ON "The Networker"

On "The Networker: Afghanistan’s first media mogul."
by Ken Auletta from The New Yorker.com

“The Networker,” these two words encapsulate the whole of the article. It talks about a man; it talks about the man. It tells you of what he does. It tells you about what the article tells you about. It talks about how one man might very well be your 6-degree-connection to the annals of world power.

If I were given the honor of re-titling the article on a criterion of my own, I would call it “Journal-ist.” The whole article is relaxed but very informative. It was filled with segments that seemed to roll themselves right out the tip of the pen. There were some tidbits that may have been best introduced by “Oh yeah, did you know that...” or, “and, by the way...” The author seemed to be telling a story, not to a brother, nor to a best friend, rather a more intimate companion. He was talking to a version of himself whom he saw a week, a month, a hotel, or a world away. It was so honest, so impromptu, that it gave the sense of reading someone’s diary of secrets and observations. It was like reading the author’s little entries—his little log into his journal.