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John Franklin, an apostle of narrative short-story style journalism whose own work won the first Pulitzer Prizes for feature writing and explanatory journalism, died Sunday in Annapolis, MD. He was 82 years old.
His wife, Lynn Franklin, said he died in a hospice less than two weeks after collapsing at their home. He also underwent treatment for esophageal cancer for two years.
A writer, teacher, reporter and editor, Mr. Franklin championed the non-fiction genre that was celebrated as the New Journalism, but was really the old narrative story – an approach he insisted that he Still adheres to old-fashioned journalistic standards of accuracy and fairness.
He expressed his thinking on the subject in “Writing for Story: Craft Secrets of Dramatic Nonfiction” (1986), which became a guide for literary-minded journalists.
In 1979, Mr. Franklin won the first Pulitzer given for feature writing for his two-part series in The Baltimore Evening Sun titled “Mrs. Kelly’s monster.”
The series, which highlighted the wonders and fringes of modern medicine, was a vivid eyewitness account that transported readers into an operating room. It describes a surgeon’s harrowing struggle to save the life of a woman whose brain was being squeezed by a vicious tangle of blood vessels.
He won his second Pulitzer in 1985, this time in the new category of explanatory journalism, for his seven-part series “The Mind Fixers”, also in The Evening Sun. Taking a deep look at the molecular chemistry of the brain and how neurons communicate, he outlined a scientist whose experiments with receptors in the brain could herald treatment with drugs and other alternatives to psychoanalysis.
Inspired by Mr. Franklin’s own sessions with a psychologist, the series was adapted into a book, “Molecules of the Mind: The Brave New Science of Molecular Psychology” (1987), which was the last of seven books he wrote. Was one of.
Barry L., professor of neuroscience at Princeton. Jacobs wrote in The New York Times Book Review that Mr. Franklin approached his theme – that the use of drugs to treat mental illness could make the world a safer place – “in a snappy journalistic style”, as well. With a touch of humor and often amusing sarcasm.” “Molecules of the Mind” was one of The Times’ Notable Books of the Year.
Mr. Franklin’s “Writing for Story” was not so much a didactic Bible for budding journalists who imagined future John Steinbecks, Tom Wolfe, or even John Franklin, as it was a demanding lesson plan about storytelling. Which took him three decades to write. Owner.
In a 2004 interview for the Nieman Foundation at Harvard, he said, “We read stories because we have developed a desire to understand the world around us.” We have read a good story, it is like living another person’s life without taking the risk or time.
Critics expressed concern that an emphasis on style might mean sacrificing substance. Mr. Franklin objected.
Literary journalism, he insisted, “poses no threat to the core values of honesty, accuracy and impartiality.” However, he cautioned that literary journalism takes time and talent to do right. “Not every story is worth it, nor can every reporter be trusted,” he wrote in the American Journalism Review in 1996.
“Mrs. Kelly’s Monster” was published in December 1978. That year the Pulitzer Board established a new award category to recognize “a distinguished example of feature writing giving prominent attention to high literary quality and originality.” The board created the award for explanatory journalism in 1984. Mr. Franklin was the first person to win each award.
John Daniel Franklin was born on January 13, 1942, in Enid, Okla., to Benjamin and Wilma (Winburn) Franklin. His father was an electrician, whose work on construction sites in the southwest often left the family devastated.
John aspired to be a scientist, but the family’s transitory nature resulted in most of his education being at the “universal school for writers” – the novels of Fitzgerald and Hemingway and the short stories of The Saturday Evening Post.
After being bullied in gang fighting as a minority white boy in mostly Hispanic Santa Fe, NM, he was given a worn-out Underwood typewriter by his father, who taught him to work out his hostility with his fingers instead of his fists. Had requested.
In 1959, John left high school to join the Navy. He worked as a naval journalist aboard an aircraft carrier for eight years and later interned at the Pentagon publication All Hands magazine, where, he said, a demanding editor honed his talents.
He attended the University of Maryland under the GI Bill and graduated with a degree in journalism in 1970. He worked as a reporter and editor for The Prince George’s Post in Maryland before being hired as a rewrite man by The Baltimore Evening Sun in 1970.
Although he won a Pulitzer for writing about science, he said in the Nieman interview that he was “a science writer, but I don’t write about science.” He added: “I write about people. Science is just visualization.”
He left The Evening Sun in 1985 and returned to the University of Maryland, this time as professor and chair of the journalism department. He briefly directed the creative writing program at the University of Oregon and worked writing at The News & Observer in Raleigh, NC.
Returning again to the University of Maryland, he was named to the first Merrill chair in journalism in 2001. Gene Roberts, a faculty colleague who had been executive editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and managing editor of The New York Times, praised Mr. Franklin. “One of the greatest practitioners and teachers of feature writing in all of journalism.” He retired as professor in 2010.
Mr. Franklin’s marriage to Nancy Craven ended in divorce. He married Lynn Scheidhauer in 1988. In addition to his wife, his survivors include two daughters from his first marriage, Katherine Franklin Abzug and Teresa June Franklin.
Among Mr. Franklin’s other books is “The Wolf in the Parlor: The Eternal Connection Between Humans and Dogs” (2000), in which he describes how the Franklins’ pet poodle, Sam, woke the family when their house caught fire. .
For a writer whose own surgical experience was limited to reattaching a thumb after it was amputated by a fall on the sidewalk, Mr. Franklin’s story on the “monster” aneurysm pressing on Edna Kelly’s brain is rich in detail and accessible imagery. Was. The increasing pressure on the artery wall was like “a tire about to burst, a balloon ready to burst, a pea-sized time bomb,” he wrote.
Mrs. Kelly was willing to die rather than live with the monster. His story was not about a miracle. But it begins and ends with an invocation of sustenance, without which life and miracles cannot exist:
First, waffles for breakfast, created by the wife of Dr. Thomas Barbee Ducker, chief brain surgeon of the University of Maryland Hospital. No coffee, Mr. Franklin wrote; Due to this his hands start trembling. When the surgery is over, Dr. Ducker faces more medical challenges and a peanut butter sandwich that his wife packed in a brown bag with a Fig Newton and a banana.
“Mrs. Kelly is dying,” Mr. Franklin wrote.
“The clock on the wall near where Dr. Ducker sits says 1:43, and it’s over.
“‘It’s hard to tell what to do. We’ve been thinking about it for six weeks. But, you know, there are some things… as far as you can go. I just don’t know.’
“He arranges the sandwiches, bananas and fig Newtons neatly on the table in front of him, the way a scrub nurse arranges instruments.
“’It was triple threat,’ he says at the end, staring at his peanut butter sandwich the same way he stares at an X-ray. ‘It was a triple threat.’
“It’s 1:43, and it’s over.
“Dr. Ducker took a serious bite of the sandwich. He should move on. The monster wins.”
