By Spencer Kornhaber
September 22, 2013
Roger Ebert was making 90 cents an hour when he started working at the Champaign News-Gazette in high school, and that was more than enough. "To be hired as a real writer at a real newspaper was such good fortune that I could scarcely sleep," Ebert remembers in his new memoir Life Itself. His love for writing still remains; you can sense it on each page of Life Itself, as the Pulitzer-winning film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times tells of growing up in central Illinois, struggling with alcoholism, traveling the world, hanging out with movie stars, and battling the cancer that left him without a lower jaw—unable to speak, eat, or drink ever since 2006.
The book charms and entertains, but it also teaches. Ebert's TV talk shows with Gene Siskel brought him to fame, but some of the most striking passages in Life Itself are where Ebert talks about his first craft: journalism. Below, a few of the lessons Ebert has learned from a lifetime of written words.
Ebert's reflections begin here:
www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/09/roger-ebert-on-writing-15-reflections-from-life-itself/245408/#slide1
Editor's Note: I especially liked the sarcasm: "[In high school] I was a subscriber to the Great Lead Theory, which teaches that a story must have an opening paragraph so powerful that it leaves few readers still standing." -- Dave
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