We published "Mr. Squishy" with the fake name, but I don't think we fooled anyone for very long. Dave had at least four distinct styles, maybe more, but "Mr. Squishy" was written in his most recognizable. (OK, acknowledging that this is ill-thought-out and incomplete, a stab at his four most clear-cut styles would be: (1) the plainspoken and fluid journalistic style demonstrated in his McCain piece (this is the style that goes down the easiest, and where his passions and opinions are most unguarded); (2) the ramped-up journalistic style of the cruise-ship piece and similar pieces of epic observation (these pieces have the more elaborate footnotes and digressions); (3) the humor-isolating and accessible style of Brief Interviews and the "Porousness of Certain Borders" stories; and (4) the dense, discursive, and insanely detailed style of his novels and certain stories.
We published "Mr. Squishy" with the fake name, but I don't think we fooled anyone for very long. Dave had at least four distinct styles, maybe more, but "Mr. Squishy" was written in his most recognizable. (OK, acknowledging that this is ill-thought-out and incomplete, a stab at his four most clear-cut styles would be: (1) the plainspoken and fluid journalistic style demonstrated in his McCain piece (this is the style that goes down the easiest, and where his passions and opinions are most unguarded); (2) the ramped-up journalistic style of the cruise-ship piece and similar pieces of epic observation (these pieces have the more elaborate footnotes and digressions); (3) the humor-isolating and accessible style of Brief Interviews and the "Porousness of Certain Borders" stories; and (4) the dense, discursive, and insanely detailed style of his novels and certain stories.