town." I love the scene in the casino when he is absent. His voice is on the speakers, women are asking about him at the front desk, but he is not there. Similarly, the last scene in which the woman spots him and then he disappears - I thought they both spoke to the slipperiness of celebrity and the desire, perhaps, to just be no one at all.