THE NARRATIVE KNOCKDOWN 4: Maureen Dowd appears to be “narrative normal”
What does the Narrative Index (NI) tell us? A lot. At least sometimes. We all know Maureen Dowd is a brilliant writer, but when it comes to narrative structure, she appears to be more restrained.
The deft voice of Maureen Dowd
Let’s start with the link to our KNOCKDOWN FORUM where you can share any thoughts, comments or suggestions (like “get stuffed” if you don’t like this particular post).
The numbers don’t lie: “A smirk not a shout”
Legendary New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd scores only a “B” for narrative structure with NI = 19. That’s not bad — it’s where just about all politicians score.
It's not blazing, bellicose argumentation. But then I don’t think that is how anyone would characterize her style. She’s more understated and sly.
I asked Chat GPT to describe her style. Among several things it said was this:
Character-driven – Rather than focusing on policy or complex analysis, she zooms in on personalities. She portrays public figures almost like characters in a drama or satire, highlighting their quirks, hypocrisies, or vanity.
When I asked if she is “aggressive,” part of what it said was:
No, she’s not uniformly aggressive in the sense of being humorless or strident. Her power often lies in her underhanded jabs—a sharp line delivered with a smirk, not a shout. Her aggression is frequently couched in irony, playfulness, and theatrical flair, rather than blunt-force argumentation.
All of these replies are indeed consistent with a narrative index of 19. Particularly interesting is the line, “a smirk, not a shout.” Think about that line in relation to our narrative heavy weights (Krugman, Faust, 49 and 47, respectively).
Shouters versus smirkers. I like that. A lot.
Also, soak in the narrative beauty of her And Frequency, a near-perfect score AF = 2.48% (she really needs to work on that last 0.02%).
Argue over the interpretation (but not the data)
All we’re doing here is reporting the patterns we see in the two most important words for narrative structure (AND, BUT). We’re doing a reasonably systematic job with the analysis — usually reporting the average of 25 samples from a single venue, usually over 1,000 words for each essay.
You can’t argue the numbers, but when it comes to interpretation, what does it all mean?
That’s what we’re constantly working on. For this installment, I think we’ve identified the divide between smirkers versus shouters.
