Exploding computer and the death penalty

I have been a bad blogger - although, I suspect only my wife will have noticed. My computer exploded. It is now being nursed back to health.

Anyway, for my handful of fanatics, here is a piece you ought to read. David Grann explores the case against Cameron Todd Willingham, a man executed for killing his children in a house fire in Texas.

The piece is long, even for the New Yorker. Added to that, you know the outcome. So why is it so compelling? Great reporting. Fact built on fact. Details rendered minutely. The story given permission to develop. This story is the best argument for long-form journalism I have come across in a while.

The Paris Review has an interview with Gay Talese, the journalist who wrote Frank Sinatra Has a Cold - the quintessential New Journalism story. The interview is here, and well worth reading. One of the nuggets that emerges is that Talese writes his notes on shirt boards. The plan for Frank Sinatra Has A Cold (written on a shirt board) is below.

Mountbatten, The Falling Man etc...

Yesterday, I reviewed Timothy Knatchbull's memoir in the Sunday Times. He was 14 years old when the IRA planted a bomb on his family's boat in Ireland, injuring himself, his mother and father, and killing his twin brother, his grandmother, his grandfather - Lord Mountbatten - and an Irish teenager called Paul Maxwell. He writes well.

Talking to Colum McCann on Saturday - who has written a novel called Let the Great World Spin, which I will be writing about on Sunday - he reminded me of a wonderful piece in American Esquire shortly after 9/11 called The Falling Man worth 20 minutes of your time.