Fabulous fabulist.

• Author: Green, Joshua
• Position: Political Booknotes

REPORTING BACK: Notes on Journalism by Lillian Ross Counterpoint, $25.00

LILLIAN ROSS, A STAFF WRITER at The New Yorker for more than 50 years, first gained fame in 1950 for a profile she wrote of Ernest Hemingway. Like so much of her work, especially in the magazine's "The Talk of the Town" section, she bulk the profile through vivid scenes and dialogue which she collected while accompanying the author and his fourth wife on a musing celebratory weekend in New York City (Hemingway had just completed a book). Ross penned what's considered to be the classic eyewitness account of Hemingway, in the course of it developing a lifelong friendship with the author.

As her new book, Reporting Back: Notes on Journalism, reveals, that's about par for the course. Ross's journalism follows a conspicuous pattern: She meets a delightful subject, joins them on an exotic outing, and emerges with a sparkling piece of writing and a new friend. Examples here include, but are not limited to, Adlai Stevenson, Norman Mailer, John Huston, Charlie Chaplin, Francois Truffaut, Robin Williams, and multiple generations of Miss America contestants. "I have always been aware of my good fortune," she writes, "in the role of a reporter, to have the special blessing of simply being there."

Ross was one of the earliest proponents of what's sometimes referred to as the "fly-on-the-wall" style of journalism (a term she disavows), minimizing her own rote in a story and bringing subjects to life with an eye for the telling detail and an ear for dialogue--sort of a literary cinema verite. While many of The New Yorker writers of yore were famously circumspect about the process of their craft, Ross is a pleasant exception. Her purpose in Reporting Back is to impart some of the lessons she's learned about writing over the course of her career.

These tend to be simple, straightforward, and strongly held. Of her subjects, Ross says: "I set them up, get out of the way, and let them go." Of her editorial voice: "Everything is implied in the facts." And of writing topics: "If I find it interesting to write, I naturally assume the reader will find it interesting to read."

In order to show how these lessons apply, the book includes extended excerpts--occasionally entire "Talk of the Town" items--from Ross's many books and articles. In fact...