Blog 3550 – 07.24.2025

The Importance of Details

One of my favorite authors, John Irving, in his book Wife For A Year and the movie made from it, Door In The Floor, tells the story of a writer that has lost his driver’s license for driving drunk. The writer hires the son of a college professor claiming that he needs a writing assistant for the summer when all he really wants is someone to drive him around.

Well, he has another motive but you will have to read the book or see the movie to get all the details.

The young would be writer catches on to the ruse pretty fast after the author has him retype the same few lines of a manuscript over and over changing but one word then changing it back again. He does however get the author to read something that he has written then honestly if brutally evaluate it. Toward the end of the book the author tells the young man a story that explains the mysterious relationship between him and his wife, the death of their twin sons, and the wife’s inability to be a loving mother to their young daughter.

After relating the terrible and traumatic tragedy and just before the young man leaves to go back to the mainland and return to college, the author relates one final detail of the story, “It was a Nike, the shoe on the foot.” After which he gives the budding young writer some important advice about writing, “The details are very important for they make the story real for the reader.”

The old adage goes, “The devil is in the details.” Yet, if one believes the details of John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, the devil himself is a fallen angel, shaking his fist at the sky and shouting, “I would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven.” Details, details, they are what make even the most incredible stories seem real.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David James White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1–bJPVIGg0Ic5pw5J0lr8BjnXxK-YWlV/view?usp=drivesdk

Angels Among Us