The Last Word

Every writer has his or her own style. True, some resemble others - and to an extent some can be imitated, but in the final analysis, a writing style is a unique manifestation of the life experiences that created it. Elements such as clarity, authenticity, and credibility are revealed not only in what is written, but how it is written. Real life transcends the hyperbole, the extremism and the sensational. Writers such as Anna Quindlen use their mastery of the written word to do more than just write.

They talk with us. They remember. They give us context.

Quindlen, a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist and best-selling novelist writes about the world as seen though the eyes not of a writer per se, but as a member of the human race. In the preface of her 2004 book “Loud and Clear,” Quindlen writes about not writing.

“I do not fly to my desk each morning with a full heart and a ready hand. I skirt the perimeters of my home office with a sense of dread, eyes averted from an empty computer screen. Instead of creation there is always procrastination.”

She was describing the beginning of a day like any other, yet one that would be tragically different. It was September 11, 2001. Although the piece was written long after the fact, Quindlen chronicles the day’s events like it was yesterday. She recalled it in terms of her relationship with her family, her friends and her profession. And though neither the preface nor the collection of columns that follow it are about the events of that traumatic day, the tone and the gravity of what such an event means to a mother, a wife and a journalist comes through with the clarity Quindlen is known for.

“The morning of September 12, 2001, I was at my desk first thing, no preliminaries, no computer games, seizing the chance to write about an event more destructive, more transformative, and more important than any I had ever written about during three decades as a journalist. And at that very moment I thanked God, not only for the safety of my family and friends, but for the gift of being permitted to do what I do for a living.”


Quindlen began her career as a reporter for the New York Post in 1974. She joined the New York Times as a general assignment/city hall reporter in 1977. By 1981 she had her own column, “About New York,” and from 1990 until she left the Times in 1994 to become a full-time novelist (and mother), she was the writer of the nationally syndicated column, “Public and Private.” Currently, Quindlen writes Newsweek’s back page column, “The Last Word,” alternating weeks with columnist George F. Will.

In her March 19, 2007 Newsweek column, Quindlen begins, “This is not a column about Ann Coulter. Otherwise, it would be irrelevant.” And indeed it was not, but rather a means to contrast Coulter’s most recent publicity stunt with issues that are relevant.

“This is an election that really matters…”
“The war that is a fruitless quagmire…”
“An education system that seems not to educate…”

More than just commentary, Quindlen brings a bit of herself to her work, and it comes through. In the April 2, 2007 issue of Newsweek, she writes of how things might have been if her then boyfriend’s draft number had been lower. She wrote about the husband and three children that might never have been. Of course, her column that week wasn’t about Vietnam, but about how war affects everyone and whether the policymakers know that. “Do they realize they have dragged heavy hands across the map of the world and altered the details of daily life?”

It’s not just about public policy or government, but also about insight. She has an ability few possess; she allows the reader to crawl inside her head. Quindlen gives us a piece of herself in everything she writes… and plenty of it has nothing to do with public policy. She writes about her family, her job(s), her friends and about life in sweeping generalities as well as decidedly specific personal anecdotes. Her writing leaves one with the feeling that, no matter what she writes, it’s personal.