Dealing with a boss from hell can be, well, a hellish experience

I have been lucky at all the organisations I have worked with. I have only had nominal bosses because once they figured out I function best independently and that I produce results I was pretty much left to my own devices.

Though, when I look back, I think at least one of my direct reports must have labelled me a boss from hell because even though I played a big part in hiring her our relationship began going downhill not long after she joined the team — in my view she did not take kindly to being taught the ropes even though she was a novice at journalism, and since she could not be taught (she had been a schoolteacher before she switched professions) she could not perform and there were ugly arguments almost every day until she was transferred to another department. I am sure I, too, had a role to play in these developments and I was reminded of those days when I came across two instructive and enlightening features in last Monday's Mint.

In the first piece, Sulekha Nair lists five important no-nos for bosses:

1 Undermining employee confidence

2 Being biased

3 Humiliating team members in public

4 Making provocative personal remarks

5 Behaving unscrupulously

I think I may have been at fault concerning that first point, though I can probably justify my behaviour. Be that as it may, if you're in a position of leadership, and you want a productive and happy team, you should read "5 prejudices a boss should guard against" and take corrective steps if necessary.

On the other hand, younger employees, especially those in their first jobs, will have had to learn to deal with all kinds of bosses. And some of these experiences may have been nightmarish, to put it mildly.  What do you do if you're being hounded by a boss from hell? Writing in Mint, career coach Sonal Agrawal offers some helpful advice by giving the example of one of her clients, a banker whose boss was "the most overbearing, obstructive, conniving, insecure man in the banking industry (and this was the polite version)". Here's an excerpt:

Try to remember that the boss is a person and not a one-dimensional caricature of Dilbert’s pointy haired boss. So what was really the issue? Was it a one-off altercation? Or was the boss always abrasive? Did he flare up during stressful events? Was he under pressure professionally or personally? To analyse and understand his motivations and likely behaviour patterns was essential before taking any decisions.

If you are dealing with a boss who is making your life at work miserable, you may benefit from some of the insights presented in this article: "Are you being hounded by a boss from hell?"

• UPDATE (June 15, 2013): Here is a must-read piece by Vivek Wadhwa, a Stanford University scholar, which I happened to see on LinkedIn today: "How To Be Happy At Work — Despite That Jerk Boss".

• ON A RELATED NOTE, if you are a woman who is intent on getting ahead in the industry, you should read this book by internationally recognised executive coach Lois P. Frankel, Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office: 101 Unconscious Mistakes Women Make that Sabotage Their Careers. (By the way, according to the New York Times, this book offers pointers that work equally well for men and women.) Here's a relevant excerpt from the introductory chapter:

This book is a composite of nearly twenty-five years' experience as a coach, trainer, human resource professional, and psychotherapist. It's about the unique mistakes I see women make at work, the coaching suggestions I provide to help them take charge of their careers, and the ways in which women hold themselves back from achieving their full potential.

The mistakes described in each chapter are real, as are the accompanying examples.... The coaching tips at the end of each section are identical to the ones I provide to women around the world. Many of these women later report that the suggestions helped them get promoted, hired, a raise, more respect from their management and peers, or the confidence needed to start their own businesses.

• Afterwards, visit Lois P. Frankel's website to access, for free, some very useful career resources.

Are you guilty of using these Indianisms?

1. 'Passing out'
2. 'Kindly revert'
3. 'Years back'
4. 'Doing the needful'
5. 'Discuss about'
6. 'Order for'
7. 'Do one thing'
8. 'Out of station'
9. 'Sleep is coming'
10. 'Prepone'

Okay, not all 10 are a problem — 'prepone' was included in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary last year, for instance. But the other nine phrases are used often in our everyday conversation (if not in our writing) without our realising that they sound bizarre to native speakers of English.

And what's so wrong about using these Indianisms? Daniel D'Mello explains in an entertaining post on the CNN-Go website: '10 classic Indianisms'.

After you're done reading and discussing about the post, you'll know when to do the needful. So kindly revert at the earliest. Unless, of course, you're out of station. In which case, it just may be a case of "sleep is coming". In other words, you have probably passed out. Capiche?

Also read:

• 50 Facebook rants to make you think about bad English vs good English
• The book you must read to rid your English of Indlish

My thanks to Pallabi Mitra (Class of 2012) and Sanchari Sinha (Class of 2011) for alerting me to Daniel D'Mello's post. 

• Commits alumnus SHIVRAM SUJIR (Class of 2011) came up with a clever riposte in his comment on Facebook about this post: 

Two years back when we joined we had no idea we would pass out so soon. Though some of us had to go out of station immediately after exams, we ordered for a pizza and then discussed about how fast the year went. The juniors' exams were preponed but they did the needful by giving us a farewell treat. Could you do one thing for me sir? Please revert if there are any Indianisms in my English. ;)

Also read: "10 English phrases that make perfect sense to Indians" (including "only", "but", and "felicitate")

What we can learn about editing from the Reader's Digest

Last month I discovered a gem of a book in the Commits library: The Condensed World of the Reader's Digest, by Samuel A. Schreiner, Jr.

Not only does this book give us a fascinating insight into the world of the best-selling magazine and its creators DeWitt and Lila Wallace but it also helps us to understand the crucial role the fine art of editing played in the Digest's astonishing success of the last century.

Schreiner is able to give us an insider's viewpoint because he worked as an editor of the magazine for many years. This is not a muck-raking book, though — far from it. Instead Schreiner takes as objective a look at the Digest as is possible given his insider status. And he is at pains to explain his motives for writing this book, which was first published in 1977:

The fact that I was an insider does... raise some questions about the ethics of this enterprise. The first, of course, is whether I have a right to make public what I can about an organization which I served willingly, knowing its preference for secrecy.

It isn't an easy question to answer.

Before I undertook this project, the publisher made clear to me his intention of having a book about the Reader's Digest written by somebody. I agreed with him. While, in fact, the Reader's Digest is a private company, there is no company more actively seeking public approval. The magazine reaches into every fourth American home; a hundred million people around the world read it. My own feeling is that they have a right to know as much as possible about how the words they are asked to accept, and pay for, are brought into being.

Beyond that, the Digest has made itself into such a wonder of the world, like the Pyramids or the Great Wall of China, that it cannot forever escape paying the price of curiosity that such wonders provoke. As to my own authorship, I accepted the job on the grounds that being now a writer, I had a right if not a duty to tackle a subject for which I was peculiarly equipped.

In later chapters, all written in an engaging style and packed with interesting anecdotes, Schreiner elaborates on the techniques used by DeWitt Wallace and the Digest staff to ensure that the Reader's Digest was "without peer". Till as recently as the eighties at least, it stood "astride the world of publishing like Gulliver in Lilliput, and the sensation of riding the back of a gentle giant" eventually got to most people who worked there, writes Schreiner.

HOUSEHOLD NAMES: DeWitt and Lila Wallace.

The chapter that journalists and media students will find highly instructive — I know I did — is titled "Along Murderer's Row" (from a writer's perspective, perhaps, a very apt title; more on this below). Schreiner begins the chapter with a quote from Norman Cousins, editor of Saturday Review and "an astute observer of the American magazine scene":

The secret of the Reader's Digest is editing. I tell my audiences ... that the Reader's Digest is the best edited magazine in America. Wally [DeWitt Wallace] himself is the best pencil man, and the result of his technique is clarity — the words lift right off the page into your mind.

Then Schreiner gets down to brass tacks. Some excerpts:

[Each] Digest article receives the benefit of a total of twenty to thirty man hours of attention, divided among some five different editors; by contrast, I had cut a whole book for [my previous magazine] Parade on [a] fifty-five-minute train ride. When I took my guilt feelings over being allowed, even pressed, to use so much time on a single job to my straw boss at the Digest, he soothed me with these words: "Here we take time to polish the diamond.

***

An article scheduled for publication in the Digest, whether it is an original or a reprint from another publication, rises from the hands of a first cutter to a more experienced or skilled check cutter to an issue editor to a managing editor for the issue to the editor-in-chief and/or DeWitt Wallace. Each of these editors is charged with putting the article into what he personally feels is the best length and shape for final publication in the Digest. In the process, anything from whole pages to phrases to single words are taken out or restored, according to the preference of the last — and highest — editor working on the piece.

While, in general, the top two or three editors limit their blue pencilling to fairly subtle refinements, I once saw an article, whittled down by half a dozen editors from eight or ten large-sized magazine pages to four Digest pages, come back from the desk of DeWitt Wallace cut once more in half; he had simply dropped off the first two pages in which the author was indulging in some dazzling "writing" and started with the point the piece was trying to make. Since the offices in which these operations go forward tend to be lined up along one corridor for the sake of convenience, that part ... is understandably referred to, mostly by bleeding authors, as murderer's row.

Rather than a slaughter house the area seems more like a distillery to me, an operation in which the verbal water is boiled off over a series of editorial flames until there's nothing left but stuff of the highest proof.

What a lyrical description that last paragraph is of the editing process! In this age of shorter time-spans and a multitude of distractions, I can think of a few magazines (and many writers) that will benefit from a rigorous application of the Digest's editing and trimming-down techniques. (At the same time, I have to say there's something to be said for dazzling writing, the kind that is referred to as "long-form journalism", which we find in Indian magazines like The Caravan and in American publications like The New Yorker. Read an earlier post: Long-form journalism in The Caravan.)

Coming back to The Condensed World of the Reader's Digest, Schreiner admits it is difficult to describe just how to turn the rough stone of an original article or a reprint into a Digest gem. There are no manuals on the art of digesting, he writes. "Newcomers to the Digest staff are not even given verbal instructions or told, for example, what to take out of an article or how to reorder its sequence to make it move more swiftly and logically or what other things might be done to improve it. You learn by observing what seasoned editors do, by your own trial and error."

So true. Unless you're supremely talented (and very few of us are), you can only become a good journalist by learning on the job and making (but not repeating) your own mistakes, presuming you have first been taught the fundamentals at a good J-School.

Samuel Schreiner's book should be on the bookshelf of every aspiring journalist not simply because it is about a best-selling magazine but because the writing is top-notch and it offers so many insights into the practice of print journalism.

For PR professionals, life is a pitch

And that's why public relations execs (and journalists) will want to read a New York Times columnist's views on what makes a perfect pitch. According to David Pogue, whose recent column about "pitching" is one of the most popular ever on the PR Daily blog, the first job is getting your message across. Which is not easy because this is a business where "50 pitches a day land in journalists’ in-boxes". So how does yours stand out? Pogue gives us a few pointers while handing out his Perfect Pitch Awards:

In my 10 years at The New York Times, I’ve seen a universe of different PR pitches and met an endless range of PR people. Sometimes it’s clear that they love their jobs and believe in the products they represent. Sometimes, it’s clear that they don’t. Sometimes, it’s clear that they have no idea what they’re doing.

On the other hand, sometimes the pitches are so wonderful, so delightful, you can’t resist. Here are this year’s winners of the Pogue Perfect Pitch award — pitches so clever, so persuasive, I’m going to wind up reviewing both of the products they’re pitching.

First, a YouTube video made by the employees of a company called CodeWeavers. They have a new program called CrossOver Impersonator that lets you run certain Windows programs on a Mac — without having to own a copy of Windows. 

Pogue then gives us details of this pitch. And, afterwards, moves on to the next award:

The second Pogue Perfect Pitch award goes to Nikon. See, in my blog, I’d written a review of the Canon S95 in the form of a love letter. (“Dear Canon S95, I don’t often write love letters to gadgets. But you — you’re something special. Truth is, I’ve been searching for someone like you for years…”) To my surprise, I received a response “from” the Nikon D80, the first camera I ever really loved in print, a couple of years ago.

If you're a PR professional, read up on these two pitches to get an insight into how some innovative thinking (and writing) can help you get your client into the newspapers. You may also like to read a young PR pro's comments on David Pogue's column: "Perfect PR pitches: New York Times tech columnist picks his favorites".

• Thanks to Commitscion Nilofer D'Souza (Class of 2009) for alerting me to David Pogue's column.

• Also read: "What PR professionals should not do to journalists".

• ADDITIONAL READING: "Don't Just Give the Media a 'Press Release' — Give Them a Story" and many more tips from a PR professional who is writing from a business owner's perspective but whose advice is very relevant to PR practitioners, too. Check out Christopher Lee Nutter's column on Huffington Post here: "The 10 Commandments to Perfect PR for Your Business".

India's First Lady of Photojournalism

Homai Vyarawalla's pictures, currently on display at Bangalore's National Gallery of Modern Art, and her storied career are an inspiration to news photographers everywhere. As film director Shyam Benegal says in a review he wrote for Outlook back in 2006 — he was commenting on the just-released Camera Chronicles of Homai Vyarawalla — her professional career spanned three of the most decisive and crucial decades in India's 20th-century history: 1940 to 1970.

Benegal continues:

In these 30 years, Homai lived in Delhi mainly photographing the political elite and their activities as a press photographer. She may not have been aware at the time that her work would become an important visual testimony of India's transition from a colonised country to the Indian nation and its travails over the next quarter of a century.

The book also contains anecdotes about Vyarawalla's encounters with the powerful and the famous. Here is another excerpt from Benegal's review:

Homai was not only the first but the only woman photojournalist in this entire period when press photography was considered an exclusively male domain. Not equipped with either a telephoto or a wideangle lens, she had to be either extremely close to her subjects or go great distances and heights to get composite shots. At one of Jinnah's last press conferences before Partition, she decided to get top angle shots from atop wooden packing cases stacked up in a corner of the room.  The packing cases gave way and she came tumbling down at the feet of Jinnah. His bemused response was, "I hope you are not hurt."

When Vyarawalla came to Bangalore earlier this week for the exhibition of her photographs at the National Gallery, Commitscion Raagamayi Rajsekhar (Class of 2011), who is working as a photographer with Bangalore Beat, rushed to meet her.

ONE FOR THE ALBUM: Raagamayi Rajsekhar with Homai Vyarawalla.

Raagamayi, whose ambition is to be a top-notch news photographer, says seeing Vyarawalla in the flesh and talking with her was a privilege. Raagamayi wrote in an e-mail today:

What differentiates her work from that of others, I think, is her brilliant composition. Imagine the situation in Vyarawalla's time: grappling with those heavy cameras, running around taking photographs while wearing a neatly draped saree, and having to make do without the innumerable editing programs now available to us.

No doubt DSL cameras are important because we need to send the pictures across to our publications immediately, but in the process we miss out on learning the finer aspects of photography. For example, we readjust the settings if our photographs are over- or under-exposed, but photographers of Vyarawalla's generation, who used film, had to know the exact camera settings for every situation.

The fact that Vyarawalla hails from Baroda, as does Raagamayi, "has been even more of a boost". Meeting this venerable pioneer was "a great, great, great inspiration", concludes Raagamayi.

• For more information about the exhibition of Homai Vyarawalla's photographs at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Bangalore: "Homai Vyarawalla: A Retrospective Curated By Sabeena Gadihoke".
• Also read: "An incredible lesson in portrait photography".

GOOGLE PAYS TRIBUTE
UPDATE (December 9, 2017): Google paid tribute to Homai Vyarawalla on what would have been her 104th birthday by making her the subject of today's Google Doodle (see image below).

ALSO READ...
...in The Hindu: Who is Homai Vyarawalla featured in today's Google Doodle?

For subs everywhere, the Obama-Osama headline conundrum

For a few hours on Monday, visitors to the Times of India website were greeted by this article on the killing of Osama bin Laden:

A SUB'S WORST NIGHTMARE: Did you do a double take on the headline?

Someone, possibly a reader, alerted the newspaper to the goof-up and the headline was later corrected to read "Bin Laden was found with youngest wife".

***

Still on headlines: A few readers must have done a double take when they saw this one in DNA yesterday:

Unlike the ToI sub, the DNA sub who came up with this headline was probably getting a few pats on the back for his clever wordplay.

***

As long as we are on the subject of Bin Laden, did you know that the New York Times used to refer to him as "Mr bin Laden" on second reference, as dictated by house style, up until he was shot and his body buried at sea? Slate contributor Stayton Bonner, who explains in his piece titled "Goodbye, Mr Terrorist" how the NYT decided to strip Osama bin Laden of his honorific, says that according to the Times, dropping his title was a last-minute decision of minor importance, made just before going to press. "But," writes Bonner, "the decision does seem to imply some form of moral judgment."

Bonner continues:

Bin Laden is certainly a historical figure — defined as someone who will be talked about for decades — so he would have gotten the one-name treatment at some point either way. But why now? If George H.W. Bush died tomorrow, he would undoubtedly be referred to as "Mr. Bush." Idi Amin was sent off as "Mr. Amin," and Joseph Stalin was "Mr. Stalin." The Times' decision to forgo any transition period and jump straight to "bin Laden" indicates it had no fears about offending readers by shortening his name.

As such, Bin Laden joins a select crew of name-shortened Times evil-doers. Adolf Hitler was called "Hitler" even while still alive. The same went for fellow Nazis like Erwin Rommel. [Cambodian dictator] Pol Pot went without a courtesy title in his 1998 obituary.

Well, we have certainly learnt something here about house style, haven't we?

• Thanks to Commitscion Padmini Nandy Mazumder (Class of 2011) for this tip-off.

***

One last item: Who are the SEALs who took out Osama? Slate provides a glimpse into this top secret force: "No bark, all bite".

Writing: It's best to keep the basics in mind — because the basics will always be the best

This will not come as news to those who live to write. But it is clear now that whether you're a journalist or a PR professional, whether you work in corporate communications or in advertising, whether you are self-employed or still a student, the basics of writing good English apply across all sectors and situations.

Take, for example, this insightful article on Forbes.com. Insisting that everyone needs to write intelligently, Helen Coster offers ten tips for better business writing. You will realise, when you read the article, that these tips can help in all kinds of writing.

Almost at the beginning, we learn...

Start by using short, declarative sentences. Never use a long word where a short one will do. (No need to write "utilize" when "use" works just as well.) Be ruthless about self-editing; if you don't need a word, cut it.

There is also some advice that is meant to be applied when writing professional emails but which will also give avid Facebookers pause for thought:

Curb your enthusiasm. Avoid overusing exclamation points, regardless of how energized or friendly you might feel. Choose professional sign-offs like "Best" and "Regards" over the too-cute "xoxo."

Commitscions will surely recall these next few rules from journalism class:

Whenever possible, use active verbs instead of passive verbs. ...

Beware of common grammatical mistakes, like subject-verb agreement. ...

Know when to use "that" and "which." ...

Another common error is confusing "affect" and "effect." ...

And the article ends with the useful recommendation to consult classic books on writing and grammar, such as The Elements of Style, by William Strunk and E.B. White.

Helen Coster and Forbes have just vindicated my belief that if you want to write well, you should know your basics.

• Thanks to Commitscion Razia Kuvale (Class of 2009) for the tip-off about Helen Coster's piece on LinkedIn.
• Also read: "If you don't read, you can't write".

Journalists in the line of fire-1

We know that journalists sometimes pay a heavy price just for doing their job.

As the deaths in Libya earlier this month of Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros show, perhaps no journalist pays a heavier price than the war photographer.

In a moving tribute to both men in Newsweek, Joshua Hammer gives us an insight into the dangers journalists face in combat zones:

War correspondents — in particular, combat photographers — have always worked with their lives on the line. But in the last few decades the body count has risen dramatically. Since 1992, 861 journalists have been killed in the field, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

We also get a glimpse into the characters of Hetherington and Hondros:

James Brabazon, a documentary filmmaker who met Hetherington in Liberia in 2003, recalls the photographer’s steady nerves. “I’ve seen people witnessing combat for the first time soil their pants…run away, scream, melt down, have terrible and understandably normal visceral reactions to the prospect that they’re about to get killed,” Brabazon says. “He just kept working.” After days of being ambushed while filming close-range combat, Hetherington and Brabazon leapt from a vehicle that had come under machine-gun fire. Ducking behind a wall, Hetherington remembered he’d left videotapes in the car, containing all his footage. “He jumped over the wall and ran into an arc of fire,” Brabazon says. “As far as he was concerned, if we didn’t have the tapes, there was no point being there in the first place.”

TIM HETHERINGTON'S PORTRAIT OF A SOLDIER IN A BUNKER IN AFGHANISTAN.

Hondros, an American whose career spanned war zones from Kosovo to Baghdad, was also in Liberia during the 2003 meltdown. Known for his intimate, empathetic images of both victims and perpetrators, Hondros later wrote about being on a bridge with a platoon of “drugged-up…militiamen” who were firing on rebels on the opposite bank of the river. Hondros’s photo of a commander jumping for joy after shooting a rocket-propelled grenade catapulted him to the top ranks of combat photographers.

CHRIS HONDROS TOOK THIS HEARTBREAKING PICTURE AT A CHECKPOINT IN IRAQ AFTER AMERICAN TROOPS FIRED ON A VEHICLE BEARING DOWN ON THEM, ONLY TO DISCOVER THAT THEY HAD KILLED THE PARENTS OF THIS FIVE-YEAR-OLD GIRL, SAMAR HASSAN.

Read the tribute to Hetherington and Hondros in its entirety here: "The Last Witnesses".

In the magazine, there's an accompanying piece, To Walk With Ghosts, by former CNN correspondent Michael Ware. Here's an excerpt that illustrates the iniquities of war and the hazards of being a war journalist:

In the field, where, as the soldiers say, “the meat meets the metal,” I’ve found that I gravitate to photographers, the ones who come the closest to revealing the truth, even if we never get to the entire truth. In war, everyone lies; their government, our government, the rebels—even civilians lie through exaggeration or confusion. But what we can get is the shards of truth, like Tim’s photo of a wretchedly filthy, dog-tired American grunt in the Korengal Valley, holding his face in his hand, or Chris’s picture of a little girl with her parents’ blood splattered over her dress, after American soldiers killed them at a Tal Afar checkpoint. (See pictures above.)

War photographers and reporters, of course, are not immune to this pain. But when you’re in a conflict, you can’t afford to think about how you’re feeling. You’re trying to capture the tremendous hurt of the war, but at the same time, you can’t afford to feel it yourself. And unlike the soldiers, who live in an environment conditioned to deal with these things, war journalists often find themselves alone in the newsroom, with no one to share the experience with.

It's not only male journalists who put their lives in jeopardy in this fashion. In February, Lara Logan, a CBS reporter covering the protests against Hosni Mubarak, was assaulted in Cairo just a week after being arrested by Egyptian police. Other women journalists have paid a far deadlier price. Why do they take such terrible risks? In the case of Logan, Howie Kurtz explains in Newsweek that...

Lara Logan kept going back to war, even after coming under enemy fire, even after an antitank missile struck her Humvee in Iraq and the soldier next to her lost his leg. Having children, however, changed her.

When the South African native became a mother, for the first time her bosses sensed hesitation. “There’s an adrenaline rush in being in war zones, and there’s no doubt Lara thrived on it,” CBS News chairman Jeff Fager tells NEWSWEEK.

The magazine also provides brief sketches of ten female journalists who put themselves in harm's way. Watch the inspirational video feature on Lebanese television journalist May Chidiac, who lost an arm and lower leg and suffered severe burns in a 2005 assassination attempt.

"SOME OF MY BODY WAS CUT, BUT MAY CHIDIAC IS STILL MAY CHIDIAC. I HAVE AN ARTIFICIAL LEG BUT MY MIND IS STILL MY MIND. I HAVE AN ARTIFICIAL HAND BUT MY MIND IS STILL MY MIND." A DEFIANT SPEECH BY AN EXTRAORDINARILY BRAVE JOURNALIST.

Let's salute them all, these men and women who brave all kinds of dangers to get the world the truth.

• Also read: The life and death of Sri Lankan editor Lasantha Wickrematunge.

PS: The May Chidiac feature on the Newsweek website was produced by the London-based Journeyman Pictures, an independent documentary and news channel that has uploaded more than 4,000 videos on YouTube. Watching some of these films will be a good learning experience for all those who are interested in journalism and a special treat for those who want to specialise in documentary film-making.

• Also read: "Journalists in the line of fire-2".

• Also read: "A tribute to the courage and commitment of a Tehelka photojournalist".

It all depends on the telling, sure. But surely who does the telling matters?

Last month, at a sale in Landmark, I picked up a delightful book: Viva La Repartee, subtitled "Clever comebacks and witty retorts from history's great wits and wordsmiths". As you can imagine, it's packed with funny and, often, sarcastic rejoinders so it's a great read. Also, this is a good reference book to have at hand when you're being insulted and want to hit back with a zinger of a remark.

But as a journalist I can't help wonder if ALL the one-liners here were actually uttered by the people to whom they're credited. Sometimes, in an exercise of this sort — collecting ripostes from around the world — mistakes may be made, embellishments may be ignored, exaggerations may go unnoticed.

Take for example this episode involving author Truman Capote and quoted in Viva La Repartee:

Truman Capote was fond of regaling people with an anecdote about one of his finer moments. At the height of his popularity, he was drinking one evening with friends in a crowded Key West [Florida] bar. Nearby sat a couple, both inebriated. The woman recognized Capote, walked over to his table, and gushingly asked him to autograph a paper napkin. The woman's husband, angry at his wife's display of interest in another man, staggered over to Capote's table and assumed an intimidating position directly in front of the diminutive writer. He then proceeded to unzip his trousers and, in Capote's own words, "hauled out his equipment". As he did this, he bellowed in a drunken slur, "Since you're autographing things, why don't you autograph this?" It was a tense moment, and a hush fell over the room. The silence was a blessing, for it allowed all those within earshot to hear Capote's soft, high-pitched voice deliver the perfect emasculating reply:

"I don't know if I can autograph it, but perhaps I can initial it."

Those who are familiar with Capote's way with words will not find it difficult to believe that he came up with this crack on the spur of the moment.

The only problem is Capote did not make this remark.

Let Capote tell it in his own words in this excerpt from "Remembering Tennessee" in Portraits And Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote (another book that I picked up at the same Landmark sale):

My funniest memory... is of four or five years ago, when I was staying with Tennessee [Williams] in Key West. We were in a terrifically crowded bar — there were probably three hundred people in it, both gays and straights. A husband and wife were sitting at a table in the corner, and they were both quite drunk. She had on a pair of slacks and a halter top, and she approached our table and held out an eyebrow pencil. She wanted me to autograph her belly button.

I just laughed and said, "Oh no. Leave me alone."

"How can you be so cruel?" Tennessee said to me, and as everyone in the place watched, he took the eyebrow pencil and wrote my name around her navel. When she got back to her table, her husband was furious. Before we knew it, he had grabbed the eyebrow pencil out of her hand and walked over to where we were sitting, whereupon he unzipped his pants and pulled out his c*** [I am the one doing the censoring here.] and said — to me — "Since you're autographing everything today, would you mind autographing mine?"

I had never heard a place with three hundred people in it get that quiet. I didn't know what to say — I just looked at him.

Then Tennessee reached up and took the eyebrow pencil out of the stranger's hand. "I don't know that there's room for Truman to autograph it," he said, giving me a wink, "but I'll initial it."

It brought down the house.

The essence of the quip is the same but so much else changed when the episode was included in Viva La Repartee. How could this have happened? Since I can only speculate, I thought it best to ask the author himself and, so, I have posted a comment on Dr Mardy Grothe's website. I am expecting a reply soon.

***

UPDATE (April 29): Dr Grothe's email was waiting for me when I got to work today:

Thanks for your note, Ramesh. Very interesting, indeed. Check out the following link, in which Capote clearly describes making the remark: Truman Capote: Conversations.

So tell me, my friend, what do you make of this? I have one theory, but I'd like to get your thoughts first. Perhaps your students might want to get in on the act as well.

Mardy

Dr. Mardy Grothe
1921 Bowling Green Trail
Raleigh, NC 27613
919-327-1971

Well, I can think of only two explanations.

One, Capote, by the time of this interview, had forgotten the essentials of the episode; perhaps, in his telling and re-telling, he came to believe he had made that crack.

Second, Capote was apparently "unabashed in his pursuit of fame and fortune". So it is likely that, years later, he took Tennessee Williams's crowd-pleasing line and conveniently made it his own.

I am going to forward my theories to Dr Grothe now. I am sure by tomorrow we'll find out what his theory is.

***

I sent another email to Dr Grothe later in the evening yesterday:

Hello Mardy,

This gets curiouser and curiouser. The link you have provided here is for an interview with Capote that was published in 1980.

When I got home today I looked up my copy of Portraits and Observations, in which Capote's essay on Tennessee has been published. And the year Capote wrote this? 1983. Go figure!

And here's the good doctor's response:

Thanks for both your notes, Ramesh.  Your first one propounded theories similar to my own.  The plot thickens, however, after your second one.  The game's afoot, my friend.  We'll have to continue our sleuthing!

Mardy

***

The plot thickens, indeed.

One thing is clear, though: no blame attaches to Dr Mardy Grothe for including in Viva La Repartee this particular Capote version. It's there for all to read in Truman Capote: Conversations.

***

AN UPDATE (May 1): After reading this blog post Dr Grothe was kind enough to write in appreciation:

Very interesting, Ramesh. You have shared our recent encounter in an intriguing and interesting way with your students and other readers. I will do the same in my weekly e-newsletter ("Dr. Mardy's Quotes of the Week"), which I usually send out late Saturday night or early Sunday morning.

I've taken the liberty of adding you to my mailing list, so you can see it for yourself tomorrow. If you decide my weekly mailing is not for you, it's very easy to unsubscribe.

My best,

Mardy

And Dr Grothe's weekly newsletter carried this little item:

WHY AUTHORS WRITE BOOKS

Authors write books for many reasons, but an important one is to connect with readers.  I made a most interesting connection this past week with Ramesh Prabhu, a professor of journalism from Bangalore, India. To hear about it from his perspective, check out his recent blog on the subject: goo.gl/NBavA.

Well said, Dr Grothe. Truly, writing is all about making connections.

An incredible lesson in portrait photography

What must it be like to take photographs of some of the individuals named by Time magazine as "The world's most influential people"?

What should the photographer keep in mind when asked to take, sorry, make a picture of, for instance, Amy Chua, the widely reviled and grudgingly admired author of a tough-love parenting memoir? Chua's book is titled Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Well, Martin Schoeller decided to take the tiger metaphor literally:

AMY CHUA AT HOME. PHOTO-MONTAGE BY MARTIN SCHOELLER FOR TIME.

Schoeller explains, in a video on the Time website, how he dealt with the challenge of shooting with live tigers. "It was quite intimidating to be sitting in front of a tiger three feet away from you, looking at you," he says.

The video includes details of two other shoots: in Cairo with Wael Ghonim, the Google executive who "launched" the Egyptian revolution, and in Chicago with Grant Achatz, a chef who's revolutionising the restaurant trade.

For some fascinating insights into portrait photography, watch the Martin Schoeller video here: "Photographer Martin Schoeller's TIME 100 Journey".

PS: Any guesses why Time labelled the photograph a "photo-montage"?

Also read:

• A profile of Amy Chua and an analysis of the issues raised in her book: Tiger Moms: Is Tough Parenting Really the Answer?
• Street artist extraordinaire
• Photography buffs will go nuts
• Shutterbugs will lurve this one
• How does an editor take the decision to publish pictures that can upset readers?
• The BEST blog on photojournalism