moriarty@fluke.UUCP (Jeff Meyer) (01/07/86)
With the advent of "Good News Journalism" these days, it seems every local news station has some smiling joker running around the local area, taking a look at the countryside and its inhabitants with a whistful smile and an ironic tone, and with widely varying degrees of success and sincerity. Every one of these reporters, however, are imitators of a style established some twenty years ago by another reporter named Charles Kuralt, and for a CBS series called On The Road. A book currently out (and apparently on the best seller list -- maybe I've been selling the American public's tastes short) called ON THE ROAD WITH CHARLES KURALT is the second collection of stories from his twenty year travels (the first, DATELINE: AMERICA, is out of print, but well worth the $11 investment from used bookstores -- trust me). Kuralt never, ever trudges into the false sentiment that seems to be the cloth of so many local pundits; his stories always seem to find the real individual on the back roads, not some quaint substitute looking for a little P.R. to play up his activites. He seems to have an amazing knack for finding the real prizes of American citizenry today; the true kind souls, the real individualists, the people who wouldn't think of looking for attention for what they're doing -- being good neighbors, or good friends, or good people. Especially the latter. But Kuralt finds them; he listens to them, shows them not as saints, but as people, flawed and blessed with personalities, and being all the more special for the fact that they do have the rough spots between the facets of gold. ON THE ROAD is a collection of transcripts from the series; while I prefer the actual episodes, I don't have the room for a video library, and while I miss the faces and the accents (West Virginia, Oklahoma, Louisiana) which Kuralt records on tape (not the least his own), we have the next best thing -- his words, and his satisfaction in knowing these people and being able to present them to us. The satisfaction is mutual, Charles. "Today, my jurisdiction ends here." Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer ARPA: fluke!moriarty@uw-beaver.ARPA UUCP: {uw-beaver, sun, allegra, sb6, lbl-csam}!fluke!moriarty <*> DISCLAIMER: Do what you want with me, but leave my employers alone! <*>