Red Smith – Quote Investigator®

A. J. Liebling? Shirley Povich? Red Smith? Apocryphal?

Dear Quote Investigator: The journalist A. J. Liebling was well-known for his productivity at the typewriter. Yet, high speed in composition and high quality in prose are sometimes antithetical goals. Liebling crafted a statement about his skills that was simultaneously egotistical and self-deprecating:

I can write faster than anyone who can write better, and I can write better than anyone who can write faster.

This adroit remark used a rhetorical technique called antimetabole; the main clause was repeated with keywords transposed. Would you please explore the origin of this statement?

Quote Investigator: The earliest citation known to QI appeared in “The Washington Post” in January 1964 shortly after the death of A. J. Liebling in December 1963. Fellow journalist Waverley Root reminisced about incidents that occurred when he was accompanying his friend Liebling in New York and Paris. Boldface has been added to excerpts:^[1]1964 January 19, The Washington Post, When Dadaists Played Chess: That Was the Decade That Was; A Rose Was a Rose and the Ilk Oozed by Waverley Root (The Washington Post Foreign Service), Quote Page … Continue reading

I think that Joe was simply trying to situate himself, with as much impartiality as if he were someone else standing aside and looking at Joe Liebling, and to my mind what he said summed up better than anyone else has ever done it, just what his merit was. He said:

“I can write faster than anyone who can write better, and I can write better than anyone who can write faster.”

Thanks to researcher Barry Popik who located the above citation.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Continue reading I Can Write Faster than Anyone Who Can Write Better, and I Can Write Better than Anyone Who Can Write Faster

References

References
↑1	1964 January 19, The Washington Post, When Dadaists Played Chess: That Was the Decade That Was; A Rose Was a Rose and the Ilk Oozed by Waverley Root (The Washington Post Foreign Service), Quote Page E3, Column 5 and 6, Washington, D.C. (ProQuest)

Thomas Wolfe? Red Smith? Paul Gallico? Friedrich Nietzsche? Ernest Hemingway? Gene Fowler? Jeff MacNelly? Anonymous?

Dear Quote Investigator: Whenever I have trouble writing I am reminded of a brilliant saying that uses a horrifyingly expressive metaphor to describe the difficult process of composition:

Writing is easy. You just open a vein and bleed.

Here is another version of the saying that I found while Googling:

There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.

I have seen statements like this credited to the prominent sports columnist Red Smith and to the literary figures Thomas Wolfe and Ernest Hemingway. Could you explore this quotation?

Quote Investigator: There is significant evidence that Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith used a version of this quote by 1949. In April of that year the influential and widely syndicated newspaper columnist Walter Winchell wrote. Boldface has been added to excerpts:^[1]1949 April 06, Naugatuck Daily News, Walter Winchell In New York, Page 4, Column 5, Naugatuck, Connecticut. (NewspaperArchive)

Red Smith was asked if turning out a daily column wasn’t quite a chore. …”Why, no,” dead-panned Red. “You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed.”

This is the earliest known attribution to Smith and it was located by top-notch researcher Bill Mullins. But a few years earlier another novelist and highly-paid sportswriter used the same metaphor to describe the often arduous task of putting words down on paper. In the 1946 book “Confessions of a Story Writer” Paul Gallico wrote:^[2]1946, Confessions of a Story Writer by Paul Gallico, Page 576, A Borzoi Book Published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York. (Verified on paper; Thanks to Stephen Goranson for checking this cite on paper) … Continue reading

It is only when you open your veins and bleed onto the page a little that you establish contact with your reader. If you do not believe in the characters or the story you are doing at that moment with all your mind, strength, and will, if you don’t feel joy and excitement while writing it, then you’re wasting good white paper, even if it sells, because there are other ways in which a writer can bring in the rent money besides writing bad or phony stories.

Today Gallico is perhaps best known for the novel The Poseidon Adventure which was made into a blockbuster disaster movie in 1972. The popular work was remade for television and for theatrical release in the 2000s. He also wrote the 1941 story Lou Gehrig: Pride of the Yankees that was made into the successful film The Pride of the Yankees.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Continue reading Writing Is Easy; You Just Open a Vein and Bleed

References

References
↑1	1949 April 06, Naugatuck Daily News, Walter Winchell In New York, Page 4, Column 5, Naugatuck, Connecticut. (NewspaperArchive)
↑2	1946, Confessions of a Story Writer by Paul Gallico, Page 576, A Borzoi Book Published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York. (Verified on paper; Thanks to Stephen Goranson for checking this cite on paper) link