After reading "Welcome To The Far Eastern Conference," by Wells Tower, it made me feel that I was reading both a biography and an autobiography at the same time because the shift of the voice from Towers's to Stephon Marbury's was beautifully spot on. Towers does a great job expressing Marbury's voice by including how he felt when he found out that his father died after he finished playing his game, also how he hated taking his wife to the funeral because there were reporters everywhere talking about how he fucked Knicks intern in his car. The voice shifts that Tower made in each sentences portrayed both Marbury's and Towers's emotions through out the whole interview process. I also loved when Marbury moved to Taiyuan and described how he wanted to kill himself at first but later didn't think about it anymore. I also admired how Towers described each and every detail about the city in Marbury's perspective as being gritty, smoggy, and a shithole. He also described how even when the windows were closed in his hotel room, the air still smelled like a chemical salty flavor that he could taste with his own eyes. There was also a major voice shift when Towers talks about Marbury's early life in the Coney Island, how he grew up with his seven siblings and how he was the chosen one to earn more money than God, and take his family out from that poverty and give them a good life. Towers beautifully touched Marbury's voice in a very individualistic way and in also a professional way. I also found this quite interesting that even though his career was over in the Knicks and he slept with another women, ate vaseline due to sore throat, and moved to China for his Starbury's business growth, but his relationship with his wife was still intact. The ending on the other hand was the one thing that I loved the most, especially after he was thrown out of the Brave Dragons and he went to Beijing for the Foshan, which was a much worse team then Brave Dragons, and Marbury still pulled it off by beating Shanxi and individually scoring fifty-five points in a single game was mind blowing. I am actually addicted to happy ending stories, and thus I loved how Marbury's voice changed from dismal and frustration, to enthusiasm and joyous as his life fully turned around to a brighter side.
I also like how the tone switched from dismal to enthusiasm... I think it really makes the reader feel sympathy for Marbury. And that's pretty cool because previously, everything in the news about him was about him sleeping with other women, eating vaseline, and other generally crazy things that presented him in an extremely negative light. Tower did a great job giving some background to Marbury- describing him as a lab rat from the get go and being grateful for fans no matter the situation.
ReplyDeleteI can't agree with you, really about most of this--other than your descriptions of what happened in the article because those are pretty indisputable... they are written down. I thought it read like a boring Wikapedia article that slipped through the peer editing cracks and managed to include personal stories as well as facts. I do think that Tower made Marbury's voice individualistic, yes, but only because obsessive behavior can easily be seen as unique and individualistic. And Marbury is certainly obsessive... of his past mostly, but his future too. It seemed less that Tower was a super good profiler and more that he picked good quotes of what Marbury said, and then described events. Yeah, Tower did his best at making it interesting, I guess I think more that Stephon Marbury is a boring dude that only talks about himself and what he did/does/will do. Honestly, I could have mostly gotten all I needed to know from the front picture and the video of him eating Vaseline--black guy with chinese script tattoos poses with people, then same guy, shirtless, talks of his theme song that "you gon' hear eeeeee'ry single day," money, and his brand, before eating a dollop of petroleum jelly as a "free Vaseline commercial ad" that he is gifting to the world.
ReplyDeleteI think that his wife and the Christ-like self image were the most interesting parts of the article. I don't know about a major voice shift... it just seemed more nostalgic when talking about his childhood or previous endeavors that forced his wife into shitty situations.
Tower's metaphors were really nice but by the third page I was completely tired of them. I suppose that's his style or maybe the only thing that could make his hotel room and the city in China more interesting. And they were interesting, individually. How could you not love the hard bed instead being a "mattress [that] would have registered respectably on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness." Or the dirty, grimy city instead being a place where "not a single window you couldn't have graffitied with a fingertip." So those were awesome, but overall, underwhelming.
I actually agree with the voice-switch concept. I think that Towers made a clear distinction between his voice and Stephon's voice. I also think that Towers did a really good job at playing the sympathy card in favor of Marbury. He wrote in a way that put his subject in a light that didn't make him seem crazy, Towers was indeed very descriptive in his writing, but those descriptions usually played in favor for his subject. For example, Towers describes how the city that Marbury is now in is a "fucking shit hole." Yes, he is describing the city, but this description makes the reader feel sorry that this supposedly well-off NBA player has to live in a place like that. So no, I don't think that Towers "just" described events. He allowed for the these events and descriptions to manipulate the readers mind into feeling sympathy for his subject.
ReplyDeleteAnd since Stephon Marbury probably is crazy, I think Towers deserves a pat on the back for his work.
I also think Stephon Marbury is very interesting. I mean, he posted a Youtube video of himself eating Vaseline. If that's not interesting, then I don't know what is.