The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0684846306 ISBN 13: 9780684846309

Publisher: Scribner, 1998

Synopsis

Learn how to be the best journalist you can be with what “could be the world’s most readable textbook” (Time Out New York).

The Art of Fact is a historical treasury tracing literary journalism back to such pioneers as Defoe, Dickens, and Orwell, and to crime writers, investigative social reporters, and war correspondents who stretched the limits of style and even propriety to communicate powerful truth. Here an extraordinary range of styles—the elegance of Gay Talese, the militance of Marvel Cooke, the station-house cynicism of David Simon, the manic intelligence of Richard Ben Cramer—illuminates an extraordinary range of subjects. From large public events (Jimmy Breslin on the funeral of JFK) to small private moments (Gary Smith on the struggles of a Native American basketball player), these readings—sad, funny, and most of all provocative—offer the double pleasure of true stories artfully told.

About this title

Review:

Kevin Kerrane and Ben Yagoda, journalists and journalism teachers, saw a need for a textbook that celebrated and organized outstanding examples of literary journalism. In this compendious volume spanning 372 years, the editors focus on the evolution of New Journalism, a term which, we learn, "was originally coined by Matthew Arnold in 1887 to describe the style of Stead's Pall Mall Gazette: brash, vivid, personal, reform-minded, and--occasionally, from Arnold's conservative viewpoint--'featherbrained.'"

The editors position Daniel Defoe's The True and Genuine Account of the Life and Actions of the Late Jonathan Wild (1725) as the prototype for the true-crime narrative. The collection's first section, entitled "Pioneers," includes such staples as Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, Walt Whitman's Specimen Days, and Jack London's daring 1902 exposé of life among the city of London's impoverished East Enders. Brief introductions to each selection set the historical context and explain innovative aspects of the piece. The second section compares two distinctly contemporary journalistic points of view: the "I Am a Camera" school and the unabashedly subjective approach exemplified by Norman Mailer and Hunter S. Thompson, among others. "Style as Substance" makes up the lively and often moving third section.

Many rich voices describe all angles of the human experience in this impressive volume. Through author Piers Paul Read we crash-land with a Uruguayan rugby team in the Andes; Lillian Ross gives us a notoriously devastating portrait of Ernest Hemingway; Ted Conover assimilates into illegal Mexican culture and smuggles us back and forth across the border. The only anthology of its kind, The Art of Fact almost doubles as a travel book.

From Booklist:

Kerrane, author of books about baseball, and Yagoda, author of a biography of Will Rogers, both teach courses on literary journalism, an endeavor that inspired their compilation of this distinctive and enjoyable anthology of, to use their definition, "thoughtfully, artfully, and valuably innovative" journalism. Kerrane and Yagoda have narrowed the broad category of creative nonfiction to writing that is literary in quality but strictly factual in content, as opposed to more impressionistic essays and memoirs. They discuss the finer points of literary journalism in their sharp and informative preface, then present an edifying array of sterling examples, ranging from works by such pioneers as Daniel Defoe, Stephen Crane, and Jack London to works by Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, and John McPhee. The selection of confident and sometimes riling voices is matched by an enlivening diversity of subject matter, from politics to sports, nature, war, and crime, a wealth guaranteed to broaden readers' perception of literary journalism and establish appropriately high standards for this vital genre. Donna Seaman

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0684846306
• ISBN 13: 9780684846309
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 560
• Editor: Kerrane Kevin, Yagoda Ben