Blog Post #6 - www.susanorlean.com

This week I read a feature article by Susan Orlean.

Orlean's article is about Robert Lang, a professional origami artist.

I really enjoy Orlean's writing style. She uses language so effectively, but at the same time her writing is simple, easy to follow and funny:

"People expecting him to be kooky -- or, at the very least, Japanese -- find his academic accomplishments and his white male Americanness puzzling.

"They were dense and crisp and precise but also full of character: his mouse conveys something fundamentally mouse-ish, his ant has an essential ant-ness."

I also like how descriptive her writing is:

"Lang is now forty-five. He is tall, with slim, fine-looking hands, a tidy Silicon Valley-style beard, and the clean, comfortable good looks of a park ranger.

"He started designing his own origami patterns when he was in his early teens. He diagrammed them in detail on letterhead from the Chrysler Corporation Airtemp Division, where his father was in sales."

"He was using large squares of tweedy-looking mauve Hanji paper from Korea, which is sturdy but still slightly translucent, like the flesh of a fish."

Orlean's article uses a couple of the structural techniques that we discussed in class. She seems to be using a 5 boxes structure: she begins with an anecdote, moves to the nut graf, continues with a very detailed and descriptive story, then provides the reader with some boring but interesting information, and then finally ends the story. Her ending concludes the story extremely well as it gives the reader the all important lesson learned.

One thing that I wonder about the article is how Orlean makes herself a part of the story and refers to herself in the article a few times:

"A few months ago, I went to a meeting of the Orange County offshoot of the West Coast Origami Guild, which is one of several groups near Los Angeles.

"Before we left, I couldn't help but ask him to do something pretty with his placemat."

Is this something that journalists are allow to do in feature pieces?