Synopses & Reviews
In 1953, Mary McCarthy published an article in Harper's entitled Artists in Uniform telling the story of a woman who encountered an anti-Semitic colonel on a train. Readers approached the tale as fiction, finding symbolic meaning in everything from what the Colonel ate to the clothes the
woman wore. Soon after its appearance, McCarthy wrote a sequel called Settling the Colonel's Hash in which she explained that there were no symbols in this story; no deeper level: it had been simply a fragment of memoir. But critics immediately took issue with McCarthy's assumption that two
literary arenas exist--that there is a clear difference between autobiographical and fictional narrative--and the incident has become a classic illustration of the fascinating and nebulous borderlands that lie between fact and fiction.
From the experiments of Hutchins Hapgood, W.E.B. Du Bois, James Agee, and Joe Mitchell to the challenges posed by the New Journalists and contemporary literary journalists such as John McPhee, this collection explores the fine line between fiction and nonfiction from both historical and critical
perspectives. What motives led Ernest Hemingway to return to extended narrative nonfiction after becoming a successful novelist? Why did John Steinbeck write The Grapes of Wrath as a novel rather than a work of journalism? How does the plain style of writers like Swift, Defoe, and Orwell affect
the reader's sense of what is true and what is made up? In what way does the Mary McCarthy episode illuminate the ways in which we approach fiction and nonfiction? Raising a wealth of intriguing questions, Literary Journalism in the Twentieth Century offers a forum fordiscussion, involving the
reader in what becomes an active definition of literary journalism. The book assembles essays by such well-known critics as Tom Connery, Ron Weber, William Howarth, Norman Sims, John Pauly, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Hugh Kenner, David Eason, Kathy Smith, and Darrel Mansell. Lively and unique,
Literary Journalism in the Twentieth Century concerns the very essence of literature itself, showing how writers have reshaped styles to permit passage across the borders between fact and fiction, in the process investigating what these borders might be, and if they exist at all.
Review
"Sims's essay shows that journalism scholars have the potential not only to find new subjects for study and new methods of analysis but to develop new ways of writing about what they learn."---American Journalism
Synopsis
This wide-ranging collection of critical essays on literary journalism addresses the shifting border between fiction and non-fiction, literature and journalism.
Literary Journalism in the Twentieth Century addresses general and historical issues, explores questions of authorial intent and the status of the territory between literature and journalism, and offers a case study of Mary McCarthyand#8217;s 1953 piece, "Artists in Uniform," a classic of literary journalism.
Sims offers a thought-provoking study of the nature of perception and the truth, as well as issues facing journalism today.
Synopsis
This wide-ranging collection of critical essays on literary journalism addresses the shifting border between fiction and non-fiction, literature and journalism.
About the Author
and#160;Norman H. Sims is a professor of journalism at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst,and#160;the editor of
The Literary Journalists, the author of
True Stories, and the coeditor with Mark Kramer of
Literary Journalism. He lives in Deerfield, Massechusetts.
John C. Hartsock is an associate professor of communication studies at the State University of New York at Cortland and the author ofand#160;A History of American Literary Journalism: The Emergence of a Modern Narrative Form.
Table of Contents
Part I
1. A Third Way to Tell the Story: American Literary Journalism at the Turn of the Century, by Thomas B. Connery
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; 2. Hemingwayandrsquo;s Permanent Records, by Ronald Weber
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; 3. The Mother of Literature: Journalism and The Grapes of Wrath, by William Howarth
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; 4. Joseph Mitchell and The New Yorker Nonfiction Writers, by Norman Sims
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; 5. The Politics of The New Journalism, by John J. Pauly
and#160;
Part II
6. The Borderlands of Culture: Writing by W. E. B. Du Bois, James Agee, Tillie Olsen, and Gloria Anzaldanduacute;a, by Shelley Fisher Fishkin
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; 7. The Politics of the Plain Style, by Hugh Kenner
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; 8. The New Journalism and the Image-World, by David Eason
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; 9. John McPhee Balances the Act, by Kathy Smith
Part III
10. Artists in Uniform, by Mary McCarthy
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; 11. Settling the Colonelandrsquo;s Hash, by Mary McCarthy
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; 12. Unsettling the Colonelandrsquo;s Hash: andlsquo;Factandrsquo; in Autobiography, by Darrel Mansell
Selected Bibliography
Contributors