Weingarten

Chris Jones (Esquire/Son of Bold Venture):

1. You’ve won two Pulitzer prizes for stories that might seem, on the surface, very different. But both of them, in some way, are about inattention, about carelessness. Was that a conscious choice of yours—are you particularly struck by our modern rush?

It’s an interesting observation, but no, it was not a conscious choice. I don’t tend to think in terms of themes. Mostly, I’m looking for the potential for surprise: Will this story defy people’s expectations, cause them to think more deeply about their assumptions?

Yes, in fact, we will walk blindly past incomparable beauty. A good, loving parent could negligently kill his child.

Specifically, each of these pieces was occasioned by an event. In the first case, at rush hour, I watched commuters ignore a talented street musician playing Beethoven on a keyboard outside a Metro station. It occurred to me that Beethoven himself probably wouldn’t have turned a head, either. In the second case, a baby died in a car in suburban Washington. There, I had to do the story because I had an emotional connection too strong to squander. See below.

-eddie