William Langewiesche was humorous. When individuals speak about him now—he died this week from most cancers at age 70—they may invariably point out the intense nature of his work. After all, this can be a man who wrote 20,000-word articles in regards to the Iraq War and a National Book Critics Circle–nominated e-book on the rubble cleanup from Ground Zero. Over his lengthy profession, he was a finalist for the National Magazine Award 10 years in a row. He received twice. It ought to go with out saying that none of these nominations had something to do with humor.
But in case you had a eager eye, you couldn’t miss the delight William routinely took in poking enjoyable on the absurdity of life. In his article about Red Bull–sponsored parachutist Felix Baumgartner, “The Man Who Pierced the Sky,” he took a shot on the total nation of Austria for causes solely he understood.
“Red Bull is an Austrian company,” he wrote, “and a big deal in that town.”
While he was researching his article “Anatomy of a Miracle,” about US Airways flight 1549 that famously ditched within the Hudson River after colliding with a flock of geese, he as soon as referred to as me on the workplaces of Vanity Fair—the place I had labored for William and his editor, Cullen Murphy, for 5 years—cackling like a 12-year-old. “I’ve got it!” he shouted. “I’ve discovered that an airplane once killed a fish!”
He’d spent hours poring over the Federal Aviation Administration’s National Wildlife Strike Database—which I presume solely he knew existed—and was in a position to lay out intimately the entire official cases by which airplanes had collided with wildlife. The ensuing passage appeared within the article: From 1990 by way of 2007, planes had “760 official collisions with deer, 252 with coyotes, 182 with rabbits, 120 with rodents including porcupines, 74 with turtles, 59 with opossums, 16 with armadillos, 14 with alligators, seven with iguanas, four with moose, two with caribou, and one each with a wild pig and a donkey. There was also an official collision with a fish, though the fish was in the grasp of an osprey at the time.”
Readers of his work won’t ever have the privilege of studying the wildly absurd sentences he planted in early drafts merely for his editor, Cullen, to find and delete. My favourite was this throwaway description of 1 character: “There was no evidence that [redacted] was a free-market radical or a polygamist, but there was also no evidence to the contrary.”
But nobody was extra critical in regards to the craft of writing than William, which was his true id and calling. As the trade modified, William by no means did. He steadfastly refused to embrace any form of self-promotion or social media. He merely wrote. So much. Slowly, methodically, laboring over each phrase. He had a observe of studying lengthy passages to me and others over the telephone in order that he may hear each phrase himself. William was obsessive about the sound of writing, one thing I feel was knowledgeable by his previous as knowledgeable pilot. Whenever he did radio interviews, he all the time requested to listen to his personal voice, as pilots do of their headsets.
He was additionally a boy at coronary heart, somebody with a giant giggle who loved the corporate of the roughest form of individuals. When he returned from South Sudan, the place he was writing a couple of ragtag group of troopers of fortune toiling to clear land mines in a conflict zone, he mentioned it was among the many happiest instances of his life due to the conversations. In his personal airplane, adoring plane mechanics had put in somewhat signal within the cockpit that learn, “Fly right William.”
Years in the past, he shared with me what he referred to as his favourite piece of writing. It wasn’t one in all his acclaimed articles—it was merely a company memo he’d written as a younger staffer at Flying Magazine within the late Seventies. The recipient, one in all his superiors on the journal, had returned it to him with directions to maintain it, which he did. Time had turned the web page a pale yellow, the phrases from an previous typewriter nonetheless crisp. In these traces, a lot of who William was and would turn into shines by way of—intelligent, foolish, assured, and wildly clever.
I lack the complete context of what prompted this memo and any helpful particulars of its contents, however I don’t assume these matter. I wished to share it right here as a result of I imagine anybody who liked William’s writing will discover the identical pleasure in it that I do.
