Literary Journalists

by Norman Sims (Editor)

The Art of Fact
The Tools of the Reporter
The Craft of the Novelist
The literary journalists are marvelous observers whose meticulous attention to detail is wedded to the tools and techniques of the fiction writer. Like reporters, they are fact gatherers whose material is the real world. Like fiction writers, they are consummate storytellers who endow their stories with a narrative structure and a distinctive voice.
Literary journalists range from such bestselling authors as Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, and Sara Davidson, to new writers like Mark Kramer and Richard West. What they share is a complete immersion in their subjects.
A DAZZLING COLLECTION OF GREAT WRITING
Interviews with literary journalists conducted especially for this book make this not only a superb collection to read and enjoy but the definitive work on some of the most exciting, influential, and critically acclaimed writing of our time.

Genres: Journalism, Nonfiction, Literary Fiction, Essays

339 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 1984

Reviews

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never judge a book by its cover. Mine was once white but is now a sickly yellow, with a grubby price sticker adorning the corner (‘University bookstore, $8.95’). The cover design is better suited to a 50s periodical than a book.

Yet what a book it is. I found it more enjoyable than even Tom Wolfe’s famed anthology The New Journalism. Its hero and also author of the longest piece is John McPhee. Most of the pieces echo McPhee’s approach - the author stays firmly in the background, selecting his subject’s words with loving care and precision, lining up the telling details. He also makes nothing up.

There isn’t a weak piece in the entire collection and its range is impressive - real estate in California, fishermen in the north of England, tyranny in El Salvador, astronauts. Oddly the funniest piece is about nuclear war. (‘Of course there was always an erotic component to the original thermonuclear fever.’)

Well worth getting.

[Micah Winters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really terrific collection of writing - an inspiring reminder of the power of creative nonfiction. Not the greatest in terms of diverse representation of writers (apparently the only people writing good journalism in the 70s were white, and mostly male), but the settings and styles varied widely and delightfully from essay to essay. Thoroughly enjoyable!

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this in high school... most of it is lost to time, but the piece on eating roadkill... well, that sticks with me.

[Steven Buechler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came across an artifact the other day that reminded me of my idealistic youth. It was a book, of course, but it was something that I reviewed greatly when I was a journalism student and foolishly looked at it thinking that it would be my guide to my writing back in the early 1990s. Instead the world became faster and more corporate and my words became mere an echo to the yips and shouts that attempt to explain the world today. So allow me to pour myself a cup of coffee and review the complex yet soothing words written in The Literary Journalists.

Introduction - Page 3 - The Literary Journalist - by Norman Sims

For years, reporters have pursued their craft by sitting down near the centers of power - the Pentagon, the White House, Wall Street. Like hounds by the dinner table, they have waited for scraps of information to fall from Washington, from New York and from their beats at the court house, city hall, and the police station.
Today, scraps of information don't satisfy the reader's desire to learn about people doing things. Readers deal in their private lives with psychological explanations for events around them. They may live in complex social worlds, amid advanced technologies, where "the facts" only begin to explain what's happening.. The everyday stories that bring us inside the lives of our neighbors used to be found in the realm of the fiction writer, which nonfiction reporters brought us the news from far-off centers of power that hardly touched our lives.
Literary journalists untie the two forms. Reporting on the lives of people at work, in love, going about the normal rounds of life, the confirm that the crucial moments of everyday life contain great drama and substance. Rather than hanging around the edges of powerful institutions, literary journalists attempt to penetrate the cultures that make institutions work.

Today, it seems that nobody even "crafts" a decent piece why anymore. We all seem eager to jam 120 characters together to tell that celebrity X has passed or arrested but we don't ask why we really found that celebrity talented to begin with anyway.

A link to my blog for the complete review

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection had some really engaging stories - some I liked more than others. The only thing I find rather off-putting is the emphasis within Literary Journalists, and indeed within commentary on the genre of literary journalism more generally, on Americana. Sometimes there's a high level of assumed knowledge about American culture that isn't very realistic for international readers, even ones who watch a lot of American TV (like me). Also, there are plenty examples of exemplary nonfiction by non-American writers. There's a wider problem, I think, in the genre when the most famous works are from people holding similar philosophies and trained in the same region. I'd like to read a collection that is more stylistically diverse, and that includes important and interesting stories from a wider range of cultural backgrounds. I fear that when exemplars lack diversity, it discourages experimentation and creates a taste for more of the same. Don't get me wrong, most of these essays are excellent, and this critique should in no way be completely borne by this specific book. I just feel like we'd be collectively losing something if all literary nonfiction were in this vein.

[Jenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rekindled my passion for gonzo journalism.

The best entry is easily the first one, "Travels in Georgia," by John McPhee.