Writers and What They Think

North Miami Beach, FL April 24, 2001
Aaron H. Schectman

THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on issues, ideas and reflections on the times. Published now and
then, Opinions pro or con are welcome.
WRITERS AND WHAT THEY THINK

I read a lot. I read what a lot of other writers like myself write. We
write essays. We write about what we think about. And, we think a lot
about what is going on in the world around us.

I remember Eleanor Roosevelt and "My Day". I remember the fulminations of
Mencken and others like him. I remember the thinkers and writers like
Theodore White and Ernie Pyle. I note today the weighty prose of the New
York Times Op Ed page. I also pick through the editorial pages of the Wall
Street Journal, the Asbury Park Press and the Miami Herald. Here is what
they are all about.

Things happen. Someone has an opinion on what happened. Someone else sees
it from a different angle and, then they are off. Everybody has a different
"take" on it and sometimes there are famous arguments about a minor point
that was raised and commentaries on commentaries and so on.

The job of a writer is to write. The writer who thinks deeply is the one
who is most quoted. If it is at all possible the deeply thinking writer
writes in some indelible prose and succinctly sets down in just a few words
the ineluctable meaning of the thing that happened.

We see a lot of this today. One of the things we also see is the imprint
of ideology and bias. The thing that happened is subject to all kinds of
interpretations and conclusions and - at times - writers sling angry words
at other writers because the other writers got it all wrong.

Actually, I write to please myself. CORRECTION! I also write to please my
editor, Carol, who sometimes negates what I say because she simply doesn't
like the topic I choose to think and write about.

I have not written at all for a week or more and I have wondered why only
one of my "readers" has asked where I have been. This gives me pause to
think. Carol's Evaluation:10 out of 10.