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Sunday, July 25, 2004
Reporter Observes Life in 'Off Ramp' Stories
By Leanne Potts
Journal Staff Writer
REVIEW; It's been said that Hank Stuever, a staff writer at the Washington Post, is the Jerry Seinfeld of newspapering, a hilarious practitioner of journalism about nothing.
The comparison is intended as a compliment, but it couldn't be further from the truth. Stuever writes about the most important things of all— the yearning, the dreams, the frailty and the fear that make up the human psyche in early 21st-century America.
Stuever's gift is that he can spot epiphanic emotional truths in the most prosaic of places— a waterbed shop in suburban Maryland, a self-storage facility in Texas, a plastic patio chair in Anywhere, U.S.A.
That he is able to make you laugh about it all is just icing on the writerly cake.
"Off Ramp: Adventures and Heartache in the American Elsewhere" is a compilation of articles Stuever wrote in the last 12 years for the Post, the Austin American-Statesman and The Albuquerque Tribune.
There are 26 pieces in all, and two of the meatiest were done during his five-year stint at the Tribune in the early 1990s (where he was a colleague of mine).
In one, Stuever chronicled an Albuquerque couple's yearlong journey from engagement to wedding. In the other, he returned to his hometown of Oklahoma City to write about the effect the deadly 1995 bombing of the federal Murrah Building had on the city.
Both were finalists for a Pulitzer, and the wedding piece brought down a hailstorm of controversy locally over its depiction of Hispanics when it was published in 1992.
Other pieces in the book are more lighthearted, but no less well-observed, like the one about "Survivor" winner Richard Hatch.
"... in his twisted way, Richard did more for gays than a thousand (Garry) Wills, with their attendant Graces, could ever do. He proved what the military and the Boy Scouts of America must on some level have always dreaded, and it is this: The power of one determined gay guy— the archetypal Evil Queen— could collapse a nation."
Some may want to compare Stuever to David Sedaris, because Stuever's writing has the same feel of a candid chat with a knowing and very funny pal who makes you feel smarter and hipper just by association.
"Off Ramp: Adventures and Heartache in the American Elsewhere"
By Hank Stuever
Henry Holt and Company, $24, 297 pp.
-- Hank Stuever signs, discusses "Off Ramp" at 7 p.m. Monday, July 26, Bound to be Read, Far North Shopping Center, San Mateo at Academy NE.