LITERARY JOURNALISM
by
JAMES LOVEL
(Under the Direction of Leara Rhodes)
ABSTRACT
Literary Journalism is the least developed form of modern literature. It lacks a precise definition, a common description, a canon and an academic home. Without these conventions, literary journalism has become a bastard form, rejected by both the disciplines from which it was derived. This study addresses these deficiencies by applying mass communication and literary theories to the form to derive a definition and identify the essential elements of the form. The study includes a comprehensive review of the scholarship and the analysis of a dozen books generally classified as literary journalism. The study found that the original intent of the authors who pioneered the form was to create journalism that read like fiction. Modern literary journalism has moved away from this founding definition and the form has become so nebulous that it has little hope of gaining academic credibility. This study suggests returning to the form’s original definition and creating a new scholarship.
INDEX WORDS: Literary Journalism, New Journalism, Social Realism LITERARY JOURNALISM
by
JAMES LOVEL
B.A., University of Arkansas, 1983
A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
ATHENS, GEORGIA
2007 © 2007
James Lovel
All Rights Reserved LITERARY JOURNALISM
by
JAMES LOVEL
Major Professor: Leara Rhodes
Committee: Barry Hollander Valerie Boyd
Electronic Version Approved:
Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia December 2007 iv
DEDICATION
Hi, Lindsey. v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
CHAPTER
1 Introduction ...... 1
2 Literature Review ...... 10
3 Methodology ...... 36
4 Analysis...... 45
5 Conclusion...... 90
REFERENCES ...... 96
APPENDICES ...... 99 Chapter One
Introduction
“What the hell is going on? The bastards are making it up. I’m telling you, Ump, that’s a spitball he’s throwing.” Tom Wolfe, 1973.
When Tom Wolfe stumbled across an article about former heavyweight
boxing champion Joe Louis in the fall 1962 issue of Esquire magazine, he
thought that he had discovered a new literary form. In the article, Gay Talese, a
reporter for The New York Times, had blended his reporting with so many devices of fiction writing that “with a little reworking the whole article would have read like a short story,” Wolfe later said of the experience (Wolfe, 10). Wolfe immediately recognized the inherent power of the form:
What interested me was not simply the discovery that it was possible to write accurate non-fiction with techniques usually associated with novels and short stories. It was that – plus. It was the discovery that it was possible in non-fiction, in journalism, to use any literary device, from the traditional dialogisms of the essay to stream-of-consciousness, and to use many different kinds simultaneously, or within a relatively short distance … to excite the reader both intellectually and emotionally (Wolfe, 15).
Wolfe, then a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune, joined a growing number of reporters and feature writers to begin experimenting with the form.
Wolfe published 20 stories in the form for the Herald Tribune’s Sunday magazine supplement, New York, in 1963. He doubled that number the following year and again two years later. He emerged as one of the form’s champions. In 1969, he wrote The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, which still is considered one of the best examples of a book written in the form. He later named the form “New 2
Journalism” and wrote a textbook, The New Journalism, in 1973 that included his definition and description of the form and an anthology of examples he compiled.
Wolfe’s involvement gave the form initial credibility and helped attract national attention to it.
This visibility and credibility expanded as established novelists began experimenting with the form. In 1965, Truman Capote, a former journalist turned novelist, wrote In Cold Blood, a book that remains an icon of the form. Capote called his book a “nonfiction novel” and claimed that he invented the form.
Norman Mailer won two Pulitzer Prizes using the form, once for The Armies of the Night (1969) and again for The Executioner’s Song (1980). The contributions from novelists during this period helped define the literary aspects of the form by demonstrating the tools of fiction that worked best with it.
For two decades – the 1960s and 1970s – the New Journalism prospered.
Journalists and novelists both embraced it. Readers bought it and asked for more. Magazines clamored for the work. Publishers commissioned books.
Universities taught it. Wolfe predicted that books written in the form would surpass the novel in popularity and literary status (Wolfe, 9).
Yet, the New Journalism was controversial from the beginning. Wolfe and his contemporaries immediately found themselves in the awkward position of defending it from attacks by both literature and journalism critics. Literary critics claimed it wasn’t literary enough to be literature, that its journalism root restricted it to being a lower form of art than the novel. Mainstream journalists were suspicious of the form because it aspired to be literary and, in the process, 3 violated some of the most entrenched basic tenets of the profession. These same arguments, in varying forms, persist today.
Wolfe compared the criticism to the objections raised to the modern novel when it emerged in the 18th century. The first modern novels were criticized for their realism, their lack of moral instruction and their omission of the standard romantic literary conventions. Many of the same arguments were made against the New Journalism, claiming it betrayed the conventions of journalism. The New
York Times Book Review called it “zoot-suited prose” (Wolfe, 38). The Columbia
Journalism Review called it “a bastard form” that was neither literature nor journalism (Wolfe, 24).
Despite the successes of the New Journalism for more than two decades, it didn’t replace the novel as the dominant literary form. Even Wolfe abandoned it. After publishing The New Journalism and defending it for a year, he took what he called “the equivalent of a Trappist vow of silence so far as the subject of New
Journalism was concerned. I was tired of arguing” (Kramer, 151). He moved on to novels. Critics from both disciplines continued to attack the form from different directions. By the mid-1980s, academic journals and editors pronounced the form dead (Boynton, B11). Wolfe’s textbook is out-of-print.
But, the form has survived. It exists under a dozen different names and almost as many different definitions. In fact, it existed before Wolfe and his contemporaries “discovered” it. Most scholars trace the roots of the form to the
Social Realism movement in literature at the turn of the 20th century when
Stephen Crane and other journalists began writing literary sketches from their 4
observations as journalists (Hartsock, 25). Other scholars place its roots in the
early 18th century with the emergence of the modern novel. These scholars
include the 1722 novel, A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe, as an
example to support their hypothesis (Hartsock, 114).
Wolfe was skeptical of these genealogies. He was sure that he was part of
a new literary movement:
The person who asks if the New Journalism is really new often supplies names of writers who he believes did it all years ago, decades ago, even centuries ago. Upon inspection one finds that these writers usually fall into one of four categories: (1) they weren’t writing nonfiction at all – as in the case of Defoe; and Addison and Steele in the “Sir Roger de Coverley Papers”; (2) they were traditional essayists, doing very little reporting and using few if any of the techniques of the New Journalism …; (3) autobiographers; (4) Literary Gentlemen with a Seat in the Grandstand (Wolfe, 42)
Wolfe was wrong about the genesis of the form – it didn’t appear out of nowhere, as he thought – but his influence on its development can’t be dismissed. He gave it a definition that made it possible for writers from all disciplines to embrace it and scholars to study and teach it. This contribution created a Golden Age for the form that has never been repeated.
However, without Wolfe as a steward, the form fragmented into its current nebulous state. It remains the least developed and least understood form of modern literature. The scholarship has done more to hurt the form’s development than to help it. After the relentless attacks of the scholars in both English and journalism “killed” the form 20 years ago, most critics ignored the work. The few 5
who continued to study it redefined it so broadly that it could include any work of
nonfiction, particularly if it were written by a journalist. This broad interpretation
erased the distinctive elements that separated the New Journalism from other forms of nonfiction. The form was incorporated into the more general category of creative nonfiction.
This classification has deprived the form of all the things it needs to be a separate, legitimate genre. Since the New Journalism, there has been no common term and no universal definition for the form. It has no canon and no academic home. It languishes somewhere between literary merit and journalistic credibility, defined by a dozen conflicting criteria.
Most of the recent work on the topic by the handful of scholars still interested in it has consisted of gathering comments from writers and assembling a collection of representative stories into anthologies. Even these scholars don’t present a common theory or common examples of the form. In fact, there are few common elements in their work. This has contributed to the continuing fragmentation and resulting confusion of the form. This process of analysis also forces the scholarship to lag behind the development of the form instead of helping shape its development.
This study is an attempt to address these deficiencies. For the form to experience a second Golden Age and return to the path of dominating American literature, it must have the conditions that existed then. I will review the body of literature about the form and samples of the work generally considered examples of it to find the form’s fundamental theory and essential elements. This review will 6
extend back to 1722 to include the earliest examples cited in the scholarship. I
will evaluate the material from the theoretical frameworks of both literature and
journalism and use the information to construct a definition of the form and identify the elements that make the form effective.
The existing scholarship lacks this sort of broad assessment. For the past
30 years, the body of information has continued to grow without the emergence of a dominant theory. The diverse interpretations and opinions of the form have accumulated in the publications and archives of disciplines so different that
scholars of the form outside those disciplines often never see the work. This
unchecked broadening of the form has led to interpretations that are so widely
varied that a writer or critic can find one to justify putting almost any work of
nonfiction into the category.
This contribution to the scholarship is an attempt to reverse that trend by giving the form the things it had during the New Journalism movement – a clear definition and a list of the appropriate tools from each discipline. There have been few prior attempts to do this despite ample evidence of the benefit these
elements provide for the development of any literary form. No literary form can
develop to its potential without these clear conventions.
This study examines only book-length examples of the form from Daniel
Defoe through the Barbara Enrenreich, a span of almost 300 years. It
emphasizes the scholarship and works of the Social Realism and New
Journalism movements. These were the two most influential periods of the form’s
development. Limiting the study to books allows the study to link the 7
development of the form with the development of the modern novel. This assists
the study because the development of the novel is more clearly documented than
the development of the short story. Also, limiting the study to one of the two
elements of the definition magnifies the analysis.
The study uses qualitative content analysis of the books to evaluate how
each blends fact with fiction and identify the elements of each. It uses
comparative analysis to evaluate the books collectively to compare the elements
of literature and journalism most commonly used in them. This includes the
elements that have been abandoned and the ones that have emerged most
recently. This information will provide standards that can be invaluable to
effectively study, and teaching, of this form.
The study uses discourse analysis to review the scholarship on the form
that has been produced over the past 100 years. However, this literature is
limited mostly to the period since the emergence of the New Journalism when
Wolfe and his contemporaries had such success with the form that it demanded explanation. There was little written about the form before then beyond the literary critiques of Social Realism. This analysis will examine the definitions, descriptions and justifications that have been offered for the form to find the common elements from which to construct a universal definition that will be used to evaluate the books in the study. This definition also will determine how and where the form should be studied and taught in academia.
This study has to begin with the subjective choice of a term for the form.
Some common references include creative nonfiction, narrative nonfiction, gonzo 8
journalism, personal journalism, immersion journalism, new new journalism,
participatory journalism, personal journalism, literary journalism, narrative
journalism, faction, thick description and other related terms. For this study, I will
use the term literary journalism. The term already is in common usage and is
more specific than the most common alternative, narrative journalism.
However, just as Wolfe disliked his term New Journalism, I am
uncomfortable with this choice. It is an awkward and inadequate term, just less
so than the other choices. The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard
University preferred the “narrative journalism” term when it launched the Nieman
Program on Narrative Journalism in 2001. However, this term is vague and
redundant.
The program at Harvard is evidence of a growing interest in the form. The
program encourages newspapers to use the form, even create narrative writing
teams, and helps train editors and reporters. The University of California in Irvine
created a literary journalism major several years ago. Of course, indicative of the
schizophrenia of the form, the study is offered in the English department. Other
universities, including Indiana, Maryland, Boston, Stanford and NYU, have added classes on the topic in the past five years. The courses are split between English
and journalism departments, carry a variety of names and share little similarity
among the course descriptions and reading lists for the courses.
The renewed interest adds a sense of urgency to a greater understanding
of the form. It is an opportunity for the form to emerge from the shadows of
academia and journalism. After decades of being derided or ignored, the form is 9 being embraced. The form must respond with a theory, definition, methodology and examples of writing that illustrate these things. That hasn’t happened yet.
The void is being filled with a dazzling array of nonfiction forms. The scholarship is arguing many of the same issues that dominated the debate 100 years ago.
This study offers literary journalism as the best response. The study will provide the definition necessary for critics to evaluate the form and writers to use it. It will establish some rules and boundaries for the form. It will provide a single theory with some examples of work to support it.
10
Chapter Two
Literature Review
The Social Realism movement began in the visual arts in Europe during the 19th century as a reaction to the sweeping social changes created by the
Industrial Revolution. Industrialization transformed the prevailing social structure from a picturesque rural world to a new society of crowded cities. Artists saw the changes, including the unprecedented rise of slums and disease, and wanted to record it. They soon rejected the traditional Romantic tenets of art as inadequate for the task and began producing realistic depictions of sometimes shocking scenes of urban live.
The movement was translated to literature and transported to the United
States near the end of the 19th century. The writers that embraced the movement, like their visual art predecessors, rejected Romantic themes and techniques in favor of stark realism. They explored the problems of economic inequality, social diversity and the complex lives of the people living near the bottom of the social and economic ladder.
Few critics supported the movement in either incarnation, faulting the abandonment of conventions. Most literary critics dismissed the work as meaningless, warning against the encroachment of the lowly genre of
“journalism” into the art of fiction. The critics who treated the work seriously often focused on the literary aspects of the work and ignored the influence of journalism. 11
One of the few critics to even mention the role of journalism in the
movement was Fred Lewis Pattee in his 1915 book, A History of American
Literature. His assessment dismissed the contribution of Crane and the other
journalists and is typical of the way critics viewed the work.
“During the closing years of the (19th) century there came into American
literature, suddenly and unheralded, a group of young men, journalists for the most part, who for a time seemed to promise revolution … The group was a passing phenomenon. Many of its members were dead … and the others, like
R.H. Davis, for instance, turned at length to historical romance and other
conventional fields” (Pattee, 396-397).
Julian Hawthorne, the only son of Nathaniel Hawthorne and also a
novelist, perceived the movement as a threat to literature. In 1906, he published
an article in Critic magazine entitled “Journalism the Destroyer of Literature.” In
the article, he distinguished between the two by claiming that literature was
superior because it was concerned with “spiritual” matters while journalism
focused on “material” things.
But, owing to our unspirituality, literature for the time being languishes. Journalism, the lower voice, attempts to counterfeit the tones of the higher, but the result is a counterfeit. So long as journalism attends to its own (material) business, it is not only harmless, but useful; but as soon as it would usurp what is organically above it, it becomes hurtful; not only because it does not give us what it pretends to give, but because the plausibility of that pretence may lead us to accept it as genuine, and thus atrophy the faculties whereby literature, the true voice of the spiritual, is apprehended (Hawthorne, 166-67).
12
Journalism had few scholars at the time so most of the defense of the
form came from writers, editors and social critics who were observing and studying the same social changes that dominated the work of the time. These
commentators recognized the potential of the form and advocated its further
development.
Lincoln Steffens, an editor at the then-influential newspaper, New York
Commercial Advertiser, at the turn of the century and an early champion of the form, once described his theory of the form while discussing the paper’s coverage of murder stories. Steffens, like other journalists who engaged the form, was not reluctant to associate journalism with art.
“The stated ideal for a murder story was that it should be so understood and told that the murderer would not be hanged, not by our readers. We never achieved our ideal, but there it was; and it is scientifically and artistically the true ideal for an artist and for a newspaper; to the get the news so completely and to report it so humanely that the reader will see himself in the other fellow’s place,”
Steffens said (Hartsock, 37).
Gerald Stanley Lee, a clergyman and sometimes controversial university professor, published an article in Atlantic magazine in 1900 defending the form
and predicting its success.
“It is the business of the average reporter to put a day down, to make the
day last until the night. It is the business of the poet reporter to report a day
forever, to make a day last so that no procession of flaming sunsets shall put that
day out” (Lee, 232). 13
Lee believed that a hybrid form between literature and journalism, which
he described as “transfigured” journalism, would become the dominant literary
form.
“To be a transfigured reporter – a journalist who is more of an artist than
the artist, an artist who is more of a journalist than the journalist – this is the
inevitable destiny of the next great writer who shall succeed in making headway
in the public mind” (Lee, 237).
Four years later, another noted literary critic, Henry W. Boynton, defended the form in Atlantic magazine. He called it “higher journalism.”
“More to our purpose are the many writers of power whose permanent and absorbing task is journalism, but whose work is so unmistakably informed with personality, so pure in method and in contour, as to outrank in literary quality the product of many a literary workshop” (Boynton, 847).
Tom Wolfe, 60 years later, acknowledged the contributions of Social
Realism to the form he defined as New Journalism. “The introduction of detailed realism into English literature … was like the introduction of electricity into machine technology. It raised the state of the art to an entirely new magnitude.
And for anyone, in fiction or nonfiction, to try to improve literary technique by abandoning social realism would be like an engineer trying to improve upon machine technology by abandoning electricity,” (Wolfe, Preface).
While scholars and critics debated the merits of the form, writers, many of them journalists, were publishing it in magazine articles and books. Stephen
Crane’s sketches of street life in New York in the 1890s are considered some of 14
the earliest examples of modern literary journalism (Hartsock, 14). Crane turned
his journalistic observations into short stories depicting daily life among the
working class in the growing city. He was among the first to apply the literary
techniques of characterization, setting, dialogue and point-of-view to the material
of journalism.
The combination was an immediate sensation. Crane published the
stories in every major New York newspaper and magazine, including the Tribune,
Press, Herald, Times, Sun, Journal and World. The stories were so popular that
they were published in newspapers in Washington, D.C., Denver, Philadelphia
and Kansas City. National magazines that carried his stories included Harper’s,
Metropolitan Magazine and McClure’s (Hartsock, 34).
In addition to the contributions of Crane and his contemporaries to the form from the journalism tradition, a group of fiction writers embraced it and began experimenting with the tools of the journalism. These writers, including
Upton Sinclair and John Steinbeck, produced books with their interpretations of the form that have become part of the American literary canon. While their books obviously are works of fiction, these writers researched their topics much as a reporter would, then borrowed the objective and limited point-of-view of the journalist to present their stories in a realistic form that imitated journalism. Their contributions also helped define the literary aspects of the form and the success of their work helped establishe the form.
The Jungle by Sinclair is a novel but Sinclair moved to Chicago and lived among the meatpacking industry workers for seven weeks to gather information 15 for the novel. He lived among the immigrant workers and used the journalistic tools of interviewing and observation with the intention of writing a realistic portrayal of the workers and the industry. The book was an immediate sensation.
Many people, including the nation’s leading politicians, refused to dismiss the work as pure fiction. President Theodore Roosevelt ordered a federal inspection of the Chicago plants. The inspectors claimed to verify all the unsanitary conditions described in the book. Within months of the book’s release, Congress passed the federal Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act and established the Food and Drug Administration.
Steinbeck’s account of the migration from Oklahoma to California during the Great Depression in his novel The Grapes of Wrath created a similar sensation and confusion among readers. He watched much of the plight from his home in California and gathered many of the details for the book from newspapers stories that were published at the time. Steinbeck, a former journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction with the book but it was banned in some counties in California because politicians claimed the book misrepresented them.
The Associated Farmers of California denounced the book as “a pack of lies” and
“communist propaganda.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered an investigation of the labor practices depicted in the book. Steinbeck never claimed that it was anything but a novel.
The contributions to the form from both journalists and fiction writers helped close a rift between the genres that had been growing for more than 100 years. By the time of the Social Realism movement, the novel had been elevated 16 to the status of a high art while journalism had been dismissed as too inferior to be art at all. The work produced during this period contradicted this view and illustrated the intrinsic connection that must exist between fact and fiction
(Hartsock, 50).
In a 1906 article in Critic magazine, critic Langdon Warner cited the success of the new form to advocate eliminating the separation that had grown between the two forms.
“What we need … is to re-wed literature with journalism, for surely God hath joined them together, and it was man who put them asunder” (Hartsock, 39).
This was a common idea at the beginning of the 18th century. Many of the early examples of the modern novel imitated journalism. Daniel Defoe allowed, even promoted, the notion that his 1722 novel, A Journal of the Plague Year, was a true story (Hartsock, 61). Defoe added authenticity to the book by gathering details from interviews with survivors and reading earlier written accounts of the plague. He used a similar ruse with his novel, Robinson Crusoe. Most scholars believe the book was based on the experience of real shipwrecked sailor. Both books were a commercial success.
Defoe was adept at both journalism and literature. He published more than
500 books, pamphlets and journals during his life, many of them about the traditional journalism topics of politics and economics. Because of the diversity of his writing, some scholars consider him simultaneously one of the first modern novelists and one of first modern journalists (Burgess, 7).This study will include an evaluation of the role Defoe played in the development of literary journalism. 17
The journalism contribution to the Social Realism movement faltered after
World War I. The extensive manipulation of information through the advent of
propaganda during the war forced journalism to move toward the objective style
that prevails today. After journalists realized that they had been the victims of
government propaganda during the war, they learned to distrust anything they
didn’t see or hear themselves. As a result, “in the war and after, journalists began
to see everything as illusion, since (factual reporting) was so evidently the
product of self-conscious artists of illusion” (Schudson, 142). Walter Lippman,
who led the movement toward objectivity, said “the greater the indictment against
the reliability of human witness, the more urgent is a constant testing, as
objectively as possible, of these results” (Hartsock, 155).
This change in the theory of journalism doomed the budding literary journalism movement among journalists because the form commonly was considered subjective. Experimentation with the form was left to fiction writers
and rogue journalists throughout the first half of the 20th century. One of the more
notable examples of a journalist that continued with the form was John Reed, a
journalist and devoted socialist, who documented the Soviet Revolution in Russia in his book Ten Days That Shook the World. The book commonly is included in
reading lists of literary journalism. It is evaluated later in this study. John Hersey,
a more mainstream reporter, documented the aftermath of the atomic bomb on
Hiroshima in a narrative style that also is included on most reading lists of literary
journalism. 18
The most important work in the form during this period – from about 1920
until the early 1960s – came from novelists. Several of them won the top honors
in literature for their books. Sinclair Lewis won the Pulitzer Prize in literature in
1926 for his realistic novel Arrowsmith and became the first American to win the
Nobel Prize in Literature. Arrowsmith was so realistic that it was banned in
Boston and several other American cities because of the disparity it cast on the medical profession at the time.
Lewis was given the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930 “for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humour, new types of characters” (www.nobelprizes.com). In his acceptance speech for the Nobel
Prize, Lewis lamented the reception of his work in the U.S. “In America most of us – not readers alone but even writers – are still afraid of any literature which is not a glorification of everything American, a glorification of our faults as well as our virtues” (www.nobelprizes.com).
Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962 for his collected
works, much of in the literary journalism form. The Nobel cited his “realistic and
imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social
perception” (www.nobelprizes.com).
The contribution from mainstream journalists didn’t return until the New
Journalism movement of the 1960s. Wolfe traces the beginning of the New
Journalism movement to Gay Talese and his 1962 magazine story about former heavyweight champion Joe Louis.
19
My instinctive, defensive reaction was that the man had piped it, as the saying went … winged it, made up the dialogue … Christ, maybe he made up whole scenes, the unscrupulous geek … The funny thing was, that was precisely the reaction that countless journalists and literary intellectuals would have over the next nine years as the New Journalism picked up momentum. The bastards are making it up! (I’m telling you, Ump, that’s a spitball he’s throwing …) Really stylish reporting was something no one knew how to deal with, since no one was used to thinking of reporting as having an aesthetic dimension (Wolfe, 11).
In his 1973 textbook on the New Journalism, Wolfe described the conflict between fiction and journalism that hindered the initial acceptance of the hybrid form. Novelists at the time still were considered the ‘literary upper class” and the only ones capable of “creative” writing. “They had exclusive entry to the soul of man, the profound emotions, the eternal mysteries, and so forth and so on …”
(Wolfe, 25).
Just under the novelists in the literary hierarchy were the “men of letters,” mostly essayists, critics, biographers, historians and scholars. These writers were not in the same class as the novelists and knew it, but they were universally acknowledged as “the reigning practitioners of nonfiction. “Their province was analysis, ‘insights,’ the play of intellect.” (Wolfe, 25).
At the bottom of literary society at the time were the journalists. “They were regarded chiefly as day laborers who dug up slags of raw information for writers of higher ‘sensibility’ to make better use of” (Wolfe, 25). When these journalists began publishing stories using the techniques of fiction, they upset the 20
status quo by “ignoring literary class lines that have been almost a century in the
making” (Wolfe, 25).
Novelists initially tried to ignore the emerging form, a response that Wolfe
called a gift to New Journalism. “So the novelists had been kind enough to leave
behind for our boys quite a nice little body of material: the whole of American
society, in effect. The New Journalists – Parajournalists – had the whole crazed
obscene uproarious Mamon-faced drug-soaked mau-mau lust-oozing Sixties in
America all to themselves” (Wolfe, 31).
Ultimately, the work from Wolfe, Capote, Talese, Mailer and other New
Journalism writers was impossible to ignore. In Cold Blood was a blockbuster
success. Capote attracted attention to it by claiming that it was all true. He had spent seven years in Holcombe, Kansas, researching the book and defended the accuracy of every detail. Mailer won the Pulitzer Prize with both of his contributions to the form, The Armies of the Night and The Executioner’s Song.
Variations of the form from other writers, including Hunter Thompson, who created the outlandish “gonzo journalism,” helped make the New Journalism too popular to ignore.
The success of the form during this period sparked a much bigger debate than it had at the turn of the century. But, this time, it was attacked by critics from both literature and journalism. Literary critics maintained their position that fiction was far above the concerns of journalism and that journalists should respect the division between the two forms. These critics rejected any claims that the New 21
Journalism could produce art. This was much the same argument that literary critics made against Social Realism.
. The difference this time was the resistance of editors and journalism critics to accept the form. They had embraced the work during the Social Realism movement. However, the idea of objectivity was so ingrained in journalism at the time that many editors could not accept the subjectivity they perceived in the form. Wolfe attributed the resistance among editors and some journalists to their allegiance to tradition and suspicion of innovation. “They were better than railroad men at resisting anything new. The average newspaper editor’s idea of a major innovation was the Cashword Puzzle” (Wolfe, 25).
Wolfe endured an attack from both camps in 1965 after an article he wrote in the style for New York magazine. One attack was mounted by he Columbia
Journalism Review, one of leading journalism publications, and other came from
The New York Review of Books, one of the nation’s most prominent literary publications. The two magazines compiled a list of mistakes they said they found in Wolfe’s story. Based on those mistakes, the publications launched broad attacks against the form. Both publications concluded that the New Journalism was neither journalism nor literature. They predicted that the New Journalism would quickly fade (Wolfe, 24).
“I think they looked at the work a dozen or so writers, Breslin, Talese and myself among them, were doing for New York and Esquire and they were baffled, dazzled … This can’t be right. They needed to believe, in short, that the new form was illegitimate … a ‘bastard form’” (Wolfe, 25). 22
Yet, the intent of the pioneering writers of the form during this period, as it was during the Social Realism movement, clearly was to produce reporting that read like a novel. Capote indicated this with his description of In Cold Blood as a non-fiction novel. Mailer expressed it with the subtitles “History as a Novel/The
Novel as History” and “A True Life Novel.” Wolfe secured the intent into a definition of the New Journalism in his 1973 textbook on the form. “This discover, modest at first, humble in fact, deferential, you might say, was that it just might be possible to write journalism that would … read like a novel. Like a novel, if you get the picture” (Wolfe, 9).
In 1970, during the heyday of the movement, Talese used this description:
“The New Journalism, though often reading like fiction, is not fiction. It is, or should be, as reliable as the most reliable reportage although it seeks a larger truth than is possible through the mere compilation of verifiable facts” (Talese, vii). John Hellman interprets Talese’s “larger truth” as “a key statement of the need that caused new journalists to abandon the limitations of conventional journalism. The contemporary individual was in less need of facts than of an understanding of the facts already available” (Hellman, 3).
While each of the early writers translated this dictum uniquely, Wolfe attempted to clarify the definition by identifying the most effective literary devices for the form. Wolfe used the same qualitative method of discourse analysis as this study to evaluate the work being produced at the time and find the literary devices that worked best. He found four: 23
1. Scene-by-scene construction. Telling the story by moving from
scene to scene and resorting as little as possible to historical
narrative.
2. Dialogue. This often requires the writer to witness the
conversations or to reconstruct it from the memories of others.
3. Third-person point of view. This requires presenting the story
through the eyes of a single character, other than the writer.
Wolfe believed that use of the first-person “often proves
irrelevant to the story and irritating to the reader” (Wolfe, 32).
4. Details. Wolfe advocated recording every observable detail for
the things they can reveal about the characters in the story.
Wolfe reiterated his support for these four devices 33 years later in a speech at the Narrative Journalism Conference at Harvard University. He also continued his advocacy of the form. “To this day, newspaper editors resist the idea … They need such reporters and writers to provide the emotional reality of the news, for it is the emotions, not the facts, that most engage and excite readers and in the end are the heart of most stories” (Kramer, 151).
The New Journalism was the Golden Age of the form that has become literary journalism (Hartsock, 202). It prospered during this period for several reasons. The New Journalism was well-defined, the tools were identified and
Wolfe was a staunch champion of the form. Writers knew the rules and could experiment with them. Journalism schools began teaching it using Wolfe’s 24
textbook. The form came as close to literary and academic legitimacy as it has
ever been.
There is little scholarship about why the New Journalism movement faded.
Some critics cite the demise as proof that it was “a bastard form,” a passing fad
or the wild fantasy of frustrated journalists. Some scholars speculate that the
more conservative social conditions and views of the 1980s robbed the form of
material and an audience. These scholars say that the form depended on social
upheaval, noting that it emerged first with the transition to urban life in America at the turn of the 20th century and again during the social rebellions of the 1960s
(Hartsock, 255). Still others claim that the New Journalism movement was just
one stage of development in a form that continues to evolve.
John Hartsock, a communications professor at SUNY, Cortland, and
scholar of literary journalism, offered this explanation: “In the twentieth century,
narrative literary journalism was further marginalized by the dominant underlying
paradigm that led to an aesthetic hegemony by literary modernists as to what
was considered literature. In the case of journalism, the underlying paradigm that
came to dominate the practice of most American journalism in this century, that
of the concept of “objectivity,” could also only exclude from serious consideration
a discourse as openly subjective as narrative literary journalism” (Hartsock, 248-
49).
Despite the odds against it, the form has survived as evidenced by the
anthologies that have been published during the past 20 years, the occasional
courses offered at universities and the continuing publication of stories and 25
books written in the form. A few scholars have devoted their academic careers to
the topic. These include Thomas Connery, a journalism professor at the
University of St. Thomas in St. Paul; Norman Sims, a journalism professor at the
University of Massachusetts in Amherst; Robert Boynton, a journalism professor
at New York University; David Abrahamson, a journalism professor Northwestern
University; and John Hartsock, a professor of communications at SUNY,
Cortland.
The form was validated further in 2001 when the Nieman Foundation for
Journalism at Harvard organized its “narrative journalism” program. It is the single largest effort to revive the form and carries the name of the nation’s most prestigious journalism foundation. The program’s director, Mark Kramer, defines narrative journalism with a description.
“At a minimum, narrative denotes writing with (A) set scenes, (B) characters, (C) action that unfolds over time, (D) the interpretable voice of a teller
– a narrator with a somewhat discernable personality – and (E) some sense of relationship to the reader, viewer or listener, which, all arrayed (F) lead the audience toward a point, realization or destination”
(www.nieman.harvard.edu/narrative/what_is.html)
Kramer retained the commitment to journalism standards in his
description. “We believe that when a story is also factual, when it’s held to strict
journalistic standards, and when it connects readers with the intimate
experiences of others – their senses, emotions, their particular world view – 26 through scene, it can be one of the most powerful ways of communicating ideas.
That’s the kind of journalism we want to support.”
The program also produces an electronic newsletter, an annual conference and workshops for reporters and editors.
Kramer’s description varies in several important ways from the definition
Wolfe offered for New Journalism. Kramer never mentions dialogue. He eliminates the requirement that the reporting read like a short story or novel. He expands point-of-view to inject the writer into the work. These are all stark contrasts to New Journalism and expand the definition of the form to include almost all forms of nonfiction. In Telling True Stories, Kramer includes profiles, memoirs, essays, commentary, history, travel narrative and investigative reporting as “cousin genres” of the form (Kramer, 66).
This broad interpretation of the form is common in modern scholarship. As a result, scholars have expanded the category so far that it defies definition.
Among current scholars, only Connery retains Wolfe’s restrictions on the form.
The others, like Kramer, can define the form only with descriptions.
The lack of precise definition also creates practical problems that hinder the form’s development. Libraries can’t agree on how to catalogue the work. The
Library of Congress has labeled it “reportage literature” and defines it as “works on a narrative style of literature that features the personal presence and involvement of a human witness” (Hartsock, 7). However, this system catalogues
In Cold Blood under criminology. Most literary journalism is dispersed throughout the library based on the topic of the books. 27
The confusion extends to the Pulitzer Prize. Mailer won the prize in
nonfiction in 1969 for The Armies of the Night and the prize in fiction in 1980 for
The Executioner’s Song. Mailer clearly labeled both books as nonfiction.
Connery, one of the early scholars of the form, describes the form as
“either ignored, mislabeled or misread” (Connery, 6). He advocated as early as
1990 that the form offered a “third way” of telling a story - an alternative to fiction and journalism - that an increasingly complex society demanded. “Two categories of printed prose to depict observed life were not enough, but a third – literary journalism – was possible and necessary” (Connery, 5).
Recent theory and criticism, though sparse, has complicated the issue.
Much of the work of scholars has fragmented the form instead of refining it. Each
of these scholars proposes and defends his or her interpretation of the form and
its required elements. Few share the same interpretation or even terminology. As
a result, some scholarship can be found to justify listing most works of nonfiction
as literary journalism.
Sims, one of the leading scholars of the form, has pursued what he calls
the “boundaries of the form” based on interviews with practicing literary
journalists (Sims, 8). In his 1984 book, The Literary Journalist, he listed what he
determined to be the six universal characteristics of the form:
1. Immersion in the subject matter. This requires the writer to spend
enough time with his or her subject to learn it intimately. Some
writers have taken unusual jobs for a year to gather information
for their books. Wolfe referred to this as “saturation” reporting. 28
2. Structure. The story must move in an organized way from one
action to another. This is the concept Wolfe referred to as scene-
by-scene construction.
3. Accuracy. The work must be held to the same standard of
accuracy as all news reporting.
4. Voice. This gives the reporter a presence in the work. This
element contradicts Wolfe and is controversial among journalists.
5. Responsibility to the character. This is an existing tenet of
journalism.
6. Use of symbolism.
Sims’ concept of the form expanded it to include most nonfiction and significantly altered the theory of the New Journalism. It added the voice of the writer to the requirements. This concept creates problems for the form’s acceptance by mainstream journalism where the invisible, objective reporter remains the standard. Sims also abandoned the requirement that the work read like a short story or novel. This broadens the form almost beyond comprehension.
English scholars have contributed most to the confusion by privileging the literary aspects of the form. Barbara Lounsberry, an associate professor of
English at the University of Northern Iowa, illustrated this in her 1990 book, The
Art of Fact. Lounsberry studied five authors, all from the New Journalism
movement, from a literary perspective and identified four characteristics of the
form. The first three – documentable subject matter, exhaustive research and 29
creating scene – agree with the theories of Wolfe and Sims. The fourth element
was “polished language” (Lounsberry, xv). She preferred the term “artful literary nonfiction” (Lounsbery, xi).
In a 1997 book by the same name, two English professors who also teach journalism, Ben Yagoda and Kevin Kerrane, tried to define the form. They chose the term literary journalism while conceding that it was “a profoundly fuzzy term”
(Yagoda, 13)) for a form that was “on the other side of the literary tracks”
(Yagoda, 97).
Their book, mostly an anthology, expands the definition of the form even
further. They sanction, even advocate, overtly subjective work dominated by the
voice of the writer as an alternative to Wolfe’s third-person narrator and include
examples of the writing from such writers as George Orwell and Hunter
Thompson, both known for the force of their personality in their writing.
“One other thing they share is an understanding that outsized and unabashed subjectivity can be a superb route to understanding. The disembodied, measured voice of classic journalism is a kind of flimflam; the pure objectivity it implies is probably unattainable by humans. By stepping out from the shadows and laying bare his or her prejudices, anxieties or through processes the reporter gives us something firmer and truer to hold on to as we come to our own conclusions” (Yagoda, 16). This concept is similar to the idea of reflexivity in qualitative research.
Their emphasis on stylistic prose also expanded the definition of the form.
This is illustrated by a story they included in the anthology by Rebecca West 30
about the Bosnian town of Travnik. Yagoda and Kerrane commented that the
piece illustrates that “the criterion for inclusion is little more than prose of a
remarkably high order” (Yagoda, 16).
Journalism scholars have remained more conservative when defining the
form. The most conservative among them is Connery. He offers the strictest
definition of the form among modern scholars, almost mirroring the theory of New
Journalism. Connery prefers the term literary journalism because it requires the use of the traditional news gathering tools of journalism. He uses the term because it limits the category by excluding essays and commentary (Connery,
15). By requiring the use of the tools of journalism, Connery’s definition also
implies that the writer have journalistic training.
Robert Boynton shared Wolfe’s definition of the form and traced the
development of the form since the New Journalism movement in his book, The
New New Journalism. He uses the rather clumsy term “new new journalism” to
describe the current state of the form and acknowledge the debt current writers
have to the New Journalism and Social Realism movements.
“In the years since Wolfe’s manifesto, a group of writers has been quietly
securing a place at the very center of contemporary American literature for
reportorially based, narrative-driven, long-form nonfiction. These New New
Journalists … use the license to experiment with form earned by the New
Journalists of the 1960s and 70s and speak to social and political concerns
similar to those of 19th century writers … synthesizing the best of two traditions”
(Boynton, B10). 31
Modern practitioners of the form are making more important contributions
to journalism than to literature, according to Boynton. These writers have found
innovative ways of practicing immersion reporting to get the detailed information
the form requires. For example, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc spent almost a decade on
Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx
(Boynton, B10). “Wolfe said he went inside his characters’ heads; the New New
Journalists become part of their lives,” Boynton wrote.
These modern practitioners also have switched the focus of the work from
the celebrities that attracted the attention of the New Journalists to the
experiences of the common man. Boynton calls this “drilling down into the
bedrock of ordinary experience” (Boynton, B10). He attributes this change in
topic to the influence of the Social Realism movement.
“It is not that their 19th century predecessors have directly influenced these writers. More, I would argue, the New New Journalists are, often unwittingly, dwelling on the questions that the genre has been posing since the 19th century:
How does a fast-growing society of immigrants construct a national identity? How
does a country built by capitalism consider questions of economic justice? How does a nation of different faiths live together?” (Boynton, B11).
David Abrahamson, a journalism professor who has been teaching the form at Northwestern University for more than decade, defines the form with a description from writer Ron Rosenbaum – “Literary journalism, he once wrote, is not about literary flourishes or references, but rather ‘journalism (which) at its best asks the questions that literature asks’” (Abrahamson, 431). 32
Deborah Campbell, a practitioner of the form, addressed the status of the
form in an October 2005 speech at the University of British Columbia as part of
the school’s Creative Writing Masters’ Series. Like all scholars of the form, she
anguished over the proper term for it. After listing a dozen common terms for the form, she chose literary journalism for her speech. “And we come back to literary
journalism, the old standby, which some New New Journalists feel is too
ostentatious because it uses the term ‘literary,’ but which serves its purpose
because it encompasses the two genres involved: journalism and literary writing;
or storytelling” (http://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2005/11/01/JournalismArt/).
Campbell offered her own definition of the form. “Roughly speaking, this literary form combines traditional reporting – interviewing, research, visiting the scene – with the techniques of fiction writing – having a voice, scenes, characterization, dialogue, metaphor. It can be first person, but doesn’t have to be. It cares about the writing as much as the research and the two are inseparable” (Ibid).
She added three “defining characteristic” of the form: It enters deeply into the subjects’ worlds; it is concerned with common people and events ignored by the mainstream press; and it relies on voice, including style, rhetorical flourish and precise word choice.
She also addressed the lingering debate about the subjectivity of the work.
She called it a “bogus debate.” Literary journalism is as obligated to accuracy as all journalism. The only difference is the method of delivering the information. 33
“Literary journalism has an advantage over straight journalism in that it
gives room for the writer to be present and revealed to the reader, furnishing the
necessary context so the reader can decide how much he or she shares that
perspective. Biases can be made plain. In the end, the only thing we are left with
is the character of the writer or journalist” (Ibid).
Scholars from disciplines outside of literature and journalism have offered theories of the form. These studies have focused on issues beyond the literary merit or journalism ethics of the form. Generally, they have complicated the concept of the form more than they have clarified it.
John J. Pauly, a critical studies scholar, characterized literary journalism as “a realm of symbolic confrontation” that reflects a larger cultural confrontation in an attempt to engage cultural negotiation (Pauly, 111). Using similar critical studies theories, David Eason differentiated between what he called “realists” texts of literary journalism “in which conventional ways of understanding still apply” and “modernist” texts of the form “where there is no consensus about a frame of reference” (Eason, 192). Shelley Fisher Fishkin, an American studies scholar, used the same approach to determine that the form emerged to give a voice to marginalized members of society (Fishkin, 133).
Phyllis Frus, an English professor, applied a postmodern Marxist interpretation to literary journalism to examine its means of production. Frus challenged the literary assumptions in some books of literary journalism, including Hiroshima and In Cold Blood, and claimed the books marginalize the
Japanese (Frus, 93) and homicidal drifters (Frus, 184) as the Other. 34
In the outer extreme, Masud Zavarzadeh offered a theory of literary
nonfiction that included the explanation “the tension between the centrifugal
energies of reality and the centripetal forces of fiction produce double fields of
reference in the nonfiction novel and distinguish the genre through its bi- referentiality from such mono-referential narratives as the fictive novel or factual
history” (Zavarzadeh, 226). Out of this derives a neutral narrative of “zero
interpretation” whose ambition in its neutrality is to reflect the absurdity of the
world (Zavarzadeh, 40).
Conclusion:
Any study of literary journalism is hindered by the lack of scholarship on
the topic. The academy has shunned literary journalism since the demise of the
New Journalism movement in the 1980s. Academics who study it and writers
who create it now often are classified as eccentrics or rebels. As a result, most
the material available for study was created by a small group of people over a
period of about 100 years. This is a less than ideal condition for studying the
form.
The existing scholarship is composed of contributions from several
different disciplines. In addition to literature and journalism critics, scholars from such perspectives as sociology, psychology, political science and philosophy have studied it. Analysis offered by writers and editors has been based more on personal opinion, and perhaps self-interest, than objective study. The result is a disparate body of literature, much of it unrelated to literature or journalism, that 35 has fragmented the form instead of consolidating it. This broad range of interpretation also complicates the study of the form.
Despite all this, this study requires a concise definition of the form for the analysis of the material. I will use discourse analysis to derive this definition from the available options. This process will be discussed in the next chapter.
36
Chapter Three
Methodology
Literary journalism is a hybrid of literature and journalism and must be
studied with methods from both disciplines. This study uses the qualitative
methods of discourse analysis from mass communications to analyze the journalism aspects of the form and the qualitative methods of comparative literature from the study of English to analyze the literary aspects. These methods provide the best tools for understanding this unique blend of literature
and journalism.
I will begin by applying discourse analysis to a review of the scholarship
on literary journalism and its related forms. I will identify the earliest definitions
and descriptions of the form and isolate the elements that originally separated it from both journalism and literature. This will establish the foundation for tracing the definitions and descriptions to the present day. By following this intellectual evolution, I will be able to identify and evaluate the changes in the form. This includes connecting the changes to specific social conditions and the prevailing theories of journalism and literature during that evolution.
This approach to the review of scholarship will allow me to propose a concise definition of the form that I can use to evaluate the dozen book-length examples of the form included in the second half of the study. This step is necessary because there is no single definition or dominant school of scholarship available. The current definitions and descriptions are far too broad to be used effectively. 37
Discourse analysis provides the best tools for deriving this definition and
providing the theoretical framework for defending it. As a research method, it is
concerned with examining not only what is contained in a text but also what is
omitted or implied. It provides the intellectual freedom to interpret this wide range
of definitions and descriptions, to find commonalities, to eliminate contradictions,
to synthesis the disparate parts into a coherent whole. This versatility is crucial to
the study of a form as fragmented and nebulous as literary journalism.
Of the several types of discourse analysis available, I will rely on a technique pioneered by Don Rabon, deputy director of the North Carolina Justice
Academy and author of the 1994 book Investigative Discourse Analysis:
Statements, Letters & Transcripts. Rabon is an international expert in discourse
analysis, interrogation, persuasion and detecting deception. In his book, he
demonstrates how to apply investigative discourse analysis to conflicting
evidence and statements. He compares the technique to processing a crime
scene.
“The examination of a crime scene may require the investigator to pick up
a shell casing and examine it in order to learn more. Investigative discourse
analysis requires the investigator to “pick up” words, phrases, or sentences for
examination. The discourse analyst should recognize what is there for what it is
and should notice what is missing that should be there” (Rabon, introduction).
This technique is familiar to journalism. Reporters routinely examine
information from the critical perspective of an investigator. It is a necessary
survival skill for a successful journalist. The press is a constant target of 38 manipulation, either in an effort to promote publicity or to suppress it, and journalists must view all information from this perspective to avoid being exploited. Any experienced reporter who has succeeded beyond the community journalism level (as I have) has learned how to detect deception and decipher jargon to find the facts. This skill, properly executed, produces some of the nation’s best and most important journalism.
The study of literary journalism demands this type of investigative approach. The scholarship consists of contributions from several disciplines – mass communication, English, sociology, psychology, philosophy – all privileging their own discipline. For example, the English scholars often belittle, even dismiss, the contributions of journalism. Journalists and mass communication scholars usually subordinate the English elements of the form in their studies and commentaries. Sociology scholars examine the external factors that shape the content and form of literary journalism. Psychologists and philosophers study the effects of the form on people and society. Investigative discourse analysis allows me to evaluate all these contributions with the critical suspicion it requires.
I also will use the method of deconstruction to evaluate this scholarship.
Deconstruction allows me to analyze the assumptions, ideas and frameworks behind the scholarship by discounting the privileged perspective of the scholars.
Jacques Derrida, a French philosopher who coined the term in the 1960s, refused to define this method but others have described it as “a project of critical thought whose task is to locate and ‘take apart’ those concepts which serve as the axioms or rules for a period of thought, those concepts which command the 39
unfolding of an entire epoch of metaphysics” (Derrida, xxxii). Deconstruction
complements the method of discourse analysis and reinforces the effort to find
the common denominators of the form.
One of the goals of a deconstructive reading of a text is to demonstrate
how a seemingly unitary idea or concept contains different or opposing meanings
within itself. This is particularly relevant to the study of literary journalism, which
is a construction of the opposing concepts of literature (fiction) and journalism
(fact). I will use the common deconstruction technique of critiquing binary
oppositions to identify the unifying concepts of the form. This technique is designed to counter the influence of the privileged perspective each discipline has embedded into its analysis.
To explain this concept, Derrida argued that the order of words in a term is significant from the perspective of binary opposition. The first word in a term like literary journalism automatically is considered superior while the second word is considered subordinate. Deconstruction attempts to neutralize this imbalance by reversing the order of the words and evaluating the philosophical implications of it. From this reversal will emerge a new concept, one that collectively transcends the individual elements of either root. This technique allows me to re-evaluate the
relationship between the journalism and literary aspects of the form by evaluating
it without privileging either discipline. The scholarship completely lacks this sort
of disinterested perspective.
I will extend these techniques beyond the scholarship to evaluate
comments the authors of the 12 books used in this study made about their work. 40
Some of these comments were included in their books, either as a preface or afterward. Others were made in interviews or articles written long after the books were published. This commentary provides insight into the original intent of the authors and some perspective of how those views changed over the years. The input from these writers is as important, if not more so, than the analysis of the scholars and critics that followed them.
I will combine all the information collected by these techniques to devise a simple definition that I can use to evaluate the books, all of which have been classified as literary journalism by more than one scholar. I will apply the definition to each book to determine if it is literary journalism, identify the elements that qualify or disqualify it as literary journalism and locate its role in the development of the form. This kind of study can only be done with a concise definition, however controversial that definition may be.
In addition to the definition, it is necessary to evaluate each book as a piece of literature. This requires the tools of comparative literature from the
English contribution to the form. Comparative literature evaluates a text from the perspective of finding the elements that unify the parts into the whole. For this study, that includes finding the common elements among all the books and understanding how they function to create a work greater than the sum of its parts.
The American School of comparative literature is the most appropriate theoretical model for this study. This school is unique in the field of comparative literature because it focuses on the relationship between literary forms within a 41 single culture. Most comparative literature is based on the French School which studies and compares literature from different nations and cultures. All comparative literature study attempts to identify the origins of the work and the influences that shaped its development in addition to comparing the common elements among the works.
These tools allow me to isolate the elements of fiction and journalism in the books and compare their use individually. Doing this will identify the most commonly used elements of each as well as identify the elements that have been tried and abandoned. This knowledge is essential to further defining the form and developing its canon, both central goals of this study.
Finding these elements and documenting their use will refine the definition by providing a list of the elements of literature and journalism that make the form effective, much as Wolfe did in his textbook. Wolfe used these same techniques of comparative literature to find the four essential elements of fiction he listed in the book. The form has evolved since Wolfe’s book and there are far more examples of it to examine. A new evaluation can test Wolfe’s list and maybe add more elements to it.
Research Questions
1. What distinguishes literary journalism from other forms of nonfiction?
This is the central question to this study. It assumes that literary journalism is distinct from other forms of the broader genre of creative nonfiction. The definition that I will propose and the common elements that I will identify in 42
examples of the work will answer this question. The rest of the study will be built on this answer.
2. Where should literary journalism be studied and taught in the academy?
The answer to this question is crucial to the development of the form. It can prosper only if it is accepted in the academy. It will only be accepted into the academy if it fits neatly into an established discipline. This study, based on the answers to the first question, will situate the form within the academy.
3. What books best illustrate the form?
Once the form is defined and assigned to the proper academic discipline,
it will need a canon. Establishing a canon is far beyond the scope of this study
but I will analyze a dozen books that have been suggested for the status. Fully
answering this question will require the work of many more scholars.
Limitations
This study is broad in the review of the scholarship but narrow in its review
of work in the form. I have limited the study to the analysis of book-length
examples of the form. There are several practical and theoretical reasons for
doing this.
First, the volume of work currently classified as literary journalism is
unmanageable for a single scholar. An effective study requires limiting the scope
to a small but consistent sample. Books provide the best source for this. It is a
small but influential segment of the category. The alternative is the body of work
available in magazines. Although much of the scholarship has examined this 43 form of the work, it varies far more widely in theory and form than books written in the form. Books also reach a larger audience than magazines. Books are distributed nationally while most magazines have regional circulation.
Books are central to the study because I believe they provide the best format for the continuing development of the form. Contributions come from both journalists and fiction writers, providing input from the multiple influences essential to the form. This combination of writers created the Golden Age of the form during the middle of the 20th century. They shaped the form through the combination of journalists experimenting with their tools and fiction writers doing the same with their tools. This process creates a body of work with the most potential for yielding the patterns and commonalities sought in this study.
Books also provide more freedom from the strict conventions of journalism than magazine articles. Books allows writers to experiment more widely with the form. This sort of experimentation will find the boundaries of the form and establish its conventions. The longer format of a book encourages and accommodates this process.
I also must confess a personal interest in the book-length format. My desire to become a journalist and writer came from an early book written in this form, The Paper Lion by George Plimpton, that I read when I was 14 years old.
As a journalism student in 1981, I studied the New Journalism from Tom Wolfe’s textbook by the same name. As a working journalist, I experimented with the form. It interested me enough that I interrupted my journalism career for four years to study fiction in a university creative writing program. As an academic, I 44
expect to study the form further and write books using it. I believe, as Wolfe did
35 years ago, that this blend of fact and fiction, done properly, will replace the novel as the most popular and influential literature of our time.
The qualitative methods I’m using in the study have the same limitations inherent in most qualitative studies. The interpretation of the scholarship and the analysis of the books are subjective. The results cannot be replicated. The validity of my conclusions depends on the strength of the arguments and examples supporting them. This is the unavoidable nature of qualitative research but there is no other option for studying this topic.
At the very least, I hope this study contributes to the broader intellectual debate by offering an alternative to the existing scholarship. This study provides that alternative perspective by imposing restrictions on the form, something few scholars have done. These restrictions, even if proved invalid, will help balance the debate by reversing, if only for a moment, the direction of the debate.
45
Chapter Four
Analysis
This study requires a precise definition of literary journalism for the
analysis of the material. After reviewing the scholarship with the methods of discourse analysis and deconstruction, I have decided to use the definition of the
New Journalism movement – “reporting that reads like a short story or novel.” It is the clearest, most precise definition of the form offered in the scholarship.
Subsequent definitions are too vague to provide an adequate framework for this
study.
There are several compelling reasons to use this definition. One of the
most compelling is the original intent of the form’s founding writers. This definition
is closest to that intent. Stephen Crane and the writers of the Social Realism
movement actually created fiction from their journalistic observations. Their
emphasis was on the literary aspects of the form. When they combined their
literary ideas with the training as journalists, the work materialized in the form of
short stories and novels.
Wolfe and his contemporaries built on this idea with the emphasis
switched to the journalism aspects of the form. Their work led to Wolfe’s
definition that the form must “read like a short story or novel.” The role of this
definition in the original conception of the form and the success of the New
Journalism movement, the two most influential periods of the form’s
development, convinces me of its validity for my analysis. 46
Much of the work produced during the Social Realism and New
Journalism movements under the guidance of this definition was commercially
and critically successful. Crane first became famous for his city sketches in New
York newspapers and magazines. Upton Sinclair shocked the nation and forced social reform with The Jungle. Truman Capote secured his literary reputation with
In Cold Blood. Norman Mailer won two Pulitzer Prizes with the form. J. Anthony
Lukas gave the form another Pulitzer Prize in 1986.
The form was successful enough under this definition in the 1970s and
1980s that it was offered in journalism classes at universities. These schools
used Wolfe’s textbook, institutionalizing this definition for a brief time. For a
decade or two, this definition provided an academic home and the form
flourished.
This definition also is supported by the fact that almost all modern scholarship is built on it and Wolfe’s other contributions to the form. Scholars have examined the individual elements and concepts of the form as defined by
Wolfe and expanded on his ideas. None of them has directly contested his “reads like a short story or novel” definition. Instead, it has been dropped quietly from the debate as interpretations have allowed the form to expand. None of them argues that the third-person point of view is wrong. Instead, their interpretations have accepted – with remarkable presumption – the first-person, subjective narrator as the norm. Their justifications for these modifications are far less convincing that Wolfe’s arguments in support of his definition. 47
This definition is as necessary as it is justified. There are no other
alternatives specific enough to use in an academic study. Descriptions of the
form can’t replace a definition for this purpose. It is the very lack of a definition
that has hindered previous studies of the form. And, I, like scholars before me,
failed to derive an original definition. Instead, I advocate the revival of an existing
one that has proved successful in the past.
This study also accepts the four literary devices identified by Wolfe as appropriate elements of the form for many of the reasons listed above. However,
I do not assume that they are the only acceptable elements. The second half of this study will focus on identifying and testing these elements.
I acknowledge the primary argument against using this definition. After all,
the Social Realism movement faded and the New Journalism was pronounced
dead. This can be interpreted as failures of the definition. However, I believe
these were more the failures of the writers, the marketplace, public perception
and other related factors than a failure of the fundamental elements of the form.
This study defines “reporting” as the gathering of information by the rules
and standards of traditional journalism. As part of the definition of literary
journalism, it denotes this traditional interpretation of journalism. Generally, this
work includes interviewing people, reviewing official records and archives,
attending meetings and doing related research.
Literary journalism relies on these fundamental tools of journalism for the
accuracy and credibility that makes the form unique. It has adapted and 48
expanded on those tools to meet the more demanding needs of the form. The most common methods that have emerged are:
1. Immersion. This tool provides a way for a writer to gather the
detailed observations the form requires. It goes far beyond the
usual bounds of journalistic observation. Some writers spend
years living with the subjects of their books.
2. Interviews. Literary journalists have transformed the traditional
journalistic interview. The simple recollections and observations
aren’t enough anymore. Literary journalists use interviews to
reconstruct dialogue and provide details for scenes.
3. Research. This provides more than a few paragraphs of
background for a literary journalist. Letters can provide dialogue.
Diaries can provide thoughts. Official records can provide
personal details.
4. Accuracy. This commitment is the same as with all journalism.
Next, I will use this definition to analysis each of the 12 books individually
and in chronological order. This structure is necessary to provide historical
context and illustrate the development of the form. The analysis begins with A
Journal of the Plague Year, published in 1722, and ends with Nickle and Dimed,
published in 2001. I will apply the definition to each book to determine if it is
literary journalism. Then, I will extend the analysis to include identifying the
elements of literary journalism within the work. 49
These books were chosen after reviewing the reading lists at universities that offer courses in literary journalism, reading a history and several anthologies of literary journalism and perusing the list of Pulitzer Prize winners in the nonfiction category. The list includes multiple examples from the Social Realism movement at the turn of the 20th century and the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s. This is necessary because of the importance of the two periods in the development of literary journalism.
The books were written by both journalists and novelists. Both are represented on this list to illustrate the contributions that each has made to literary journalism. The form has been equally accessible to both groups of writers and they have learned from each other, a process that continues to shape the form today.
This list is not intended to be exhaustive. There are many other good, perhaps even better, examples of book-length literary journalism. There also is no discussion of literary journalism in other countries. There is an active movement in England, France and Germany, but those movements are beyond the scope of this study.
A Journal of the Plague Year. Daniel Defoe. 1722.
This book does not meet the definition of literary journalism. It fails the journalism requirement of the form. It is fiction imitating journalism. Still, it is important to the study of literary journalism for the historic and theoretical lineage it provides. It demonstrates the common heritage between modern journalism 50
and the modern novel that existed as the forms emerged in the 18th century. This
example helps discount the modern criticism that the two forms are incompatible.
This book provides a connection between the two that is far closer than modern
scholars of journalism and English want to acknowledge.
Defoe promoted his book as a true story written by a survivor who witnessed the event. In other words, he disguised the book as journalism in its
root form – a journal. The book was a sensation. He had used the same ruse
three years earlier with The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson
Crusoe with the same success. In Journal, he reinforced the perception by
publishing what he claimed to be copies of government mortality records and
copies of government orders and statements issued during the plague. In
Robinson Crusoe, he published what he claimed were actual journal entries.
The success of Defoe’s books illustrates a public interest in the form that
has become literary journalism that is as old as the modern novel itself. When
Defoe wrote his books, the public preferred true stories to the fantastic, overtly
contrived, romances that dominated fiction at the time. Robinson Crusoe was in
its fourth printing within a year of its release. Journal and Robinson Crusoe have
remained in print for almost 300 years.
John Hartsock, a scholar of literary journalism, finds deep significance in
the success of Defoe’s books and their guise of journalism. “It may be more
appropriate to conclude that the modern fictional novel borrowed technique from
nonfiction narratives and not the other way around … In other words, 51
characterizing a story as true gave it a legitimacy that the early and overtly fictional novel did not have” (Hartsock, 118).
Defoe knew how to blend the two forms. He is described as one of the first modern journalists and one of the first modern novelists (Burgess, 7). He spent most of his life as a journalist, writing political pamphlets and essays for newspaper and magazines. He also edited several journals. He only began publishing fiction in 1719, at the age of 58. To write his books, he blended his journalistic training with fiction, much as modern literary journalists do. The results are studied in university literature programs today.
Defoe obviously relied on his skills as a journalist to write this book. He was only 5 years old during the plague year but there is little doubt that he heard stories about it while growing up. The plague had claimed the lives of about one- third of the city’s residents. His descriptions of the sickness and details of the suffering it inflicted are consistent with other available accounts of the plague.
The closing of houses, the mass burials, the superstitious rituals, the panic, all seem to be historically accurate. Defoe collected these stories, then combined them into a book, embellishing them with the devices of fiction.
“Defoe was a professional writer and we know that, in preparation for the
Journal, he amassed a solid little library of reference works. He wanted to write a popular novel, but he insisted on doing his homework first” (Burgess, 1).
In Journal, Defoe used the fiction technique of creating a narrator to tell the story from the limited first-person point-of-view. Defoe created a London saddler who remained in the city during the devastating plague of 1665 and 52
claimed to be publishing his memoir of the event 60 years later. However, the
narrator is not developed as fully as a character should be in a novel. He is
identified only as H.F. at the very end of the book. Most scholars believe Defoe
used the initials of his uncle, Henry Foe, who was 37 years old at the time of the
plague and might have lived in London during that time (Burgess, 14). The
protagonist of the story seems to be more the city of London than a single
character.
Defoe also incorporated the fiction techniques of creating dialogue,
describing scenes, using a plot and developing characters. All these techniques
are consistent with the elements of literary journalism that Wolfe identified.
This book should be considered for the canon of literary journalism, not as
an example of the form but as a point of reference for the history of the form. It
was one of the first popular books written in a version of the form. It is a good
starting point for the study of literary journalism.
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. Stephen Crane. 1893.
This book does not meet the definition of literary journalism. It is obviously fiction. However, like the previous book, it is important to the study of literary journalism and is listed on most reading lists of the form. It provides an influential example of the work produced during the Social Realism movement in American literature at the turn of the 20th century. Most scholars consider this period the
incubator of literary journalism. 53
Stephen Crane was a journalist who ventured into fiction while retaining
many of the principles of his journalistic training. The novella, Maggie, is a fictionalized account of Irish immigrant life in the tenements of lower Manhattan at the end of the 19th century but it is based on Crane’s extended observations
and experiences in the area. Crane compromised his health (he died at 29 from
tuberculosis) to live in the boarding houses and alleys of the slums, using the
journalism tools of observation, interviewing and immersion reporting in an
attempt to understand the subject well enough to write about it accurately.
Maggie is one of several works he produced from those experiences.
Early in his journalism career, Crane was influenced by the New Realism
literary movement led by novelist Hamlin Garland (Wolfe, 192). Garland advocated that American writers should portray life exactly as they saw it and
never conceal the unpleasant behind sentimentality. “Crane was swept away” by
the concept and applied the concept to his choice of topics as a journalist.
(Wolfe,193). He wrote about the people and places ignored by the popular press,
establishing what has became a central tenet of modern literary journalism.
“Crane is a realist in the most rigorous sense of the word; he just wants to
show how people respond to situations they have no control over even when
they have (wittingly or not) helped to create them. The why is never protested;
Crain thought it unnecessary to ask” (Kazin, xvi).
The New Realism, later called Social Realism, movement in literature moved the novel closer to journalism and Crane was among the first of many journalists to embrace the development. Journalists used the forms of fiction as a 54
way to express themselves beyond the limitations of the journalism form, to more
fully portray what they saw on the streets. Fiction writers, no longer satisfied with
simple artifice, used the form as they sought the deeper meaning, the “truth,”
about the rapidly changing world around them.
Crane and his contemporaries relied on their journalism skills to provide
the realism in their work. It also influenced how they incorporated the
conventions of fiction into their work. They avoided the purple prose, the
sentimentality of internal reflections and the trivia of social manners that
dominated novels and short stories of the day. They wrote stark stories of real
people struggling to survive. They rejected the omniscient point-of-view that
dominated fiction at the time for a narration that read as if they were reporting only observable details.
In the opening scene of Maggie, Crain illustrates this stark journalistic
style with his description of a fight among some neighborhood children:
“A stone had smashed in Jimmie’s mouth. Blood was bubbling over his
chin and down upon his ragged shirt. Tears made furrows on his dirt-stained
cheeks. His thin legs had begun to tremble and turn weak, causing his small
body to reel. His roaring curses of the first part of the fight had changed to a
blasphemous chatter” (Crane, 2).
This observation would fit easily into any newspaper, then or now. There
is no internal dialogue, no privileged literary point of view, no moral reflection on
the scene. It seems to be an accurate description by a competent, disinterested
observer. Yet, it contains the kind of details that relate far more information about 55 the scene than the writer provides overtly. For example, the boy wears a ragged shirt, which denotes him as poor. He cries and he has a small body, denoting that he is young. He curses and blasphemes, which indicates he has little moral or religious instruction. Crane gives the reader a portrait of troubled child with an uncertain future, a child Crane had seen many times as a journalist.
Crain transformed his journalism into fiction with the four techniques Wolfe identified. Crane used dialogue, although he invented it instead of recreating it as required by literary journalism. He told his story through the use of scenes and action, as Wolfe advocated. Crane used the third-person limited point-of-view and relied on details instead of narrative to reveal character, just as Wolfe listed in his textbook.
Although Crane technically created fiction, the introduction of the journalism writing style into the novel and short story is the lasting contribution of
Crane and the other writers of the Social Realism movement. They blended journalism and literature into a new form that is the basis for all work in the form today. That influence is important enough to include Crane in the canon of literary journalism.
The Social Realism movement lasted until the beginning of World War II and produced such notable works of realistic fiction by journalists as The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. These books were prototypes of what literary journalism could become. Tom Wolfe describes this time as “the one and only great period of the American novel” (Wolfe, 209).
56
The Jungle. Upton Sinclair. 1906.
This book does not meet the definition of literary journalism. Clearly, it is
fiction. But, like the two previous books, it shows an important evolution in the
form. This book provides an example of a novelist engaging the form during the
Social Realism movement. It also illustrates the impact that work produced in the
form can have. The book created a public sensation and prompted new federal
laws protecting food safety.
Sinclair was a member of the Socialist Party and wrote more than 90
books, including novels, social commentary and an autobiography. In 1904, he
decided he wanted to write a book depicting the conditions of immigrant workers
within the growing American industrial machines. He chose to focus on the
meatpacking industry in Chicago. He sold the idea for the story to Appeal to
Reason, a Socialist magazine, and moved to Chicago to live among the workers for seven weeks. During that time, he recorded the details of his observations and interviewed dozens of workers. He was, before the terms were ever coined, practicing the modern literary journalism techniques of immersion reporting and intensive interviewing.
Once he gathered the information, he chose to write it as a novel instead of a journalistic expose, which was a popular and profitable form at the time. He had written the exposes during the meatpacking house labor strikes two years before he wrote The Jungle. Sinclair’s choice to use the form of a novel indicates that he was as convinced of the power of literary journalism as Crain and other journalists were. 57
“In choosing fiction over a journalistic account, Sinclair was responding to
a moment when novelists were also taking on the real and exploring new
techniques for storytelling, and as a consequence, enjoying a heady period of
reinvigoration and a renewed sense of their own persuasive power” (Spiegel, xv).
Sinclair experimented with technique in this book by using the journalistic writing style. He rejected the literary omniscient point of view for the journalistic style – the one Wolfe advocated – of a limited third-person point of view that realistically presents observable and knowable facts. This choice limits the use of other literary conventions, such as internal dialogue and motivations, but enhances the realism essential to the form.
Sinclair’s use of the form baffled readers and reviewers at the time.
Although the book never was promoted as anything other than a novel, readers, reviewers and some members of the federal government believed it to be fact. It generated a public debate. Months after the book was published, then-President
Theodore Roosevelt ordered a federal investigation of the meatpacking houses in Chicago. Federal investigations verified the conditions Sinclair described and, by the end of the year, Congress passed the federal Food and Drug Act and the
Meat Inspection Act. The only detail not documented by federal investigators concerned men falling into the machinery and being processed into the food.
“This was the only assertion in the novel that could not be independently verified after the book’s publication. Sinclair responded that the employers made sure to send the widows of the men killed in such accidents back to their 58 countries of origin in order to hide the atrocious manner of their deaths” (Spiegel, xviii).
The book’s close association with journalism earned both praise and criticism, something modern literary journalist still experience. It was rejected by five publishers and only accepted by Doubleday after Sinclair personally sold
$4,000 in advance copies.
A June 1, 1906, review in The New York Times literary supplement praised the book for its journalistic authenticity:
“This book is published as a novel, and it might claim to be reviewed, therefore, under the head of fiction. But the very first thing to be said about it is that, if it is a novel, a work of imagination and invention, the conduct of an author who invented and published in a form easily accessible to all readers, young or old, male or female, such disgusting, inflammatory matter as this would deserve the severest censure. Unhappily we have good reason for believing it to be all fact, not fiction … The names alone are fictitious. The rest of the book is a faithful report of abuses which fill the reader with nausea and indignation … published in this form, it will be recognized far and wide for what it is – a most important sociological document; and the practical effect of it should be great.”
An April 1906 review in The Bookman, a trade journal for the publishing industry at the time, criticized Sinclair for the simple journalism style and stark reportorial details about conditions in the plants. The reviewer called Sinclair
“ignorant” and claimed he was not reliable as an “observer and recorder of conditions in a special field.” The reviewer faulted Sinclair for abandoning the literary expectations of the time: 59
“Yet all of Mr. Sinclair’s plain speaking would be justified and even welcomed if it signified anything. Unfortunately it all comes to naught. We do not need to be told that thievery, and prostitution, and political jobbery, and economic slavery exist in Chicago. So long as these truths are before us only as abstractions they are meaningless. Mr. Sinclair has pretended to reduce them to concrete experience, but the pretense is too shallow. His chief character is a mere puppet. He is too obviously manipulated, his experiences are too palpably made to order, to signify anything one way or the other. Jurgis Rudkus is neither individual nor type. He is a mere jumble of impossible qualities labeled a man and put through certain jerky motions at the hands of an author with a theory to prove. The whole performance shows how much Mr. Sinclair has yet to learn.”
Sinclair was surprised by the reaction to the book. He had tried to focus the book on the condition of the workers, not the condition of the meat they were processing. “I aimed for the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach,”
Sinclair said (Spiegel, xvii).
The Jungle deserves consideration for the canon for several compelling reasons. This book is what literary journalism aspires to be. It provides a model of what the form can look like when it is done properly. Sinclair focused on the ignored segment of society, now a tenet of literary journalism. He lived among the subjects of his book, using the literary journalism technique of immersion reporting. Then, using the facts he gathered, he created a novel that was mistaken for journalism. Literary journalists adhere to the facts more closely than
Sinclair – no composite characters or invented dialogue – and attempt to create a work of journalism that is mistaken for a novel or short story.
60
Ten Days That Shook the World. John Reed. 1919.
This book fits the definition of literary journalism. The book could be mistaken for a novel, albeit of a sort of fractured, postmodernist form. Yet is an accurate account, at least as available to a single observer, of the last 10 days of the Russian Revolution and the victory of the Bolshevik Party. Even one of the primary characters in the book, Lenin, signed a letter attesting to the book’s accuracy. “It gives a truthful and most vivid exposition of the events …,” Lenin said in an introduction to the first edition of the book in 1919.
John Reed gathered the information for the book as a working journalist in
Russia during the Bolshevik revolution. He attended public forums and debates, conducted interviews, gathered government statements and public notices, moved among the opposing factions and observed and recorded everything. He was a journalist covering a world event, witnessing history, and he knew it.
Reed described the book in a preface to the first edition as “a slice of intensified history – history as I saw it. It does not pretend to be anything but a detailed account of the November Revolution … In the struggle my sympathies were not neutral. But in telling the story of those great days I have tried to see events with the eye of a conscientious reporter, interested in setting down the truth” (Reed, 8).
Reed was the only American journalist there at the time. He was considered a rogue reporter by much of the mainstream media because of his
Socialist beliefs. During World War I, some of his stories as a war correspondent 61
were rejected for what editors called leftist sympathies. These beliefs later provided a lot of ammunition for critics to attack the book.
Reed followed most of the conventions of modern literary journalism. He
was immersed in the story. He used detailed scenic descriptions, dialogue that
he gathered as it was spoken during the 10 days covered in the book and official
documents instead of descriptions and characterizations of government policy.
And, like many other works of literary journalism then and now, the protagonist is
not a person but a thing. In this case, it is the Russian revolution.
Despite its strengths as journalism, it has some serious flaws when
viewed as a novel. There is no central character that is transformed by the
events. In fact, the book contains too many characters for most readers to
remember them all, a violation of one of the central tenets of literature. There is
no symbolism and very little use of metaphor or simile. It uses a first-person
point-of-view that is limited to the narrator’s personal observations. These are
failures of the book by modern literary journalism standards. However, Reed
never claimed to be creating anything but a “slice of intensified history.” There is
no record of him ever discussing the concept of literary journalism.
Much of the power of Reed’s book comes from his writing style. His
language and syntax reflect the chaos and frantic pace of events during those 10
days. His descriptions rival those in any novel and have the effect of putting the
reader into those crowded Russian streets or in the smoky rooms where
politicians argued strategy. He did all that without violating the basic tenets of
journalism. He remained an impartial observer and accurate recorder of events 62 but used one-sentence paragraphs, sentence fragments and ellipses to help convey the action and atmosphere around him at the time. He wrote as if he were being carried along by the events, struggling to keep pace with them. The reader feels that dramatic tension.
However, some critics claim that Reed didn’t sufficiently separate his role as journalist and participant. Reed erred in some facts and has been accused of
“heightening the drama” of the story in places with embellishments (Taylor, ix).
For example, Reed described a meeting in which Lenin determined the date that the Bolsheviks would seize power. The meeting never occurred (Taylor, xiv) but including it enhanced the drama preceding that central, climatic event. Also, his sympathies for the Bolsheviks and the Socialist Revolution may have prompted him to misinterpret the significance of some of the crucial events surrounding the day the Bolsheviks seized power.
“Himself tense and excited, (Reed) did not perhaps stress enough the small scale of the dramatic events he recounted. It was a conflict between two small groups, neither of which had much taste for fighting. One sailor was killed when his rifle went off in his hand. Four Red Guards and one sailor were killed by stray bullets. That was the total death toll on this historic day. Most people in
Petrograd did not even know that a revolution was taking place” (Taylor, xvi).
This book should be considered for the canon of literary journalism. It already is included on most reading lists of the form. It is an example of the key literary journalism elements of immersion reporting, use of detail, accurate dialogue and scenic descriptions. It also is an example of the power of good 63
reporting. Reed wasn’t trying to create literature. He was trying to capture an
event, a moment, in history. In the end, he did both. This is a strong illustration
against the argument that the novel and journalism are incompatible. This combination of the two happened spontaneously.
The Execution of Private Slovik. William Bradford Huie. 1954.
This book does not meet the definition of literary journalism. It fulfills the
journalism requirements with some remarkable investigative reporting but it fails
to meet the literary standard. The book doesn’t read like a novel. However, it
contains enough elements of the form to justify analyzing it.
Huie, a journalist and novelist, wanted to know everything he could about the only man executed for desertion during World War II, Army Pvt. Eddie Slovik.
The execution wasn’t important to Huie. It had happened a decade earlier. He wanted to know the man well enough to write a journalism story about it. Huie used journalism to ask the questions normally asked by literature, a concept of the form expressed by scholars 40 years later.
“But why was it Slovik? What was there about this deadend kid to win him such a role in the nation’s history? Are there giant wheels that start turning somewhere, long before a man is born, which eventually deliver him, along among millions, before a dozen aimed rifles in fifteen-inch snow?” (Huie, 10).
These are the questions that concern literary journalism. Like all good literary journalists today, Huie knew to look behind the event, to find the human experience and relate it in a way that allowed others to experience it. Slovik was 64
a petty criminal who spent most of his life in reform schools and prison. Few
noticed when he was executed. Huie came along a decade later and put a face
on an obscure but tragic event in American history. This is a recurring theme of
the form and one of its most important aspirations.
Huie’s reporting is impeccable. He did an impressive job of navigating the
military bureaucracy and secrecy (Slovik’s wife didn’t even know about the
execution until 1954) to gather enough information to reconstruct the life and
execution of Slovik. Huie interviewed participants and family members and read trial transcripts and personal correspondence to develop Slovik into the three- dimensional character required in literature.
Huie strengthened the story through the liberal use of transcripts from interviews and court proceedings. He published the letters between Slovik and his wife. These journalistic tools move the story forward and give it an authority that only quotes and documents can provide. They reveal character in a uniquely intimate and honest way while constantly reminding readers that they are reading a true story about a real man. They are reading the facts, not interpretations or opinions. They are witnessing the final months of a doomed man’s life as they unfold.
Huie would not have wanted his book mistaken for a novel. He constantly intrudes on the story as the author to remind the reader that it true. He seemed obsessed with emphasizing the accuracy of his account. As a result, he used few of the devices of fiction. Among the best examples of their use in the book is
Huie’s use of scenes and scenic descriptions. And, Huie develops Slovik into the 65
kind of complex character required in literature. However, the book lacks a plot and characterization.
I don’t recommend this book to the canon of literary journalism. It is a great example of investigative reporting and refined literary prose but it isn’t literary journalism. This book is more appropriate for the study of journalism or military history.
Black Like Me. John Howard Griffin. 1961.
This book meets the definition of literary journalism, marginally. Griffin used the frame of a journal to present his story. This is a common fiction technique, although Griffin probably didn’t choose it for that reason. Griffin was a sociologist doing research when he experienced the remarkable events in the book. When he decided to write the book, he found the frame of sociology inadequate. He chose one better suited for the drama of the story. As if by accident, Griffin created this work of literary journalism.
This book is valuable to the study of literary journalism as an example of immersion reporting. Griffin wanted to understand the black experience in
America and, correctly, realized he could only hope to do that by living as a black man. Griffin took pigment-altering drugs, baked under ultraviolet lamps, rubbed his skin with dark stain and shaved his head to make himself look like a black man. He spent a month living in New Orleans as both black and white. He also took a bus trip as a black man through Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, the 66
Deep South states most entrenched in racism at the time. He documented every
detail, every conversation and every nuance of behavior.
Immersion reporting is a primary tool of literary journalism. It in not
unusual for a journalist to spend a year or more immersed in his or her topic. The
form demands the level of familiarity that immersion provides. The writer has to
experience the same things the subjects of his book experience to reach that
kind of understanding. The technique also helps establish the deep level of
intimacy with the subjects of the story that a writer needs to probe their memories
for minute details and relevant dialogue.
Griffith took immersion reporting to the extreme. He was trained as a
social scientist and was considered an expert in race relations in 1959 when he
began his project. The experience transformed him.
“This began as a scientific research study of the Negro in the South, with
careful compilation of data for analysis. But I filed the data, and here publish the
journal of my own experience living as a Negro. I offer it in all its crudity and
rawness. It traces the changes that occur to heart and body and intelligence
when the so-called first-class citizen is cast on the junk heap of second-class
citizenship. It is the story of the persecuted, the defrauded, the feared and the
detested. I could have been a Jew in Germany, a Mexican in a number of states,
or a member of any ‘inferior’ group. Only the details would have differed. The story would be the same” (Griffith, xi).
Griffith’s experience provides a good illustration of how to do immersion
reporting. He found confidantes of both races to help him. A doctor helped him 67 darken his skin. A black man shining shoes in the French Quarter helped him look and act black. Griffith also moved through both worlds in the same place within a short period of time. He walked through a section of New Orleans as a black man, then washed his skin and passed through the same area an hour later as a white man. It emphasized the difference and added power to his observations.
The book contains elements of literary journalism beyond the extreme immersion reporting. Griffin was a successful novelist before he wrote this book and was familiar with the tools available to him. In addition to the journal format,
Griffith used scenic descriptions and reconstructed dialogue. His writing has elements of literary flourishes. For example, the first time he sees himself in the mirror as a black man, he writes, “In the flood of light against white tile, the face and shoulders of a stranger – a fierce, bald, very dark Negro – glared at me from the glass. I was imprisoned in the flesh of an utter stranger, an unsympathetic one with whom I felt no kinship” (Griffith, 12). The power of the transformation is evident in the words and sentence structure. This is one of the fundamental strengths of literary journalism.
Griffin’s focus on black Americans demonstrates another recurring theme of literary journalism. Blacks were all but absent from media in the 1950s.
Stereotypes dominated public discourse and government policy. Griffin looked beyond all that and was willing to live among the subjects he was studying in order to understand them. This follows the tradition – established by Crane in the
1890s and used by many others, including Upton Sinclair and John Steinbeck – 68
of writing about the things that the rest of the media are ignoring. This supports
the case that this is a common, but not necessary, element of the form.
The journalism elements of the form were met by Griffin’s scientific method of inquiry. The methods and goals of each are similar. He tried to remain objective. He tried to observe everything. He tried to see the world from the perspective of his subjects. He tried to relate those observations in a form that compelled people to read them. These are all goals of journalism and science.
Griffith’s book also illustrates the potential power of the form. The book received far more attention than any sociological study of race relations had ever attracted. Written within the discipline of sociology, his findings would have remained obscure. Instead, he provided information that became part of the public debate in the early days of the Civil Rights movement. He was interviewed extensively on television, radio and by newspapers and magazines. The book and his public appearances sparked a national debate about race in America.
Black organizations praised its insight into racism and viewed Griffith as a white man who could bridge the gap between the races.
Many whites, disturbed by the findings, dismissed his book, claiming his observations were invalid because he only saw the black experience from the perspective of a white man. Other whites reacted more violently. He was hanged in effigy in Fort Worth. A cross was burned near his home. His family moved to
Mexico for awhile because of death threats. A decade later, he was beaten with tire chains by Ku Klux Klan members and left for dead in Mississippi. 69
This book shows the power of the form on the writer as well as the reader.
Griffith often was overwhelmed by the experience and clearly was transformed
by it. Journalists must be aware of this potential, and the added risk of physical
injury (Hunter Thompson was beaten by the Hell’s Angels after his book about
them), when they choose this form. Griffith captures this aspect better than any
other example available.
The book also demonstrates that the form can accommodate an intrusive
first-person narrator. This contradicts Wolfe’s idea that third-person was the most appropriate point-of-view. The use of first-person has proliferated in the past 20 years and the voice of the writer has become a common element. In this case, the point-of-view works without destroying the book’s resemblance to a novel.
This book should be considered for the canon. In addition to the examples of literary journalism listed above, the book will provide students with some insight about the demands of the form and the possible consequences of the work.
In Cold Blood. Truman Capote. 1966.
This book meets the definition of literary journalism. It is the best example of the definition among the books surveyed. Capote, a journalist and novelist, was one of the first to combine those skills to create a masterpiece. Among current scholars, the book is considered an icon of literary journalism. It is included on every reading list of the form and is the standard by which all other 70 books of literary journalism are judged. Simultaneously, it is part of the American literary canon.
Capote’s book demonstrates all the elements that make literary journalism a powerful form: Immersion reporting, exhaustive research, probing interviews, scenic narrative construction, complex characters, and a plot built around the actual events with a focus on people ignored by the mainstream media.
To meet the journalism requirements of the form, Capote spent six years in Holcomb, Kansas, the small farming community where the Clutter family was murdered. Capote interviewed hundreds of people, including extensive interviews with the killers, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, and compiled thousands of pages of notes. He immersed himself in the story until he had the information he needed to write the book in the form of a novel.
It was an impressive job of journalism but it was the writing of the book that made the work immortal. Capote proved that facts could be presented as dramatically, if not more so, than fiction, and he demonstrated how to do it. He switched from journalist to novelist when he began writing the book, his imagination limited only by the facts.
Capote opened the book in the traditional novel technique of a narrative describing the setting of the story. Capote’s description is indistinguishable from the opening chapter of any American novel. And, like any good novelist, Capote introduced the conflict of the story within the first three pages.
“Until one morning in mid-November of 1959, few Americans – in fact, few
Kansans – had ever heard of Holcomb,” Capote wrote in the fifth paragraph of 71
the book. “At the time not a soul in Holcomb heard them – four shotgun blasts
that, all told, ended six human lives” (Capote, 5).
Capote followed the opening narrative with the daunting task of
constructing characters from dead people. This is a challenge for any writer,
novelists and journalists alike, but literary journalism depends on being able to
reconstruct thoughts and conversations. That usually requires having access to
the person involved. Without access to that person, writers have to depend on
the secondary source of the recollections of others.
Capote managed to overcome this handicap and make the Clutter family
into real people, not just murder victims. He does this with the literary technique
of showing the Clutter family in action, not describing their actions. Capote
gathered enough details about the family’s last day to reconstruct the actions of
all four members. He wrote about the beginning of the elder Clutter’s last day in
stunning detail:
“After drinking the glass of milk and putting on a fleece-lined cap, Mr.
Clutter carried his apple pie with him when he went outdoors to examine the morning. It was ideal apple-eating weather; the whitest sunlight descending from
the purest sky, and an easterly wind rustled, without ripping loose, the last of the
leaves on the Chinese elms” (Capote, 10).
Capote used a plot line that allowed him to switch the point of view of the
story back and forth between the Clutter family and the killers, showing their
actions simultaneously during the hours preceding the murders. The device
increased the drama of an event the reader already knows is going to occur. He 72
continued the technique throughout the book, showing the simultaneous actions
of the killers, the police and the prosecutors. The multiple point of view adds to
the effect of the work without compromising its journalistic integrity.
Capote also switched freely between the techniques of journalism and
fiction. To support his description of the details of the murders, he published the
lengthy transcript of Smith’s confession, including the interruptions by the
interrogators. He often relied on letters the killers had written, transcripts of
interviews with them and others and newspaper accounts to advance the story.
Capote’s use of journalism techniques was a constant reminder to the reader that his story was true without destroying the engaging effect of a compelling novel.
Capote, like his contemporaries, believed that as much, or more, of the power of literary journalism comes from the facts as from the literary devices.
Capote believed he was inventing a new literary genre with the book. He called it the nonfiction novel. On the Title page of the book, he labeled the work
“A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences” and on the
Acknowledgement page claimed, “All the material in this book not derived from my own observation is either taken from official records or is the result of interviews with the persons directly concerned, more often than not numerous interviews conducted over a considerable period of time.” He continued to defend the accuracy of his book years later when critics began questioning some of the facts.
Capote was wrong about inventing the form but he did become one of the more influential writers of the New Journalism movement. The success of In Cold 73
Blood secured his literary reputation and gave legitimacy to the form. Gay
Talese, Norman Mailer, Wolfe and other writers of this period brought even more attention to the form.
In Cold Blood not only succeeds as an example of literary journalism, it demonstrates the role in journalism that only the form can fill. The Clutter family would have been forgotten with nothing more than a 300-word story on the back pages of The New York Times if Capote had not been inspired to find the human elements of the story. The Times printed the following UPI story about the murders on Nov. 15, 1959:
“A wealthy wheat farmer, his wife and their two young children were found shot to death today in their home. They had been killed by shotgun blasts at close range after being bound and gagged … There were no signs of a struggle, and nothing had been stolen. The telephone lines had been cut.”
Only literary journalism in the hands of a writer accomplished in both journalism and literature can produce a story like In Cold Blood from such a simple, even obscure, news story.
“It seemed to me that journalism, reportage, could be forced to yield a serious new art form, the ‘nonfiction novel,’ as I thought of it,” Capote told the
The New York Times at the time. “Journalism is the most underestimated, the least explored, of literary mediums.”
This book must be included in any canon of literary journalism. It is the best example of the form available.
74
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Tom Wolfe. 1968.
This book meets the definition of literary journalism. It is reporting that
reads like a novel. And, it was written by the guru of the New Journalism movement that provided the source of the definition for this study.
Wolfe, through the tools of journalism, documented some of the most important events of the 1960s Hippie movement by focusing on Ken Kesey, a novelist and the leader of the outrageous group of hippies known as the Merry
Pranksters. Wolfe interviewed Kesey, all the Pranksters and many of the people who attended the events in the book. He researched police and court records.
Wolfe’s book captured the exuberance of the period, including the LSD-fueled cross-country trip Kesey and the Merry Pranksters took in a DayGlo-painted school bus. No fiction writer could have created a better protagonist or plot.
Of course, Wolfe used the four elements of fiction that he identified in his
textbook. Their success in the book is his strongest argument for their validity.
For all its merits, and there are many, the book illustrates a paradox about
Wolfe’s involvement with the form. Wolfe defined the form in his 1973 textbook
and can be credited with much of the attention and acceptance it found.
However, his later work in the form pushed the boundaries of the form too far, in
essence, breaking it. Journalists attacked its outlandish writing style. They
attacked the subjectivity. Novelists attacked its creative limitations. By the mid-
1980s, scholars pronounced the movement dead. Wolfe, ironically, contributed to
this decline with his excesses. For example, in the Author’s Note at the end of
the book, he claimed that he tried to capture the “subjective reality” of the topic. 75
“I have tried not only to tell what the Pranksters did but to re-create the mental atmosphere or subjective reality of it. I don’t think their adventure can be understood with that” (Wolfe, 371).
Capturing the “subjective reality” is beyond the scope of journalism.
Literary journalist can only show the actions of their characters and the people around them and allow the reader to form his or her own interpretation of the reality. Wolfe made the form vulnerable to critics by continuing to pursue this idea in his subsequent works of literary journalism. Even his flamboyant writing style, one of the tools he used in an attempt to capture subjective reality, soon exceeded the liberal conventions of literature. Hunter Thompson, also considered an icon of the New Journalism movement, pushed the form even further beyond its limits with his brand of “Gonzo Journalism.” These efforts were later dismissed by both journalists and novelists and led to a decline in the literary journalism form that continues today.
This book must be part of the canon of literary journalism. No study of the form can exclude Wolfe.
The Executioner’s Song. Norman Mailer. 1979.
This book meets the definition of literary journalism. It is reporting that reads like a novel. It meets this definition so well that it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1980 despite Mailer’s claim on the dust jacket that it is “a true life novel” and his ardent defense of the book’s journalistic accuracy in subsequent interviews. 76
Mailer conducted the kind of exhaustive research reminiscent of Capote’s
work on In Cold Blood. Mailer and a team of researchers conducted more than
300 interviews and compiled thousands of hours of tape. They collected court
documents, jail records and personal correspondence. In the Afterward to this
book, Mailer wrote:
This book does its best to be a factual account of the activities of Gary Gilmore and the men and women associated with him in the period from April 9, 1976, when he was released from the United States Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois, until his execution a little more than nine months later in Utah State Prison. In consequence, The Executioner’s Song is directly based on interviews, documents, records of court proceedings, and other original material that came from a number of trips to Utah and Oregon. More than one hundred people were interviewed face to face, plus a good number talked to by telephone. The total, before count was lost, came to something like three hundred separate sessions, and they range in length from fifteen minutes to four hours … It is safe to say that the collected transcript of every last recorded bit of talk would approach fifteen thousand pages (Mailer, 1051).
Mailer joined the New Journalism movement from the perspective of a novelist and produced some of the form’s best work. He won the Pulitzer Prize twice with books of literary journalism. In 1969, he won in the non-fiction category for The Armies of the Night, an account of his participation in a Vietnam War protest that he subtitled “History as a Novel/The Novel as History.” He won the
Pulitzer again in 1980, this time in the fiction category, for The Executioner’s
Song, an account of the crimes, trial and execution of Gary Gilmore in Utah. 77
Since adopting the form, Mailer has produced more works of nonfiction than fiction.
Like Capote, Mailer switched from journalist to novelist when he began writing the book. As a novelist, Mailer was familiar with the tools available to him.
He constructed Gilmore as a three-dimensional character by showing his actions
during the last nine months of his life without trying to explain them. Instead of
narrating the events, Mailer showed us meticulous details of Gilmore’s daily life through his interaction with the people around him. He built his plot around the sequence of the actual events. What emerges is a portrait of a man, not the
stereotype of a psychopathic killer. Mailer found the human story behind the
headlines and brought it to life. This is one of the more noble goals of literary
journalism and the one it is uniquely qualified to provide in mainstream
journalism.
Mailer’s choice of topic was influenced by the tenets of literary journalism
established during the Social Realism movement. The story was about more than
a single person. It was about the controversial social institution of capital
punishment. Gilmore wasn’t just any condemned criminal. He was the first one
scheduled to be executed after the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death
penalty in 1976. By telling Gilmore’s story, Mailer was engaging the national
debate about capital punishment. He forced Americans to see the man and the
process in detail. Gilmore’s demand for execution and his gruesome choice of a
firing squad added the kind of complexity and drama to the story that illustrates 78
the cliché – truth is stranger than fiction. Few novelists could invent a character
and plot better than Mailer found in Gilmore.
Mailer confessed to violating some basic rules of journalism in the book.
He wasn’t always able to independently corroborate all events. The chronology of
some events was difficult to establish exactly and had to be approximated. He
altered the content of some newspaper accounts that he included in the book “to
avoid repetition or eliminate confusing references” (Mailer, 1052). He edited the
interviews with Gilmore and some of Gilmore’s letters to his lover, Nicole Baker.
Most grievously, Mailer confessed to using information gathered several years
after the trial to invent part of the cross-examination of a witness. Mailer explained that the information “has been placed in Dr. Woods’ mind with his kind permission” (Mailer, 1052). While his other violations of journalism ethics can be argued in the context of literary journalism, inventing dialogue is a violation of ethics by any standard of journalism and can’t be tolerated in literary journalism.
Much of the book’s power is in its sparse, journalistic writing. The style would fit easily into any contemporary newspaper or magazine. It is most effective when describing the murders:
Gilmore brought the Automatic to Jensen’s head. “This one is for me,” he said, and fired.
“This one is for Nicole,” he said, and fired again. The body reacted each time.
He stood up. There was a lot of blood. It spread across the floor at a surprising rate. Some of it got on the bottom of his pants.
He walked out of the rest room with the bills in his pockets, and the coin changer in his hand, walked by 79
the big Coke machine and the phone on the wall, walked out of this real clean gas station (Mailer, 224).
The Executioner’s Song should be included in the canon of literary
journalism. It is second only to In Cold Blood in its value as an example of the form. It also represents a later period in the New Journalism movement that avoided the excesses of style that were dominant in the form’s heyday during the
1960s.
Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American
Families. J. Anthony Lukas. 1985.
This book meets the definition of literary journalism. It documents the effects of school busing in Boston in a form that reads like a novel. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 1986 and achieved popular appeal at the same time. This combination of providing information in a format that attracts readers is one of the unique traits of literary journalism.
Lukas, a journalist, also won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting in 1967 for an article in The New York Times about a woman who died during her involvement with the hippie movement. Lukas left daily journalism soon after that, during the height of the New Journalism movement, to write books using the form. Common
Ground was the most successful of the three books he wrote in the form before his suicide in 1997 at the age of 64.
Lukas documented the lives of three families in Boston during the period of mandatory busing during desegregation of the public schools. Like any good journalist, he chose a diverse representation of society. He found the Twymons, 80
an African-American family that lived in the public housing projects and hoped
busing would improve education for their children; the McGoffs, a middle-class
Irish family that saw the change as an assault on their culture and heritage; and
the Divers, a wealthy white family headed by a Harvard lawyer who worked as an
assistant to the mayor and advocated desegregation.
Lukas spent seven years researching and assembling the information for
the book, using all the tools of journalism. When he sat down to write the book,
he turned to the tools of literature. He told the stories of the three families
simultaneously through the events as they unfolded, showing the intended and
unintended effects of using busing to enforce desegregation. The use of three
intertwined plot lines is a sophisticated literary device. He used Wolfe’s limited
third-person point of view. He used foreshadowing and symbolism.
Lukas carefully protected the book’s association with journalism. He
acknowledged this in the Author’s Note at the beginning of the book.
“This is a work of nonfiction. All its characters are real, as are their names, the places where they live, the details of their personal lives. Nothing has been disguised or embellished. Where I have used dialogue, it is based on the recollection of at least one participant” (Lukas).
Some of the literary elements of this book resemble those used in the gothic novels of the 19th century. The simultaneous plot lines of such different
social classes and their impending clash creates the kind of dramatic tension
common in the gothic novel. Lukas inserted exhaustive historical detail when 81 defining the backgrounds and explaining the viewpoints of each family. This, too, was a distinguishing feature of the novel during that period of its development.
For example, when introducing the McGoff family, Lukas spent several pages illustrating the influence of the Fitzgerald and Kennedy political careers on the McGoffs and other Irish families in and around Boston.
As early as 1894, in a race marked by bogus ‘matress’ voters, street brawls and bully-boy raids on polling places, a tough little mick named John Francis Fitzgerald had won election to Congress from the Eleventh. ‘Honey Fitz’ promptly repaid Charlestown’s support by getting the Navy Yard reopened, bringing hundreds of jobs back to town. But his stock in trade was as appeal to Irish rage against the ‘blue-nosed Yankee bigots.’ In 1905, he rode that anger into the Mayor’s office (Lukas, 22).
Lukas did this with each of the families. He used the technique over and over again to provide context to the actions and thoughts of the characters. In doing that, he demonstrated that literary journalism can educate readers in a practical way. Although the technique is overused in the book and often halts the action of the plot, it illustrates the form’s ability to present a lot of factual, important information that increases the understanding of the reader.
It is impossible to understand the perspective of the Twymon family without knowing the history of the oppression of blacks in Boston. It is impossible to understand the impact of busing on the McGoff family without the historical context of the plight of the Irish in Boston just as it is impossible to understand the motives and actions of the wealthy Diver family without that context.
And, like all good literary journalists, Lukas produced a book that addressed a contemporary social issue. Desegregation and school busing was 82 one of the most traumatic and turbulent periods of American history. No study by social scientists or analysis by political scientists could ever reach and portray the level of understanding that Lukas achieved with his book.
This book should be considered for canon of literary journalism. It is a solid example of the definition and description of the form used in this study. It’s commercial and critical success supports its consideration for the canon. It also provides a good example of how the form can be used to make complex social issues comprehensible and how much information the form can accommodate.
Nickel and Dimed. Barbara Ehrenreich. 2001.
This book does not meet the definition of literary journalism. It is shoddy reporting and written in the form of an essay. It’s inclusion on reading lists of the form and its own claim of literary journalism illustrates the major academic schism in the form. The essay is an established literary form that journalists have used as long as there have been newspapers, but an essay can’t be literary journalism. It can’t read like a short story or novel.
This perception that employing any kind of literary device to nonfiction qualifies the work as literary journalism has evolved from the most recent scholarship and remains the single largest obstacle to the development of the form. The more precise definition used in this paper mitigates the problem by specifying an exact criteria that eliminates work like this book from consideration for the canon. In fact, the definition eliminates the majority of the essays currently classified as literary journalism, including the work of such icons as Joan Didion. 83
In the Introduction to the book, Ehrenreich claims to be doing “old- fashioned journalism” (Ehrenreich, 1) but later refers to herself as an essayist.
She also claims to be studying her topic as a “scientist” (Ehrenreich, 3).
Admittedly, there is much crossover between the tools of a journalist and a social scientist but a writer must commit to one theoretical model and its accompanying protocol and assumptions. As a result of her ambiguity and her selective application of each perspective, very little of her book is actual journalism. She proved most true to her proclamation of being an essayist.
She also hindered the project by establishing conditions for the work that were designed more to protect her from discomfort than to find the truth of her topic. She rented a car using a credit card that wasn’t charged against her minimum wage salary. She had the psychological protection of her vow to abandon the project if she were forced into homelessness. She was protected against hunger by an ATM card that could provide emergency assistance whenever she needed it. She also limited her exposure to the conditions of poverty to several weeks at a time. This is not the immersion reporting of literary journalism. This book is tourism, even voyeurism, into a social topic presented as quaint observations marked more by the voice of the writer than the voice of the subjects of the story.
. Ehrenreich offered no real insights into the world of the working poor, just the observations and interpretations of an upper middle-class woman who experienced it for brief moments. Ehrenreich made what she must have considered important observations, from her perspective, but they say more 84
about her inadequacies as a writer than they say about her subjects. For example, she claimed to wake at 4 a.m. with the epiphany, “Poor women – perhaps especially single ones and even those who are just temporarily living among the poor for whatever reason – really do have more to fear than women who have houses with double locks and alarm systems and husbands or dogs”
(Ehrenreich, 153). This detail seems too obvious to mention to most journalists and novelists.
She offered many other equally trite observations in the Evaluation section at the end of the book. She learned that all jobs require some measure of skill
(Ehrenreich, 193). All jobs include social interaction with co-workers (194).
Manual labor is hard and can be hazardous to your health (195). She isn’t physically able to hold two jobs (197). Wages are too low and rents are too high
(199). Most people already know these things. Literary journalism tells us what this means to people and what it does to them. It finds the human story behind the issue. Ehrenreich does none of this.
Not only are her insights trivial and obvious to most people, the essay format fails to present even this simple information effectively. The writer is overbearing in the work. No observation goes unfiltered through her own experience. Of course, in reality, this is the case with all observations but journalism attempts to minimize it while the essay amplifies and glorifies it. The essayist tells the reader what is happening. The literary journalist lets the characters of the book tell the reader what is happening. 85
This book took what could be a significant work of literary journalism on a
pressing social issue and turned it into something akin to watching home movies
of a vacation to the ghetto accompanied by witty commentary. Ehrenreich wrote
a book from what should have been preliminary research for a book. This is
common among essays that have been classified as literary journalism. The
writer uses his or her voice to overcome the lack of reporting in an essay. This
inordinate dependence on voice often transforms the subject into something
amusing instead of showing the reality of the topic.
To create a work of literary journalism, Ehrenreich should have taken her
experiences, the ones she used to write the book, and used them to find a single
character, or two, and immerse herself in their experience. She could then have
written a book with a protagonist facing real life and death situations, illustrating
the problems of people living on minimum wage. That would have made the book
part of the national debate instead of a peep show for the more fortunate.
Alternatively, Ehrenreich could have abandoned her financial safety net
and actually lived on her minimum wage salary for a year or so, facing whatever
consequences that brought. From that, she could have constructed a first-person
story that would have captured the real experience.
Instead, Ehrenreich tried to add significance to the book in the closing
pages by making sweeping sociological conclusions from her observations. She
railed against the manipulation of workers by corporations and the constant compromising of basic human dignity required of workers to keep their low-wage jobs (Ehrenreich, 208). She expanded that argument to society in general: 86
The larger society seems to be caught up in a similar cycle: cutting public services for the poor, which are sometimes referred to collectively as the ‘social wage,’ while investing ever more heavily in prisons and cops. And, in the larger society, too, the cost of repression becomes another factor weighing against the expansion or restoration of needed services. It is a tragic cycle, condemning us to ever deeper inequality, and in the long run, almost no one benefits but the agents of repression themselves (Ehrenreich, 212-13).
While this conclusion might well be true, it is stated as the opinion of the writer. This is never more effective than showing those things in action through the characters in the story. A skilled literary journalist can understand the truths
Ehrenreich discusses but deliver them to the reader in a dramatic form that helps them understand what they mean. In the best cases, it alters public discussion or policy. Ehrenreich wants to have that effect without doing the work of a literary journalist. The essay is not the shortcut to that effect that writers of the form want it to be.
This book should not be considered for the canon. It’s only value to the study of the form is as a bad example of it.
The Exonerated. Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen. 2004.
This is a stage production, which makes it impossible for it to fit my definition of literary journalism. However, it is worth analyzing because it introduces an interesting variation of the form. It meets the journalism requirements of the definition and it would meet the literary requirements if the definition included theater. It suggests that literary journalism can use other 87 literary forms beyond the short story and novel. In this example, the literary technique applied to the material gathered through journalism is theater. The result is a powerful form that reaches people in the personal way only live theater can.
The play presents the experiences of six people who were sentenced to death but later freed after DNA evidence proved their innocence. The authors of the play, Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, gathered the information by interviewing
40 people “as they told us what it was like to be innocent and on death row”
(Exonerated, xi). From those 40, Blank and Jensen narrowed the focus of the story to 12 and wrote the play. After several productions, they narrowed the focus again, this time to the six characters in the current production of the play.
The characters are a diverse group from a variety of different circumstances that landed them all on death row. The diversity is an effective tool. Three of the characters are black men. One is a woman, a yoga teacher from California. Another is an ex-hippie organic farmer from the Midwest and the other is a man who lived on death row for 22 years, from the age of 19. This selection of characters is typical of the kind of broad representation that literary journalism looks for. It also enhances the theme that anybody can be falsely accused and convicted. This selection of representative characters would have worked just as effectively in the traditional literary journalism form.
The writers of the play employed some important tools of journalism. Most notably, the dialogue is composed almost entirely from transcripts or other published material, a remarkable theatric achievement and one of the most 88
powerful elements of the play. The authors said they spent “countless hours in
dusty courthouse record rooms, pawing through thousands of microfiche files
and cardboard boxes full of affidavits, depositions, police interrogations, and
courtroom testimony” (Exonerated, xiii) to get the material for the dialogue. The
audience is informed at the beginning of the production about the source of the
dialogue.
The play has influenced the national debate. It was still touring the nation
at the end of 2007 and being locally produced by dozens of small theaters. Many of the productions have been accompanied by panel discussions of capital punishment and the criminal justice system. It has been performed at the United
Nations and for politicians and at least one Supreme Court justice in Washington,
D.C. The New York Times, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and other publications have praised its power. In 2003, the Times named it the best play of the year.
Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno said of the play: “What has been done through The Exonerated is one of the most extraordinary events I have ever seen, and it will do more to promote justice than any literary efforts I have seen.”
Literary journalism accepts the application of theatrical techniques well.
Like all literary journalism, this work uses dialogue, develops characters, follows a plot and involves a relevant social topic that is part of the national debate. The translation of the form into theater actually enhances its effectiveness by 89
providing a new set of tools, the tools of theater. The material of literary
journalism molds easily into the dramatic form of the theater.
The lack of setting in the production – it is performed by actors sitting on stools on an otherwise empty stage illuminated by spotlights above them – is one example of a successful theatrical tool in the production. The stark contrast of light and dark provides a compelling visual effect that adds drama to story. The theatrical presentation of the dialogue gives the words more power than is available through writing alone. And, it provides a group experience for the audience as opposed to the solitary experience of reading a novel. The group experience provides a body of common knowledge that facilitates further reflection and discussion. And, with more than 600 Off-Broadway performances and a 27-week national road tour, the play has reached more people than some of the books on the list.
This play introduces the exciting possibility that literary journalism can be translated into forms other than the short story or novel. If it can succeed on stage, perhaps it can succeed in film. This study does not explore that possibility beyond this one example but casual observation suggests that the form can be used effectively in documentary films. It is an area ripe for future scholarship.
90
Chapter Five
Conclusion
Literary journalism is a distinct literary form with a precise definition and
specific requirements. It is “reporting that reads like a short story or novel.” This
definition requires the work to simultaneously meet all the journalistic standards
of news reporting and all the literary standards of fiction. This separates it from other forms of nonfiction. No other form demands this precise combination of two existing genres.
Modern literary journalism was conceived in the 1960s by journalists, mostly magazine feature writers, who found that they needed a form more flexible than traditional journalism to present their stories, and novelists trying to transcend their conventions. The journalists borrowed the techniques of the short story and novel and the novelists borrowed the techniques of journalism. They successfully combined the accuracy and credibility of journalism with the drama of fiction to create a new literary form – New Journalism.
The idea of combining literature and journalism is not as contradictory as it seems. The modern novel and modern journalism share common roots from their simultaneous emergence in the early 18th century. Literary journalism combines
the most powerful elements of each genre. The New Journalism showed that this combination is not only possible and but also more powerful than either genre
individually.
Wolfe gave New Journalism the definition “reporting that reads like a
novel” in his 1973 textbook. Universities institutionalized it with courses using the 91
book. It was the controlling theory of the New Journalism movement. It was the
single most distinctive element of the form and its most compelling feature. The success of the work under this definition supports its validity. The work of this period contains the examples of the form most studied today.
The failure of the New Journalism 20 years ago wasn’t because of a fault in this definition or the theory of the form. It failed because writers pushed it beyond its bounds and, in effect, broke the form. Fueled by their initial success, writers moved further away from the conventions of both the root disciplines.
They experimented, pushed boundaries and invented new, sometimes outlandish, techniques. By the end of the New Journalism movement, the form had moved so far away from the original definition that it lost its association with either of its parent disciplines.
Development of the form since the 1980s has been based on this broken model of the late New Journalism era. This has resulted in at least a dozen interpretations of the form, most ignoring its original concept. None of these modern incarnations of the form has produced work that has matched the work of the New Journalism. The work in the form during the past 20 years has not won
Pulitzer Prizes. The form is not taught widely in universities. Magazines are not being started to accommodate the work. The difference between the two eras is the definition used in this study.
I’m not advocating a return to the past. History has shown the futility of such an idea. But, I believe that literary journalism can be fixed. We can correct the mistakes of the New Journalism through the lens of historical perspective. 92
We can find where it exceeded the limits of the form and understand the
consequences of that. I advocate returning to the original definition of the form and building a new scholarship from that point. The scholarship of the past 20 years remains useful only as a way to understand the excesses of the form and to avoid them in future scholarship.
Using this definition also resolves practical problems with the form’s development. The definition requires reporting, which assigns the study of the form to journalism departments. Literary journalism is just another form of specialty reporting, much like business writing or sports reporting. It should be written by trained journalists. We should teach the tools of fiction to literary journalists just as we teach the tools of business to business writers. The importance of the journalistic ethics and credibility to the form requires this emphasis on the journalism aspects. Giving the form this academic home will accelerate its development more than any other single factor.
This definition allows the compilation of a canon of literary journalism. This is virgin intellectual territory. There has never been a canon for this form or any of its related forms. Yet, no literary genre can prosper without a canon. It defines
and standardizes the form so scholars can study it. Literary journalism must have
this, too. This study suggests that the canon must include In Cold Blood, The
Executioner’s Song and Common Ground. They illustrate the definition almost
flawlessly. The study suggests other books but compiling the complete canon will
require years of analysis and many more studies.
93
Literary journalism has been an unruly outlaw in the worlds of literature
and journalism since it first recognizable ancestor emerged almost 300 years
ago. It has been criticized for its realism and its literary presentation, two of the
form’s most important elements. It has been rejected by its parent disciplines,
leaving it as a bastard form. Its obituary has been written. Yet, it survives. Now, it
is time for it to prosper.
Literary journalism could be the most powerful, most celebrated, most
used, most studied genre of literature. It meets the human need for a good story
and the social need for information. Tom Wolfe was right about the potential of the form to replace the novel as the dominant form of literature. It almost happened under Wolfe’s stewardship with the books that followed his definition most closely. The best hope to reach that potential now is to return to that definition. This study is a first step in that direction.
Limitations
The work examined in this study is limited to 12 book-length examples generally classified as literary journalism. The list was compiled from references in the scholarship and samples of readings lists for courses on the topic. The selection process was subjective but I included books covering the entire history of literary journalism as defined by most scholars. I also included books written by novelists and journalists to illustrate the mutual influence of the two disciplines. However, the sample is small. There probably are hundreds of books that could be examined with the methods of this study. 94
The scholarship on literary journalism is limited and the little scholarship that is available is fragmented. This was a challenge for this study, or any study, of literary journalism. No single school of scholarship dominates the debate. In fact, there is little debate at all. This requires the scholar to choose a school of scholarship with little guidance from his predecessors. I can’t scientifically prove that my choice is more valid than any of the other choices available in the scholarship. I can only offer the evidence that I included in the study.
Future Research
Defining literary journalism, or any other form, as “reporting that reads like a short story or novel” creates a new field of inquiry. There is no existing literary form with this definition. Consequently, there is no scholarship on it.
The most pressing need is an examination of the short form of the work, the kind generally published in newspapers and magazines, using the same methods and theory of this study. Those findings should be compared with the findings in this study. That comparison will further refine the definition of the form.
The scholarship needs contributions from the same variety of disciplines that have evaluated the form under other definitions. The work needs criticism from literature scholars based on its literary merits. It needs criticism from journalism scholars based on its compliance with journalistic standards. It needs the same examination from the sociological, psychological, historical and postmodernist perspectives as the faulty versions of the form have received. This is the only way the form will reach its potential. 95
The study suggests with The Exonerated that literary journalism could
translate beyond its definition to include theater. This is an interesting possibility
that should be vigorously explored. If literary journalism can be theater, the form
requires a new definition. This also would require reconsidering some of the fundamental elements of the form or, at the least, translating them for the different media. However, if literary journalism has this kind of flexibility, it can be
a more influential form and reach more people than this study anticipated. This is
an exciting possibility.
Another interesting study would be a survey of films to find any that are
literary journalism. This would require modifying the definition to something like
“reporting that looks like a feature movie.” I don’t know if such a thing exists or if
it is even possible to make such a film but it is an interesting idea. Perhaps this
form could create a new genre of film, too.
Then, there is the work on the canon. This will be a lengthy and ongoing
process. Getting the form back into the academy will ensure that work continues
on it. There may even be two canons, one for the short form of the work and
another for the book-length examples.
This study removes literary journalism from the general category of creative nonfiction and creates a new literary form. Subsequent studies must refine the form.
96
References
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Appendix
Reading List
Blank, Jessica, and Jensen, Erik. (2004). The Exonerated. New York. Faber and Faber.
Capote, Truman. (1965). In Cold Blood. New York. Random House.
Crane, Stephen. (2006). Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and Selected Stories. New York. Signet.
Defoe, Daniel. (1722). A Journal of the Plague Year. New York. Penguin.
Ehrenreich, Barbara. (2001). Nickel and Dimed. New York. Metropolitan Books.
Griffin, John Howard. (2006). Black Like Me. San Antonio, Texas. Wings Press.
Huie, William Bradford. (2004). The Execution of Private Slovik. Yardley, Penn. Westholme Publishing.
Lukas, J. Anthony. (1985). Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families. New York. Alfred A. Knopf.
Mailer, Norman. (1979). The Executioner’s Song. New York. Little, Brown.
Reed, John. (1982). Ten Days That Shook the World. New York. Penquin.
Sinclair, Upton. (1906). The Jungle. New York. Barnes and Noble.
Wolfe, Tom. (1969). The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. New York. Bantam.