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How Do You Explain Gene Weingarten?

He’s juvenile and more than a little crazy. Friends say he barely copes with day-to-day life. He also happens to be one hell of a writer.

By Tom Bartlett Published Monday, December 05, 2011

When Weingarten is working on a big story, the world around him just about ceases to exist. He becomes, in his words, “the machine.” Photograph by Stephen Voss

The son asks the father why he’s not wearing a seat belt. The father says it’s because long ago the father’s sister drowned. She backed her car into a swimming pool and, because she was strapped in, was unable to free herself. Her lungs filled with water and she died. The seat belt, the very device meant to protect her, sealed her doom.

The son believes the story. Why wouldn’t he? What kind of horrible person would make up a story like that?

Gene Weingarten is not a horrible person. If anything, according to those who know him, he’s empathetic, even sweet, if also obsessive, slovenly, and slightly nuts. Maybe more than slightly. He regrets fooling his son, who only found out the truth about the dead fictional sister years later.

Weingarten told me that anecdote knowing it would end up in print. It’s the kind of story that, depending on your point of view, you might find either darkly funny or deeply repugnant. It is comedy and tragedy with a side of self-flagellation. It is Gene Weingarten, abridged.

Read Some of Weingarten's Best Work:

The Armpit of America

Snowbound

The Peekaboo Paradox

Pearls Before Breakfast

Fatal Distraction

You probably know Weingarten. He writes a humor column that runs in the back of the Washington Post Magazine. He helps run the Post Hunt, the paper’s annual urban-puzzle contest. Perhaps you’ve noticed his byline atop stories like the one about the famous violinist who played during morning rush hour at a Metro station and was more or less ignored. Or maybe you’ve seen the comic strip, Barney & Clyde, that he writes with his son, who didn’t let that morbid joke-gone-wrong ruin their relationship.

Weingarten may also be the best writer in American journalism. He’s the only person to have won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing twice, once for the violinist story and once for a story about parents who accidentally leave their children in hot cars. And as amazing as those articles are, neither is generally considered his finest. That story, about a children’s entertainer, is as good a piece of writing as you’ll ever find tossed on your front lawn.

You might wonder why the best writer in American journalism would have fake poop as his Twitter icon. Or spend an inordinate amount of time making prank phone calls. Or concern himself with monkey sex, fake sneezes, or bacon taped to cats. As he once put it in a column, “I mostly write about underpants.”

Weingarten is not a horrible person, but there may be something wrong with him.

Next: "I wanted to be great at something."

Posted at Monday, December 05, 2011 | By Tom Bartlett

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Posted by: menejacque, Jan 16, 2012 02:20:32 PM

you can delete my post but he is still an idiot

Posted by: dan, Dec 28, 2011 05:55:44 PM

you can delete my post but he is still an idiot

Posted by: dan, Dec 28, 2011 05:55:11 PM

Explain him.The man is a total idiot

Posted by: Dan, Dec 28, 2011 05:38:03 PM

I knew Gene in Miami, when he was poor, though not as poor as I was. If you’d handed me this profile, with his name and the story references redacted, and asked me to guess who it’s about, I’d have said "Probably Gene Weingarten, or someone very like him."

Posted by: amarkowitz, Dec 16, 2011 10:12:50 PM

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Posted by: vogue7.us, Dec 15, 2011 01:19:20 PM

This article will change the way I read Weingarten. That is meant as a compliment. Though I’m not sure Gene would agree.

Posted by: JDP, Dec 10, 2011 12:48:01 AM

"The Hypocondriac’s Guide to Life. And Death." is the first, and only, book I ever laughed at so much I cried. I only recently found out about his more serious pieces, which are excellent too, but also a bit odd when you know him as a humorist. It’s weird to realize that he worries about being funny. He really shouldn’t. They don’t come much funnier than that.

Posted by: Louise, Dec 08, 2011 03:22:31 PM

Is it true that Weingarten constantly jacks it to Rachel Manteuffel?

Posted by: spamfilter, Dec 08, 2011 02:14:18 AM

I’m a big fan of Gene and I loved your description of him. Thank you!

Posted by: Megan, Dec 07, 2011 05:35:44 PM

Stone Trail Press: By "there" the author means at the talk.

Posted by: D, Dec 07, 2011 09:07:45 AM

"That’s an unfair summary of Weingarten’s talk from someone who wasn’t there."

He wouldn’t have f ucking done it if there were someone there, you incredible retard.

Posted by: Stone Trail Press, Dec 07, 2011 06:47:07 AM

“It is possible to spend 80 hours a week editing a paper, which is what I did,” he says.

That is obviously a lie. More than 11 hours a day, seven days a week? Here’s a tip to all you aspiring writers (by which I mean you, author of this article): whenever someone says "I work X hours a week" THEY ARE LYING. WITHOUT EXCEPTION.

And quitting school one course (3 credits) shy of a degree is a f uck up, probably a drug problem.

Posted by: St. John Hunt, Dec 07, 2011 06:07:14 AM

Posted by: St. John Hunt, Dec 07, 2011 05:30:14 AM

He may not be a blowhard but he plays one on the internet. His long form articles are genius. I was particularly moved by the one about substance abuse in Alaska. But when he prank calls unsuspecting customer service reps for a column it’s just embarrassing.

Posted by: yellojkt, Dec 06, 2011 11:07:11 PM

“He’s interested in human beings,” Stuever says. “Visible panty lines, farts, turds—all of that is desperately human. It’s horrifying, but it’s interesting. It’s gross, but it’s interesting.”

I think this line essentially sums up why I genuinely look forward to every single one of his columns. Gene, you are weird and wonderful, and a total genius for tapping in to this.

Posted by: Sarah Zlotnick, Dec 06, 2011 04:50:59 PM

you can add "sexist" to his description...too creepily fixated on young women and "underpants" for my taste...kind of negates his "witty" attributes.

Posted by: anneh, Dec 06, 2011 02:07:08 PM

zdeno chara: I disagree. Good piece on an interesting subject.

Posted by: Cindy Kelly, Dec 06, 2011 11:55:06 AM

"How Do You Explain Gene Weingarten?"

You didn’t.

Posted by: zdeno chara, Dec 05, 2011 10:57:29 PM