The Washington Post Pulitzers: Gene Weingarten, Feature Writing
()
About this ebook
Recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.
What happens when one of the world’s most renowned musicians appears incognito outside of a Washington, D.C. metro station to play some of the most beautiful music ever composed?
In the audacious social experiment, “Pearls Before Breakfast”, Gene Weingarten seeks out the answer to this question as he chronicles how an audience of rush hour pedestrians pass indifferently by as international wunderkind Joshua Bell plays his Stradivarius. He also examines a horrifying phenomenon in the remarkable story "Fatal Distraction", in which he speaks to thirteen mothers and fathers whose children died as the result of being left in a sweltering car during the hot summer months.
The result is an emotional revelation that inspires readers to take a closer look at the world around them.
Gene Weingarten
Gene Weingarten is a nationally syndicated humor columnist and a Pulitzer Prize–winning staff writer for The Washington Post. He lives in Washington, DC.
Read more from Gene Weingarten
The Fiddler in the Subway: The Story of the World-Class Violinist Who Played for Handouts. . . And Other Virtuoso Performances by America's Foremost Feature Writer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Old Dogs: Are the Best Dogs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Hypochondriac's Guide to Life. And Death. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm with Stupid: One Man. One Woman. 10,000 Years of Misunderstanding Between the Sexes Cleared Right Up Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to The Washington Post Pulitzers
Related ebooks
Summary of John le Carré's The Pigeon Tunnel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsArthur Conan Doyle: His Life and Art Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Making of a Saint Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Summary of Ellen Jovin's Rebel with a Clause Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Outnation: A Search for the Soul of Japan Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Final Sunset: The fatal sinking of the HMBS Flamingo Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRandom Commuter Observations (RCOs): Living the Dream on the Way to Work Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Philosopher of Palo Alto: Mark Weiser, Xerox PARC, and the Original Internet of Things Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHerma: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWe All Wore Blue Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVillage Diary of a Heretic Banker Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Petraeus Files: All the Photos, Chats, Poems, and Other Super-Secret Emails They Don’t Want You to See Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWebster's Saul Bellow Picture Quotes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGoing Negative Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Touchstones: Essays on Literature, Art, and Politics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Tents of Wickedness: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Days: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings21 Lives in 2013: Obituaries from The Washington Post Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for DBC Pierre's "Vernon God Little" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLast Night at the Brain Thieves Ball Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGoing Down Swinging: Essays, Letters, Reflections Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRebuilding the News: Metropolitan Journalism in the Digital Age Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Powers That Be Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Son Of The Times: Life, Laughter, Love & Coffee Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAutumns in the Garden: The Coach of Camelot and Other Knicks Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlinding Light: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSteve Hannagan: Price of the Press Agents and Titan of Modern Public Relations Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Tobias Wolff's "In the Garden of the North American Martyrs" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Music For You
Me: Elton John Official Autobiography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Music Theory For Dummies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Circle of Fifths: Visual Tools for Musicians, #1 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Strange Loop Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Weird Scenes Inside The Canyon: Laurel Canyon, Covert Ops & The Dark Heart Of The Hippie Dream Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bowie: An Illustrated Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Everything Songwriting Book: All You Need to Create and Market Hit Songs Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Learn Jazz Piano: book 1 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Making Rumours: The Inside Story of the Classic Fleetwood Mac Album Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Learn Your Fretboard: The Essential Memorization Guide for Guitar (Book + Online Bonus) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/588 Piano Classics for Beginners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rememberings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Open Book Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Learn Guitar A Beginner's Course Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bass Guitar For Dummies Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Guitar For Dummies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hal Leonard Pocket Music Theory (Music Instruction): A Comprehensive and Convenient Source for All Musicians Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Easyway to Play Piano: A Beginner's Best Piano Primer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Can I Say: Living Large, Cheating Death, and Drums, Drums, Drums Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black Country Music: Listening for Revolutions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming a Great Sight-Reader–or Not! Learn From My Quest for Piano Sight-Reading Nirvana Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Well-Tempered Clavier: Books I and II, Complete Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Music Theory For Beginners Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Songwriting: Essential Guide to Lyric Form and Structure: Tools and Techniques for Writing Better Lyrics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Play Ukulele: A Complete Guide for Beginners Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for The Washington Post Pulitzers
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Washington Post Pulitzers - Gene Weingarten
The Washington Post Pulitzers
Gene Weingarten
Feature Writing
Copyright
Diversion Books
A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.
443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008
New York, NY 10016
www.DiversionBooks.com
Copyright © 2014 by The Washington Post
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com
First Diversion Books edition July 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62681-373-1
Letter of Introduction—2008
January 7, 2008
To the Judges,
Gene Weingarten’s Pearls Before Breakfast
began as an audacious experiment in social science: What would happen if one of the greatest musicians in the world appeared incognito outside a Washington, D.C. Metro station at rush hour and played some of the most beautiful music ever composed on one of the most valuable violins ever made?
Pearls Before Breakfast
–which appeared in The Washington Post Magazine—chronicles how, for 43 minutes, international virtuoso Joshua Bell played his Stradivarius to an indifferent, unheeding audience. Augmented by captivating real-time video, this became the most viewed article ever to appear on our Web site, washingtonpost.com. The story’s physical reach spanned continents; its emotional reach was incalculable.
More than 40 members of the clergy–priests, ministers and rabbis alike–wrote to say they had crafted a sermon around the message they found in this story: that we must not be so self-absorbed, or in such a pointless hurry, that we miss God’s beauty all around us.
Pearls Before Breakfast
left them in tears. Some didn’t know why. Others put their finger on it eloquently–people sense that they are being spiritually strangled by the tunnel-vision of our culture. Some readers said the story had inspired them to make fundamental changes in their lives, to begin doing what they feel passionate about and not just what pays the bills.
For all these reasons, we believe Pearls Before Breakfast
is groundbreaking piece of journalism. Its enormous power lies in the originality of its conception and the sensitivity and eloquence of its writing.
We are proud to nominate Gene Weingarten for the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing in Category 8.
Sincerely,
Leonard Downie Jr.
Executive Editor
Pearls Before Breakfast
Can one of the nation’s great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let’s find out.
Sunday, April 8, 2007
He emerged from the Metro at l’Enfant Plaza Station and positioned himself against a wall beside a trash basket. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.
It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of them, a government job. L’Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and these were mostly mid-level bureaucrats with those indeterminate, oddly fungible titles: policy analyst, project manager, budget officer, specialist, facilitator, consultant.
Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he’s really bad? What if he’s really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn’t you? What’s the moral mathematics of the moment?
On that Friday in January, those private questions would be answered in an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities—as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?
The musician did not play popular tunes whose familiarity alone might have drawn interest. That was not the test. These were masterpieces that have endured for centuries on their brilliance alone, soaring music befitting the grandeur of cathedrals and concert halls.
The acoustics proved surprisingly kind. Though the arcade is of utilitarian design, a buffer between the Metro escalator and the outdoors, it somehow caught the sound and bounced it back round and resonant. The violin is an instrument that is said to be much like the human voice, and in this