At the Heart of It: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives

Rating:
Summary: A journalist's humane curiosity creates engrossing portraits
Review: When I picked up Walt Harrington's collection of his profiles from the Washington Post Magazine, I'll admit it was rather dutifully (he's going to be speaking at a conference I'm attending), and didn't expect to become such a fan. I brought a prejudice of "just a newspaper article," not expecting the impact of anything born of a such a transient outlet (today's news, tomorrow's fishwrap) to outlast the day, or at best a week. But Harrington raises his sights higher. . . and lower. With one exception (the sensitive portrait of U.S. poet laureate Rita Dove, so evocative of a poet's thought process that I made copies for all my poet friends), he writes about people not normally considered "important" enough to make it into mass circulation. For example, Harrington's humane curiosity portrays the real world struggles between an elderly African-American minister, once strong and dominant, and his daughters who now take care of him, portraying without judgment their struggles with anger, their seeking compassion and not always finding it. Harrington's psychology and insight are amazing as he examines the "ordinary people,extraordinary lives" of his subtitle, such as a couple who has managed to create a marriage in which they equally share the childrearing, or of another couple who have slid into low-level poverty, or the life-changing experience for girls who participate in a competitive high school soccer team. Each of Harrington's subjects seems fascinating from a different vector: the tough streets of D.C. and how they are pulling down a once-stoic vice detective (part thriller, part sociological portrait of an impoverished neighborhood); the life of a man who works tirelessly for the release of death row inmates (an inspiring example of humanity at its best); a study of three generations of women (the groundwater basic impact of family, plus a feminist perspective of the changing attitudes and opportunities for women). With almost every portrait, we both learn about a few individual people we'd likely never have had the opportunity to meet, and we also learn a larger lesson-about the sociology of a section of people, or about the dynamics of family. . . . Also, interestingly, eight of the 14 portraits focus on African-American individuals or families, even tho Harrington is white. Harrington is deft enough that I don't think I would have known whether he himself was white or black if not for his author's photo. I didn't get any sense of finger-pointing at his African-American subjects, although I'm also white, so may not pick up on the same cues as black readers. On the face of it, Harrington's color blindedness seems laudable, and mostly creates in me a curiosity about what draws him to African-American subjects.