Surprise surprise, I really enjoyed all these Pulitzer Prize winning articles. For all the similarities these articles had, I thought they had some pretty significant distinctions too. It’s my second time reading the Jennifer Senior article, which personally raised questions about the value of re-reading, and I have to honestly say I just love it – definitely my favorite of the articles. I was immediately struck by the beginning. I find it relevant to note that each article this week begins with a physical image (a photograph, omitted elements of last-week’s pieces on structure). The writing then also begins with an image, transitioning into a scene, with the second section really acting as the nut graf; similarly, Drost’s and Engelhart’s articles begin with scenes from the “starts” of the tension in the story (though Drost’s arguably isn’t exactly the start). All three articles then zoom out into context, but do so in different ways. I was appreciative of the historical context Drost provided (which I don’t remember being present in the recent Atlantic Darien piece). The context in the other two was very character driven, Engelhart making this broad sweep over Diane’s life, while Senior makes her context very personal. I’m amazed that even the background in her article comes through with the “I” so deeply entrenched; the “you” too. Sam articulated in his reading response the difficulty of getting across background without boring the reader. I agree that part of why Senior’s article is so successful is that it feels personal, and conversational – even the context is related to her. More generally, though Bobby and his family are the obvious throughlines, I’d argue Senior uses herself as a main narrative vehicle. And it works really well! I also was surprised by what I felt was an absence of “nut-grafs” across the three articles. All the writers seemingly develop their “points” in the second sections, building on them over time.

While I understand Drost’s impulse to have her story be basically linear, all scene-based, I found it difficult to understand the point at times. As a result; especially when her story ends, I wanted to scream out “but this isn’t the end!!” and something about her narrative construction made it feel like it was supposed to be. Maybe this is a more general critique, but I felt like her article did so much more “showing” than “telling.” I realize that is what we’re constantly advised to do, but I honestly would’ve appreciated some telling. Where was the data? How their story played into larger narratives felt lost to me. Senior, on the other hand, did such a great job of bringing her story out into other contexts. I mean, let’s talk narrative deviation… a three paragraph section devoted to the relationship between 9/11 denialism and January 7th? Human grief relating to political grief? How interesting is that! I really do find those asides so spectacular, and I thank god for whatever editor let her do that. Also enjoy academic / literary asides, from Senior and Engelhart. They both punctuate the middle points of their articles with intellectual background, but they do so in ways that don’t feel overwhelming. These articles raised for me the need to think about overlapping storylines and arcs. These are all so successful, in my mind, because they have multiple moving parts. Each character feels like they have their own character arc to consider (is this a helpful way of thinking about writing?) Especially Senior’s! There’s so much going on that by the end, I had almost forgotten about the initial diary, yet I never lost excitement. I hope this article would make McPhee jump for joy – it’s an exact articulation of his idea that a story should have multiple endings. Every section near the end could be the closer, and it kept me really at the edge of my seat. There are no “exit ramps” in the story, it continually felt like there was more to get, and I thought that was the result of overlapping stories. She writes that “If you’re going to cede the power of the last word to someone else, you’d better be damn sure that person deserves it.” and then she does cede that power to Bobby in the end! Blows me away.

Thinking also about sentence-level structure: Senior and Engelhart both use “he said she said” setups at points. I can’t tell how I feel about these… I worry about sensationalizing a story. Lines like “But she still had it, just so you know.” feel like too much. I understand we have to learn the rules and then break them, but it still feels weird to see them broken so clearly. Should we think about longform akin to book-writing, just a little bit? I think part of why Senior’s article is so great is that it reads as if it’s a section from a book (and it’s interrupted by an ad for her book On Grief).

One last thing, and I just want to take a step back from structure and consider theme. Drost’s article has a clear individual story that it tells – it’s bringing attention to the conditions in the Darien gap (though the fact that another very similar story had to be written only three years later, and nothing had changed, is maybe a bad sign). But Engelhart and Senior are answering vague questions. More than anything, they’re complicating our understanding of grief and memory; of healing and autonomy. They’re huge questions, and fun to grapple with. But how do you even take on such large questions, and what are you supposed to take from their articles? Maybe I can say I learned specific things from Engelhart’s, that I could bring into conversations about dementia and conservatorship. But with Senior’s, I’m not sure I can articulate what I learned. I hope it’s clear from my previous comments that this isn’t a critique – I loved this article, seriously. Deeply deeply impressed by her writing. But I finished reading the article, went to eat dinner with my family, and the conversation immediately turned to my grandmother’s death and the grieving we all went through / are going through. Our conversation circulated around grief processes for like ten minutes, and I found myself unable to bring up the Senior article. I just had nothing to say in respect to it. I couldn’t define one key point from it, one thing that would actually help with the personal experience of grieving that we all feel. But the story touched me personally. I believe there’s a lot of value to that. Maybe it’s good that the story resists narrative closure. Maybe this a long winded way of saying that I’m happy there was no clear resolution to the article, and it inspires me to take on unanswerable questions through longform. All to say I loved these articles.