| Today, the staff writer Rachel Syme shares some of the stories from our pages that inspired her while she was writing about the actress Sarah Jessica Parker. I looked at a few classic Profiles from our archive as I started writing this piece, which I learned quickly would be a character study of a devoted New Yorker and a person who is utterly committed—to the city, to whatever task she is undertaking, and to a part, to the point that she will execute a pratfall over and over again if it means getting a good take. Parker trained as a ballet dancer, and she brings a lot of bodily effort to the role of Carrie Bradshaw—she told me that “freedom comes from preparation,” a motto she undoubtedly absorbed during ballet classes—and so I looked at Joan Acocella’s amazing 1998 Profile of Mikhail Baryshnikov to get myself into the mind-set of writing about a dancer. I also looked at two great Ariel Levy pieces: her Profile of Julia Louis-Dreyfus, from 2018, about a person known for creating an iconic television character; and her Profile of Marc Jacobs, from 2008, about someone whose innate fashion sense, much like Parker’s, absorbed and changed the landscape of Bleecker Street. But mostly I looked back at the work of Maeve Brennan, who wrote a mid-century column for The New Yorker called the Long-Winded Lady that was hyper-attuned to—and, in many ways, romantic about—the denizens of New York City, especially those who were regulars at restaurants and in various hotels. Brennan wrote about what we might call “real New York characters” with curiosity, generosity, and an arched eyebrow, and I hoped to channel her as I wrote about another very New York character. | 
No comments:
Post a Comment