Literary Techniques Used in New Journalism
Is New Journalism a literary genre? Analyse with reference to the literary techniques used in two examples of New Journalism.
Word Count - 2231
I suppose the most common sense point at which to start is by defining New Journalism, or Literary Journalism, as Eisenhuth and McDonald (2007, p. 38) say it is called at the “upper end of the spectrum.”
The Collins Concise Dictionary (1999, p. 995) defines New Journalism as “a style of journalism, using techniques borrowed from fiction to portray a situation of event as vividly as possible.”
Wikipedia (2010) defines it as “a style of 1960s and 1970s news writing and journalism that used literary techniques deemed unconventional at the time.”
The meaning of New Journalism has evolved over the the past one hundred years or so and has supposedly been coined by many a person, including the so-called founding father of New Journalism, Matthew Arnold (Roggenkamp, 2005, p. xii)
The term, with relevance to the above definitions, was codified with its current meaning by Tom Wolfe in his 1973 collection of New Journalism articles, The New Journalism, which included works by – most notably - himself, Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer, and Joan Didion.
With reference to the aforementioned New Journalists, Tom Wolfe, in a 1972 New York Magazine article, said, “I know they never dreamed that anything they were going to write for newspapers or magazines would wreak such evil havoc in the literary world; causing panic, dethroning the novel as the number one literary genre, starting the first new direction in American literature in half a century. Nevertheless, that is what has happened.”
He went on to say that, “Bellow, Barth, Updike - even the best of the lot, Philip Roth - the novelists are all out there ransacking the literary histories and sweating it out, wondering where they now stand. 'Damn it all, Saul, the Huns have arrived.'”
So, this uproar is what begs several questions that these
Word Count - 2231
I suppose the most common sense point at which to start is by defining New Journalism, or Literary Journalism, as Eisenhuth and McDonald (2007, p. 38) say it is called at the “upper end of the spectrum.”
The Collins Concise Dictionary (1999, p. 995) defines New Journalism as “a style of journalism, using techniques borrowed from fiction to portray a situation of event as vividly as possible.”
Wikipedia (2010) defines it as “a style of 1960s and 1970s news writing and journalism that used literary techniques deemed unconventional at the time.”
The meaning of New Journalism has evolved over the the past one hundred years or so and has supposedly been coined by many a person, including the so-called founding father of New Journalism, Matthew Arnold (Roggenkamp, 2005, p. xii)
The term, with relevance to the above definitions, was codified with its current meaning by Tom Wolfe in his 1973 collection of New Journalism articles, The New Journalism, which included works by – most notably - himself, Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer, and Joan Didion.
With reference to the aforementioned New Journalists, Tom Wolfe, in a 1972 New York Magazine article, said, “I know they never dreamed that anything they were going to write for newspapers or magazines would wreak such evil havoc in the literary world; causing panic, dethroning the novel as the number one literary genre, starting the first new direction in American literature in half a century. Nevertheless, that is what has happened.”
He went on to say that, “Bellow, Barth, Updike - even the best of the lot, Philip Roth - the novelists are all out there ransacking the literary histories and sweating it out, wondering where they now stand. 'Damn it all, Saul, the Huns have arrived.'”
So, this uproar is what begs several questions that these
References: Books Collins Concise Dictionary, 1999. New Journalism. Glasgow: Harper Collins Publishers. Eisenhuth, S, MacDonald, W., 2007. The Writer 's Reader – Understanding Journalism and Nonfiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hartsock, J.C., 2000. A history of American Literary Journalism. The Emergence of a Modern Narrative Form. Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press. Lounsberry, B., 1990. The Art of Fact – Contemporary Artists of Nonfiction. Lincoln: Greenwood Press. Maugham, S., 1938. The Summing Up. London: Heinemann. Roggenkamp, K., 2005. Narrating the News: New Journalism and Literary Genre in Late Nineteenth Century Newspapers and Fiction.Kent, OH: Kent State University Press. Articles Conley, D., 1998 Murphy, J.E., 1974. The New Journalism: A Critical Perspective. Journalism Monographs, 34, p15. Newfield, J., 1967. Hooked and Dead. New York Times Book Review, May 7, p. 20. Wakefield, D., 1966. The personal Voice and the Impersonal Eye. The Atlantic, pp. 86-89 Weiss, C., 2004 Wikipedia, 2010. New Journalism. [Online] Available at: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Journalism> [Accessed 27 November 2010]. Wolfe, T., 1972. Participant Reveals Main Factors Leading to Demise of the Novel, Rise of New Style Covering Events. New York Magazine. [Online] Available at: <http://nymag.com/news/media/47353/> [Accessed 27 November 2010].