Floating Off the Page; The Best Stories from The Wall Street Journal's "Middle Column"

by Ken Wells; Michael Lewis

• ISBN13: 9780743226639
• ISBN10: 0743226631
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-05-07
• Publisher: Free Press

Summary

Wells, a senior editor at the Wall Street Journal, has put together a terrific collection of the most memorable stories from the off-beat front-page column that covers singular topics like toad-licking and the Miss Agriculture pageant, and leads with irresistible opening lines.

Author Biography

Ken Wells is a 20-year veteran of The Wall Street Journal, having served stints as a reporter in the paper's San Francisco and London bureaus, and as an editor on the Page One staff in New York. He has written and polished numerous A-heds and is the author of two novels, Meely LaBauve and Junior's Leg. When he isn't busy with journalism or pecking away at his novels, he plunks around on his blues-and-jazz guitar and often wishes he were fishing. He lives with his family in the greater New York area

Table of Contents

Foreword	xiii
Introduction	1	(6)
The Way We Are Now
Phone Hex	7	(3)
``Nothing Personal. We Sue All Our Friends.''	10	(4)
Men Will Be Boys	14	(4)
And some Boys Will Stay That Way	18	(4)
Not Your Mother's Cemetery	22	(4)
Why the Girl Scouts Sing the Blues	26	(4)
Pity the Toad	30	(4)
Ruff! Ruff! Ruffage! Here, Rover, Have a Nice Bean Sprout!	34	(3)
Bambi Deconstructed	37	(5)
The Deeper Meaning of Mail	42	(5)
Luck Among the Ruins	47	(6)
Style
The Art of the Perfectly Awful	53	(5)
Roasted Porcupine and Basil, With a Hint of Tire Mark	58	(3)
Domes of Resistance	61	(3)
The Agonies of Miss Ag	64	(5)
And the Winner for Placing the Most Bras Is	69	(3)
Men in Brown	72	(4)
Poetic Justice	76	(2)
Hair Wars	78	(4)
Rise Up, Ye Sleeveless Men!	82	(4)
Men Are from Hardware Stores, Women Are From	86	(5)
Things You Might Not Know
The Fat Man Cometh	91	(6)
Prisons, Guns and Knickers	97	(3)
But Will the Klingons Understand Deuteronomy?	100	(4)
The Steak Tender, the Soup Positively Rodentine	104	(4)
The Sky, Sometimes, Is Actually Falling	108	(4)
The Offal Truth	112	(3)
Carrots, No Schtick	115	(4)
Your Orthodontist and Ewe	119	(4)
Men at Work
The Waning Days of Mr. Coke	123	(5)
Fishing with His Nose	128	(4)
Blowing Up on the Job	132	(4)
``Bear Hunting Is Hard on Wives''	136	(4)
Charles Atlas, Grandpa	140	(4)
One Writer's Novel Problem	144	(5)
Obsessions
The Longest Replay	149	(4)
The Bean of His Existence	153	(4)
Y2K Alert! (But It's 1980)	157	(5)
Claim That Tune!	162	(5)
This Cup Must Not Be Runneth Over	167	(4)
What We Wrote Home About
A Navy and Its Demons (and Dragons)	171	(4)
A Fence Without End	175	(4)
The Last Word	179	(4)
Touring God's Country	183	(2)
Smoke Got in Their Eyes	185	(3)
Yes, We Have No Bananas	188	(5)
Of Counterculture, Counter Cultures and Pig Rights	193	(4)
A Night Among the Snipers	197	(4)
Things Are Hopping in New York	201	(2)
The Struggles of Otter 76	203	(8)
Play's The Thing
Fish Story	211	(4)
Golfing in the Spring: One Hole, Par 70	215	(4)
Having a Fling or Two	219	(4)
Why Tiger Is Glad He's Not Japanese	223	(3)
Not Your Father's Buick	226	(5)
Notions and Controversies
Naked Assumptions	231	(3)
Little Feats	234	(3)
China, in Stride	237	(4)
No, This Isn't How They Invented Chicken Tenders	241	(3)
Why the Future Isn't Coming Up Roses	244	(5)
Scribes, Describing
Traveling Cheap, but Not Sleazy	249	(5)
In Praise of Small Words	254	(2)
Z-less in Zanzibar	256	(3)
Being Hip in Cairo	259	(4)
Check Out That New Model-Uh, I Don't Mean the Car	263	(5)
Puzzlements	268	(4)
Play It Again, Ma'am	272	(7)
Acknowledgments	279