The Heart Is an Instrument: Portraits in Journalism - Paperback

by Madeleine Blais (Author), Geneva Overholser (Foreword by)

From the Foreword by Geneva Overholser

What is it about really fine writers, how they delight, intrigue, compel us?

Style, you say. But style is not something you begin with. Rather, it's what you end up with, a result of far more fundamental traits. Traits such as an ear and an eye and a heart, traits that Madeleine Blais has honed superbly well.

This is a book well named: The Heart Is an Instrument: Portraits in Journalism. The heart is surely first among Blais's gifts. Whether she is writing about the famous--playwright Tennessee Williams, novelist Mary Gordon--or about the least elevated among us--a teenage prostitute infected with the AIDS virus, a homeless schizophrenic--she brings to her subjects an incomparable empathy.

Back Jacket

These portraits are fascinating reading. Blais's storytelling instincts and techniques are superb. She knows how to weave in those seemingly insignificant details that reveal so much... - Nancy Roberts

Author Biography

MADELEINE BLAIS is professor of journalism at the University of Massachusetts. In 1980, while on the staff of the Miami Herald, she won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. Her latest book is In These Girls Hope Is a Muscle.