In Saturday’s Globe and Mail, Sarah Nicole Prickett wrote a brilliant piece about writer Aaron Sorkin, creator of The Newsroom. Sorkin, the writer who created, among other things, The West Wing and Sports Night, is one of my writing heroes. Now I’m not so sure, and what’s informing that wavering is in this artful snippet of Prickett’s:
Hence, my first question starts, “I watched the pilot twice … ” But I don’t get to the question part because Sorkin looks as if he wants to say something. I invite him to do so, and he asks, “Because you liked it so much the first time, or because you didn’t understand it the first time?”
So huge is the hubris in thinking anyone smart enough to write about this show for a national newspaper might not be yet smart enough to understand it (should you fret about your own Sorkin-fathoming abilities, let me say that if you read Don Quixote in the ninth grade or studied American History in the 11th, you will be fine) that I just swallow and tell my own truth.