Nieman Storyboard’s “Why’s This So Good” explores what makes classic narrative nonfiction stories worth reading.
This week: Thomas Curwen takes a look at Michael Paterniti’s “The Long Fall of One-Eleven Heavy,” which was originally published in Esquire in July 2000.
The opening sequence of “The Long Fall” is a mere 500 words and, in my mind, an incantation of Gardner’s dream, one that stunningly hinges halfway through upon a couple making love (no better image of human vulnerability) seconds before the plane hit the ocean.
Before this image: a series of stills introducing Peggy’s Cove. After this image: the gathering momentum of the disaster with its disorienting and sinister intrusion upon daily life when out of the low ceiling of clouds comes first a sound – the first suggestion of a plane (“the horrible grinding sound of some wounded winged creature”) – and then silence, then an explosion and the backstory.
“Why’s This So Good?” No. 33: Michael Paterniti’s Painted Ghosts
