Tell it in passing and don't even think of showing it

First person reporter (and connoisseur of wines) at 'paper for personalities' takes popular controversial writer/poet to Northern jetset seaside resort where they hook up with well-known photographer friend, and they are all invited to have dinner with bestselling novelist and his wife in summer residence.

A few years ago, this novelist host put out a book on painter residing in Rome, and I recall one reviewer making fun of novelist's somewhat pretentious descriptions of novelist and painter enjoying a fine dish of ravioli and nut sauce along with delicious frascati somewhere humble along the Via San Martino (yes, I looked it up now to get the details straight; the reviewer was Klaus Rothstein). A passage like that may at best have had an ambivalent appeal to readers by evoking also some envy of such a stereotypical meal on a stereotypical day in the lives of artists hanging out in Rome outside of holiday season, but the title of the review included the ravioli in nut sauce and the dish stole the picture.

My point (part I) is: textual showing in the first person was being read and ridiculed as showing off.

Back to our first person reporter who includes abovementioned Northern dinner event in prominently exposed story in 'paper for personalities' two weeks ago and who is obviously running the same risk of exposing himself to ridicule. And here comes my point (part II): The stage is set for pretentious specific details concerning the meal. Readers are ready to scorn the reporter and his friends, AND they are probably somewhat curious too to be informed of what are in fact the appropriate pretentions to have foodwise this year up North. And readers are reading it, aren't they? And I was reading it, wasn't I?

And what happens?

We are just told in passing that "the food was good and the wine was good". There's no showing it, and the lacuna in the story made me remember this really quite brief and insignificant passage two weeks later. Which is well done by reporter, and/but really annoying. The experience of having my expectations thwarted stays with me, and what is more: it even feels like all the pretentions now stick to me rather than to the reporter. And this, of course, is an especially annoying thing about it.

I like to celebrate first person journalism for making readers aware of rhetorical mechanisms at play in their reading. This is an example of it, and I did learn a lesson. And there's certainly no use crying over figures of speech (like this... proslepsis?)

Still, what namedropping as such is doing to readers on a global level and on a daily basis remains a dire thought. And one thing is certain: My dropping Jamie O's name on my blog about a week ago immediately directed an unknown visitor from Bath and one from Slough to The First Person in Print, but they only stayed here for a few seconds.