'The Long Fall,' Revisited

Thomas Curwen on Paterniti's masterpiece:

"The Long Fall of One Eleven Heavy" was first published in Esquire in July 2000, and 12 years later, I find myself admiring with each reading the risk that Paterniti took in his telling of this story.

As journalism, the work is idiosyncratic. Paterniti identifies none of the characters by name, and he provides no explanation. The principals are known only as the medical examiner, the television reporter and the father of the woman with the blue Persian eyes.

Nor does Paterniti seem overly concerned with sharing the provenance of details in the story. To complicate matters, he acknowledges in a Nieman narrative writing discussion that he might have gotten some of those details wrong.

I am, however, not overly troubled by these omissions. For the writing alone – and for the many details I have no reason to dispute or question – I have found few narratives more spellbinding, a quality I attribute largely to the melody of the language.