Writing the personality profile

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, April, 1989 by Peter P. Jacobi

"Do you always eat an orange like that?" I said.

"Of course."

"May I ask why?"

"I never touch anything I eat with my fingers," she said.

"Good Lord, don't you really?"

"Never. I haven't since I was twenty-two."

"Is there a reason for that?" I asked her.

"Of course there's a reason. Fingers are filthy."

"But you wash your hands."

"I don't sterilize them," Miss Trefusis said. "Nor do you. They're full of bugs. Disgusting dirty things, fingers. Just think what you do with them!"

Dahl's observational powers, teamed with careful listening and writing skills, cause the reader to discern the special in that woman. Every person has a special something. The creator of a good profile finds that special something and builds around it.

The editor must help the writer by forcing the issue, by asking for the special something in the person whose biography is being prepared for the magazine, by threatening to withhold space otherwise because if there's nothing special in the subject, then the subject obviously is not worth covering. That's simply being journalistic. But all too often editors let down their guard when dealing with people pieces, when in reality they require extra careful attention.

The biographical writer may become overwhelmed by his material, being so close to it and having so much of it that determining angle and selection and order becomes difficult. The editor can assist by keeping a little of that distance that permits perspective and interpretation.

The oblique approach

Writer Dominick Dunne provides such in his article, "The Women of Palm Beach," published in Vanity Fair. Note his approach:

Palm Beach people talk about Palm Beach people constantly. It is a subject that never seems to exhaust itself, and any one of them, at any event where they are gathered, can give you an instant precis of any other one's life. "She's Mollie Netcher Bragno Bostwich Wilmot. She lives next to Rose Kennedy, and last year a tanker ran aground on her seawall and practically landed in her living room." ... "The man in the receiving line, third from the end, is Paul Ilynsky. He's on the town council. His father was a Russian grand duke who married Audrey Emery, Paul's mother, and his second cousin was the last czar of Russia." ... "The lady with the long blond hair who never misses a dance is Sue Whitmore, the Listerine heiress. She was practically born at the old Royal Poinciana Hotel. She single-handedly runs the International Red Cross Ball every year, which is the only one of the big charity parties the chic people go to." ... "There, with the deep tan and the mustache, is Douglas Fairbanks Jr. I don't have to tell you who he is, except that his house, for some reason, is called the Vicarage." ... "That elderly lady being helped across the dance floor by Charlie Van Rensselaer is Mary Sanford, Laddie Sanford's widow--you know, the polo player. They call her the Queen of Palm Beach. Don't say I called her elderly."...

And on and on the litany goes. Certainly Dunne introduces the reader to Palm Beachers, but the speaker interests me more. The as-yet-unidentified speaker is Palm Beach, as Dunne sees it. Writers needn't always approach their profile subjects directly. The revelation can come obliquely.