“When I took the stand at the trial in San Francisco in 1993 I could not have done worse than to present myself in the accustomed New Yorker manner. Reticence, self-deprecation, and wit are the last things a jury wants to see in a witness.” – New York Review of Books
Tag: 09.24.20
How A Speech Coach Saved Janet Malcolm’s Bacon In Her Libel Trial
The first time that Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson’s lawsuit against Malcolm and The New Yorker went to court, she writes, the personal manner she and her colleagues at the magazine had cultivated turned out to be disastrous: the jury ruled against her, and it was amazing luck that they deadlocked on how much to award Masson and the judge declared a mistrial. So she went to see speech coach Sam Chwat, and she recounts here how the things he taught her changed everything the second time around. – The New York Review of Books