Brian Chasnoff

Zeitoun

“Zeitoun,” by Dave Eggers, is a swift, affecting work of literary nonfiction that also works as an essential piece of American journalism.

Count Mr. Eggers as another object of my overactive writer’s envy. This guy has penned screenplays (the fantastic, eerie “Where the Wild Things Are”), novels (“You Shall Know Our Velocity”) and an experimental memoir (“A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius”).

He’s also the founder and editor of an independent publishing house (McSweeney’s). Oh, well, at least he’s not smooching Fiona Apple, like another writer I envy, er, admire.

Eggers, who has a degree in journalism, obviously flexed some investigative muscle for this book. It takes place in New Orleans immediately before and after Hurricane Katrina turned the city inside out. (more…)

David Rohde, a New York Times reporter who was captured last year by scary Taliban militants and held for more than seven months in the tribal regions of Pakistan, used his own wiles to escape their clutches.

In a recent five-part series that recounts the ordeal, he also uses a wily literary technique: in medias res.

That’s Latin for “into the midst of things,” or beginning a narrative in the middle of the action. Rohde opens his story like this:

“THE car’s engine roared as the gunman punched the accelerator and we crossed into the open Afghan desert. I was seated in the back between two Afghan colleagues who were accompanying me on a reporting trip when armed men surrounded our car and took us hostage.”

An interesting note: Rohde milks in media res to thrust us into the midst of his story, yet paradoxically he manages not to violate Aristotle’s rule of connectedness — the Greek philosopher’s appeal to make sure that everything that happens in a story is a natural consequence of what came before it.

His first paragraph is self-contained, yet it still deposits us right into the middle of the action.