generico | por daniel lima

Toda ilusão de caminho fácil está fadada ao fracasso. Trecho da entrevista do Gay Talese na Paris Review:

INTERVIEWER
Why did you choose journalism as a major?

TALESE
The main reason was that it seemed like the easiest thing to do.

Aí você topa com o rascunho de “Frank Sinatra Está Resfriado”, sua reportagem mais conhecida e um clássico incontestável das faculdades de jornalismo:

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INTERVIEWER
Did you write as slowly and carefully then as you do now?

TALESE
All the other reporters of my generation would come back from an assignment and be done with their piece in a half hour. For the rest of the afternoon they’d be reading books or playing cards or drinking coffee in the cafeteria, and I was always very much alone. I didn’t carry on conversations during those hours. I just wanted to make my article perfect, or as good as I could get it. So I rewrote and rewrote, feeling that I needed every minute of the working day to improve my work. I did this because I didn’t believe that it was just journalism, thrown away the next day with the trash. I always had a sense of tomorrow. I never turned in anything more than two minutes before deadline. It was never easy, I felt I had only one chance.