Desperately Seeking a Good Quote

This exercise confounded me, because I think (or thought) that we're constantly awash with good quotes in our daily reading. But when asked to find one for this assignment, I searched several newspapers, ranging from the New York Times to my local paper. And I unearthed nothing within quotation marks besides rambling platitudes, corporate-ese, and marketing spin. Even the words of normal people whose houses had burned or whose brothers had been shot sounded like government clerics reading from a prepared script titled "Acceptable Responses to Terrifying Events." "I'm just grateful everyone got out alive," "I know that's the way he would've wanted it," and "Well, tomorrow's another day."

Huh? Do people in the midst of immense personal crisis really utter such staid sentiments? Or are journalists today so busy shooting photos, laying out pages, and covering the work of three people that they don't have time to write down what people really said?

I even read through a few back issues of the Chattanooga Times Free Press, in the desperate hope that maybe a newspaper that covered the South still published evocative voices. Alsas, alack. Doesn't anyone actually talk to anyone anymore?

In the end I reverted to the New Yorker, and picked a most obvious choice, a quote in a story that is only a story because of its quotes: "Digging" in The Pictures section, June 9, 2008, and on a most inane topic: the recent release of "Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Crystal Skull" (see link and full story below).

The quote that captured my attention in particular was near the end, when
Feisel interrupted.

“Listen,” he said, “archeology is really, really boring.” He went on, “I’ve been on only one dig, and where was it? In Secaucus, New Jersey, directly underneath the New Jersey Turnpike. Some guy had been researching where his grandfather should’ve been buried and figured out it was in this potter’s field beneath the turnpike. Turns out the government had known all about it. Later, they couldn’t excavate all the bodies, because moving them would’ve interfered with the structural support of the overpass. These bodies were basically holding up the turnpike.”
I like this quote because it conveys a real person moving inside those quotation marks; he’s three-dimensional – he offers to the readers both the perspective of the archaeologist but also of the general public. That’s rare in someone so completely entrenched in their field and when I find someone with that ability, I try to quote them because it tends to give a story balance, to show how far the pendulum can swing from the others being quoted. And with the inclusion of that voice, the reader will trust that the story is fair – or more fair than it might appear without that quote.

I also like the life this quote brings to the story (those the piece is pretty lively anyway). Leaving in the “listen” is key; it makes Feisel’s comments more confessional, a “just between you and me” kind of thing. That reaches out to readers. Feisel’s use of language makes me feel as if I’m having a casual conversation with this person, at a bus stop. His language is very loose. I also like the humanity that he shows, however crudely, in his astonishment over the government’s knowledge of the situation.

Then, of course, there’s the colorful anecdote that he shares. How can you beat that? When you get a quote about something like that you’ve hit pay dirt. That anecdote written in narrative form would not have had the same light touch, or humor, as it does when Feisel tells it in his own way.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2008/06/09/080609ta_talk_peedThe PicturesDiggingby Mike Peed June 9, 2008
Last week’s news that “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” had won one of Hollywood’s most coveted prizes—the Memorial Day-weekend box-office—sent shivers through the offices of Archaeology, a magazine of the Archaeological Institute of America. (The organization recently elected Harrison Ford to its board of directors.) “O.K., fine, the movie romanticizes what we do,” Eric Powell, one of the magazine’s editors, said recently. “Indy may be a horrible archeologist, but he’s a great diplomat for archeology. I think we’ll see a spike in kids who want to become archeologists.”The magazine had recently published its May/June issue, which includes the “Indy Spirit Awards,” a catalogue of those archeologists who best exemplify Dr. Jones’s spirit (e.g., Nels Nelson, 1875-1964: “When beset by outlaws in Mongolia, he brandished his glass eye at the brigands, who quickly fled”). Last Tuesday, Powell organized an expedition: a matinée in Long Island City, followed by lunch, where the archeologists would do what archeologists do best—scrutinize their findings.The group sat in the fourth row of the theatre. They passed around a tub of popcorn, snickering at Indy’s bravado (“If you want to be a good archeologist, you’ve got to get out of the library”) and recoiling at his crude excavation techniques. Later, over dolmades and Mythos beer at S’Agapo Taverna, they elaborated. “Those tombs!” Samir Patel, an associate editor, began. “That’s an awfully exposed site not to have been hit by looters.”“Looters?” Ken Feisel, the magazine’s design director, replied. “Indiana Jones himself is nothing but a stinking looter!”Powell joined in: “I loved that technique at the temple. Bang, bang, bang with a rock until the pieces fall off. Oh, that just makes you cringe. And when he cuts into the mummies? I was begging, Please, please do not do that.”Soon, the conversation had turned toward stories of Indiana Jones-ish exploits. “I guess it was in the seventies,” Malin Banyasz, an editorial assistant, said. “I was in Israel, working on this big dig, and one of the guys sort of looked up at me funny and then whispered, ‘Move just a tiny bit this way.’ And that’s when I noticed a huge scorpion about to crawl up my leg. I moved, and then with his little hatchet”—Banyasz made a hacking motion—“he sliced up the scorpion.”“West Texas,” Powell said. “Rattlesnakes all around. You could always hear them approaching because their tails would shake. But then one time, when I was walking over a site, I looked down and right between my legs was this huge rattlesnake. The end of his tail was flying back and forth, but there wasn’t any sound. I looked closely, and then I saw that his rattle had somehow been chewed off. So I froze, staring him down, just like the cobra scene in ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark.’ ”Feisel interrupted. “Listen,” he said, “archeology is really, really boring.” He went on, “I’ve been on only one dig, and where was it? In Secaucus, New Jersey, directly underneath the New Jersey Turnpike. Some guy had been researching where his grandfather should’ve been buried and figured out it was in this potter’s field beneath the turnpike. Turns out the government had known all about it. Later, they couldn’t excavate all the bodies, because moving them would’ve interfered with the structural support of the overpass. These bodies were basically holding up the turnpike.”A few more gulps of beer, and the group found its way back to “The Crystal Skull” and, in particular, to what the Archaeology colleagues were calling “the treasure chamber”—a room full of artifacts unearthed near the movie’s climax, a sand sifter’s Shangri-La. The group had discerned several Chinese terra-cotta warriors from 210 B.C., a statue from King Tut’s tomb, and—why not?—a few Buddhas. “I bet that if you could pause it you could figure out exactly what each artifact is,” Zach Zorich, an associate editor, said.“You’d need a frame-by-frame still to do it,” Powell said. Someone suggested bringing a cell phone to capture the images.“Who’s a big enough nerd to do that?” Feisel asked. Silence. “What I mean is, who’s a big enough nerd not sitting at this table?” ♦

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2008/06/09/080609ta_talk_peed