A "Washington Post" staff writer describes his journeys through a Black world, evoking his efforts to cross over and engage Blacks in a way whites generally do not

Crossings: A White Man's Journey into Black America

Politics & Social Sciences

Harrington, Walt

Social Sciences

Harpercollins

A white Washington Post writer recreates his cross-country journey, listening to poor, rich, unknown, and famous African Americans to gain perspective on his mixed race children's future. Reprint.

Perennial

When Walt Harrington was first invited to Kentucky to hunt with his African American father-in-law and his country friends--Bobby, Lewis, and Carl--he was a jet-setting reporter for The Washington Post with a distaste for killing animals and for the men’s brand of old-fashioned masculinity. But over the next 12 years, this white city slicker entered a world of life, death, nature, and manhood that came to seem not brutal or outdated but beautiful in a way his experience in Washington was not. The Everlasting Stream is the absorbing, touching, and often hilarious story of how hunting with these "good ol' boys" forced an "enlightened" man to reexamine his modern notions of guilt and responsibility, friendship and masculinity, ambition and satisfaction. In crisp prose that bring autumn mornings crackling to life, Harrington shares the lessons that led him to leave Washington. When his son turned 14, Harrington began taking him hunting too, believing that these rough-edged, whiskey-drinking men could teach his suburban boy something worthwhile about lives different from his own, the joy of small moments, and the old-fashioned belief that a man's actions mean more than his words. The Everlasting Stream is a funny, intimate, inspiring meditation on the meaning of a life well lived. CHAPTER ONE Walt recounts the first time he went shooting with his father-in-law, Alex, in rural Glasgow, Kentucky, during a Thanksgiving visit with his wife. I lived in Washington DC, where most people I knew believed hunters were sick, violent men.” His attitude toward his African-American hunting mates (I was white, and I figured it was going to be my worry to fit in”) is condescending as hell,” but it all turns around when he shoots his first rabbit, and surprises himself with the purity of his exhuberence when he calls out, I got him!” He discusses the repulsion over having to clean his rabbit, but when his guests act similarly repulsed when he serves them rabbit dinner, he says I think I’m going to kill some more.” CHAPTER TWO He describes hunting with Alex, Bobby, Lewis and Carl in a gully half the length of football field. Over the years I’ve become convinced that Alex, Bobby, Lewis, and Carl have discovered the secrets of living life well,” although the idea that these men had anything to teach me didn’t come to me for many Thanksgiving vacations.” He is attracted by how well they get to know a place through hunting it: How many of us can say that about any place in our lives?” The men are like relics of a bygone era, but they eventually convinced him that he should bring his son along too. He introduces Carl and Bobby, who have retired from factory jobsthey own sixty acres together in the country. Lewis bought his own 18-wheel rig a few years ago and still hauls freight. Alex is retired and has many hobbies. The men talk in a colorful drawl about their dogs, teasing each other mercilessly. CHAPTER THREE He talks about hunting at the Old Collins Place. Every time he comes back there, he sees something for the first time. He talks about how ambitious he was as a kid, determined to make a name for himself in journalism. He meets his wife-to-be, Keran, and works thankless 70-hour weeks until he finally writes a profile of George Bush that gets him major attention, a huge raise, and freedom to cover other figures such as Jesse Jackson, Jerry Falwell, etc. CHAPTER FOUR: BOBBY’S BARN His son Matt catches a rabbit and gets a sip off the post-hunting bottle of Wild Turkey. He discusses his tough decision of taking the boy hunting for the first time when he was seven: Really I rolled the dice. I knew that most affluent city perople would shield their sons from such rough men and gritty settings. But after my first few years of hunting I deced that the forests, fields, wind, rain moon, stars, leaves, weeds, guns, killing, cursing, drinkingand naturally the men themselveswould be good for Matt.” He describes skinning and gutting a rabithe does it without squeamishness because it has to be done,” the same way you have to clean up a kid’s vomit. LAWSON BOTTOM He discusses the time it dawned on him that he had come to savor thingsthe Miro painting he owns, for instance and asks himself I love my work but what if the day comes when I don’t? What happens to all of this? What happens to me? Will I be trapped in my affluence for the rest of my life?” (The climax of his career comes when President Bush is seriously considering appointing him as his official biographer, and even invites him to a celebrity-studded dinner, but eventually Bush decides the security risk is too great. Harrington considers it a blessing in disguise, thinking about all of the quality time he would have lost with his son, etc.) THE EVERLASTING STREAM He recalls a morning of picture-perfect contentment at a place called the Everlasting Streamsuch memorable moments are like waking versions of lucid dreams. We are within them and outside them at once as they are happening.” He reflects To this day I don’t believe I have ever seen men so at ease, so thoroughly enjoying one another’s company.” He realizes he hasn’t had true friends like these since he was kid. BEHIND BC WITT’S FARM He talks about the way that moment at the Everlasting Stream has caused him to think of hunting not just as a diversion, but to think of it off and on throughout the year. Carl takes him to the four-room shack where he grew up and Harrington is shocked by how small and run-down it is. Carl says We hunted to eat.” THE SQUARE He describes being in the zonehunters since Socrates onward have described an ethereal hunter’s state of mental and emotional clarity. What nature writer James Swan calls the Zen of hunting--- a state of awe and reverence, which I sthe emotional foundation for transcendence.” LEWIS’S GARAGE He talks about the joys of hanging out in Lewis’s garage after hunting. I have come to love hearing the men laugh. After all the years, if I were blind I’d still know the men by their laughs.” .. Listening to the men is like watching a pinball bounce around its board. The action is impossible to predict but it isn’t random. The point is to relax and lety my time with the men wash over me in the way that a Christmas midnight Mass with candles and organ and incense would wash over me as a boy.”

The Everlasting Stream: A True Story of Rabbits, Guns, Friendship, and Family

Parenting & Relationships

GROVE PRESS

Author Walt Harrington, award-winning writer for the Washington Post Magazine, lifts the masks of celebrity and obscurity to reveal the lives of some singular men and women--from actress Kelly McGillis to nocturnal satanist Anton LaVey.

American Profiles: Somebodies and Nobodies Who Matter

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

University of Missouri

Delving into the everyday lives of real, everyday people, Walt Harrington skillfully draws the reader into an intimate relationship with the men and women profiled in this powerful collection of stories--people like V. I. Smith, a homicide detective; Deane Guy, a stock car racer; Jackie Jordan, a social worker in family services; and Sheri D'Amato, a girls' soccer coach.
Originally appearing in the Washington Post Magazine, these stories, which capture a cross section of Americans, stand out in the field of journalism because of the unique way in which Walt Harrington uses unheralded, individual lives to elaborate on the great human issues of the day. In "Mothers and Daughters" three generations of women discuss how society affected the choices they made and who they became. "The Mystery of Goodness" follows a Harvard-educated lawyer who handles death-row cases for very little money because he feels the system is unfair to African Americans. In "To Have and Have Not" a young couple with two small children struggle to make ends meet. Harrington describes in detail the creation of a poem by Rita Dove, then United States Poet Laureate, in "The Shape of Her Dreaming."
Harrington has adeptly combined sociology and journalism into beautiful prose. As "literary journalism," the stories employ scene, dialogue, and physical description within a narrative framework. At the same time, they also adhere to all the traditional journalistic standards of accuracy, fairness, and balance. As a result, At the Heart of It represents a subgenre that is rarely practiced and seldom understood even within the profession of journalism.
All of these stories are snapshots, pieces of everyday life in America that are intended to be a mirror held to the lives of readers. These are not stories about which you can remain neutral; even the most casual readers will be moved by the glimpses Walt Harrington provides us of ourselves.

At the Heart of It: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives (Volume 1)

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

One day in the dentist's office journalist Walt Harrington heard a casual racist joke that left him enraged. Married to a black woman, Harrington is the father of two biracial children. His experience in the dentist's office made him realize not only that the joke was about his own children but also that he really knew very little about what it was like to be a black person in America.
After this rude awakening, Harrington set off on a twenty- five-thousand-mile journey through black America, talking with scores of black and white people along the way, including an old sharecropper, a city police chief, a jazz trumpeter, a convicted murderer, a welfare mother, and a corporate mogul. In Crossings, winner of the Gustavus Myers Award for the Study of Human Rights, he relates what he learned as he listened.

Crossings: A White Man's Journey Into Black America (Volume 1)

A former city reporter recounts how his experiences with four hunter friends from the country changed his life over the course of a dozen years and how he sought to impart their outlook to his teenage son years later.

The Everlasting Stream: A True Story of Rabbits, Guns, Friends, and Family

Arts & Literature

Atlantic Monthly Pr

“This collection of profiles about great American craftsmen is itself the handiwork of a great American craftsman.” -–David Grogan, This Old House Magazine ForActs of Creation, award-winning journalist Walt Harrington travels America searching for the magical nexus of craft, talent, and mastery that gives birth to a functional work of art—and leaves its maker with a sense of satisfaction and achievement known well to fine craftsmen across the ages. A builder of monumental fireplaces in Maine. A cabinet maker in Maryland. A millwright in Virginia. A locksmith and a house framer in Ohio. A hardwood floor man in Indiana. A blacksmith in Illinois. A stone carver in California. Not one of the fourteen craftsmen and woman profiled believes he or she is working only to build a house, to renovate a watermill, to cast a plaster medallion. Each imbues their work with grander purpose—Michael Seward wants the people who buy his furniture to experience an emotional connection; Chuck Crispin wants his clients’ lives to be evoked in his floor designs; Charles Keller wants the highly educated world to appreciate the complicated genius of not only fine blacksmithing but all fine craftsmen. The profiles in Acts of Creationhelp to reclaim the place of craftsmanship in a consumerist era that places higher value on profit and branding than it does on dedicated excellence. These craftsmen offer not only lessons about craftsmanship, but also about life. “Acts of Creation is a lovely collection of literary journalism, written by a master of the form. Walt Harrington’s gracefully nuanced prose, full of feeling and finely observed detail, wonderfully conveys the world of craftsmen in all its artful integrity. In the grand tradition of Tracy Kidder, John McPhee and Joseph Mitchell, Harrington offers us a fascinating and enduring homage to men at work.” –-Barry Siegel; Pulitzer Prize winner; director of the Literary Journalism Program, University of California, Irvine “Acts of Creation is an example of what happens when a top-notch writer, laboring in solitude with purity of purpose, puts the right words in the right order.” --Madeleine Blais, Pulitzer Prize winner, author of Uphill Walkers: Portrait of a Family “A compelling tribute to Americans who work with their hands and hearts.” --Pete Earley, author, “Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness.”

Acts of Creation: America's Finest Hand Craftsmen at Work

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Crafts & Hobbies

Sager Group, The

“If you aspire to do artful journalism, everything you need to know is in this book.”—Jon Franklin, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, journalism professor emeritus, University of Maryland, author of Writing for Story 
Artful Journalism is a must-read for journalism professors and students, working professionals who want to enhance their storytelling skills, readers, and literary journalism scholars who understand the immutable place of “truth” in even the most artful examples of journalism.
For four decades, Walt Harrington has done memorable stories and books that are still studied and admired by those who pursue the kind of journalism that aims to engage the heart as well as the mind. A longtime Washington Post Magazine writer who became a journalism professor at the University of Illinois, Harrington has been a leading voice in the field of long-form storytelling. Artful Journalism collects for the first time his insightful and evocative essays that have inspired and informed several generations of writers who aspire to do journalism-- that captures the feeling of literature while adhering to traditional journalistic standards of fairness, balance, and accuracy.
Artful Journalism also includes essays by two of America’s prominent young journalists, Wright Thompson and Justin Heckert, whose work has been inspired and shaped by Harrington’s principles.
“For years, I've been marveling at Walt Harrington's work and wondering how he did it. After reading Artful Journalism, I have my answer. Not only is Walt a brilliant writer, he's a true master of the craft.”—David Finkel, Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur Award winner, author of The Good Soldiers
“Harrington’s essays are as practical as they are artful. He reminds us why we write, and why it matters.”—Joe Mackall, director, Ashland University creative writing program, author of Plain Secrets: An Outsider Among the Amish

Artful Journalism: Essays in the Craft and Magic of True Storytelling

Reference

Writing, Research & Publishing Guides

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Harrington, Walt. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Harrington, Walt

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Harrington, Walt. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Crossings: A White Man's Journey into Black America

Crossings: A White Man's Journey into Black America

The Everlasting Stream: A True Story of Rabbits, Guns, Friendship, and Family

American Profiles: Somebodies and Nobodies Who Matter

At the Heart of It: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives (Volume 1)

Crossings: A White Man's Journey Into Black America (Volume 1)

The Everlasting Stream: A True Story of Rabbits, Guns, Friends, and Family

Acts of Creation: America's Finest Hand Craftsmen at Work

Acts of Creation: America's Finest Hand Craftsmen at Work

Artful Journalism: Essays in the Craft and Magic of True Storytelling