IRRESISTIBLE CALLING

by Sean Mitchell

Overview

Sean Mitchell was teaching English at a private school in Ohio when the New Journalism piqued his interest and lured him toward a profession that was much harder to crack than he imagined. After an editor in Washington, D.C. finally gave him a chance, he found a calling that would require and reveal multiple skills: editing an “underground” newspaper in his hometown of Dallas, writing magazine length stories about long distance truckers and Z.Z. Top, serving as the Dallas Times Herald’s first rock critic and then its theatre critic, winning national recognition for his reviews.

Moving to Los Angeles to cover Hollywood for the strangely singular and doomed Herald Examiner and then the Los Angeles Times, he profiled stars like Clint Eastwood, Ann—Margret and his irascible former St. Mark’s School of Texas soccer teammate Tommy Lee Jones. While examining the nation’s preoccupation with celebrity, he wondered if journalists like him were part of the problem or part of the solution?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780875659312
Publisher:	TCU Press
Publication date:	08/15/2025
Pages:	302
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Sean Mitchell grew up in Dallas, where he was editor of the city’s first alternative weekly, then a reporter and cultural critic for the Dallas Times Herald, before moving to Los Angeles to cover Hollywood for the Herald Examiner and Los Angeles Times. A graduate of St. Mark’s School of Texas and Brown University, he has also worked as an English teacher, videographer, and designer of custom wood fences.

Table of Contents

FOREWARD

PREFACE

CHAPTERS

 

PART I

 

1.     MY YEAR IN THE UNDERGROUND

2.     ACCIDENTAL TEXAN

3.     CHANCE ENCOUNTER

4.     THE BRANCH

5.     ERIC LANE

6.     MODERN LIVING

7.     LU

8.     TRIPS

9.     A MUSICAL DILEMMA

10.  BOYS SCHOOL

11.  THAT DAY AND JFK

12.  NO CRUSADERS, PLEASE

13.  EXTRACURRICULUM

14.  GENE

15.  PROVIDENCE

16.  UP FOR GRABS

17.  RUMINATION IN THE AIR

18.  THE WAR AT HOME

19.  BANKS OF THE OHIO

 

PART II

 

20.  STARTING OVER

21.  GO EAST (AGAIN) YOUNG MAN

22.  WASHINGTON

23.  SITTING IN LIMBO

24.  STAFF WRITER

25.  LONG FORM

26.  TWO ON THE AISLE

27.  NOTHING IF NOT PERSONAL

28.  PRIZE AT THE END OF THE LINE

29.  UPHEAVAL

30.  THAT UNDER MILK WOOD GUY

 

PART III

 

31.  WESTWARD

32.  WELCOME TO STARLAND

33.  ONE—ON—ONE

34.  LOVE AND HAPPINESS

35.  TRANSCRIBING FAME

36.  THIRD TIME IN SECOND PLACE

37.  GETTING OFF THE CARAVAN

38.  THEATRE UNDER THE PALMS

39.  ENOUGH ALREADY

40.  SCREENWRITER

41.  BETHLEHEM REVISITED

42.  NO VIVA LAS VEGAS

43.  LIFE AT THE TIMES

44.  MOVING ON