Profiling the profiler

New Yorker theater critic and Overlook author John Lahr was profiled in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday, July 16. HONKY TONK PARADE is Lahr's collection of profiles from the world of show business originally published in the New Yorker, and will be released in paperback next month.

It is a tricky business, profile writing. It's impossible to give full measure of someone's life and character, even in a periodical with space allotments as vast as the New Yorker's.

So Lahr sees his job as offering snapshots — "minibiographies," he calls them — of people who give testament to society's delight. "They are really how we define our lives," said Lahr... "There are people who show us our life, who revive our life, who help us to play. In writing about them, you are really writing a history of the joy of the time."

You can read the full piece here.
--John Mark