Abcarian: A speech-impaired John Fetterman is better than a fast-talking Mehmet Oz
It’s not every writer’s skill to capture a moment from the past; it’s often the artist’s talent to capture a moment from the future.
It’s not every writer’s skill to capture a moment from the past; it’s often the artist’s talent to capture a moment from the future. Sometimes it’s the ability to imagine that moment so deeply that we feel ourselves transported to it and forget to breathe — this is the act of fantasy. Often the artist must work with the memory of the event, recalling it in a vivid detail and holding it firmly in the mind’s eye. This allows him to imagine it so vividly that it can become the image of imagination.
Sometimes it’s the ability to recall something so precisely that it becomes a memory; to recall something that has so been told and retold and re-told and retold over so many years by so many people that it becomes a myth.
The ability to do this is the act of mastery. The mastery, in this instance, is in the ability to write about John Fetterman, as the events of his life are so vividly remembered by so many people, and so beautifully recreated in the pages of his biography.
John Fetterman was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on September 12, 1925. He was the son of a successful real estate broker and a mother who had lived in Europe. His father’s business was the basis of his early training; in the 1930s, he took classes at the business school of the University of Pennsylvania. He was an officer in the Navy during World War II, rising to the rank of lieutenant commander.
Fetterman’s love of writing began early, and he continued to develop his skills as a writer well into adulthood. He wrote a number of plays while he was in high school, and as a young man he wrote a number of newspaper columns, many
