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The Mailer Review/Volume 3, 2009/A Favor for the Ages: Difference between revisions
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We owe much of that—although we have always been loathe to admit it and certainly do not do so now—to the best of American journalism, and in particular to those who have been the boldest, brightest, and most tenacious and passionate of the practitioners. They push, prod and knead the prosaic forms of their craft until what might otherwise be homely articles instead become illuminating stories that strain and tilt inexorably toward something more. Invariably, the goal is a keener, clearer, more circumspect knowledge: truth, in other words, with a capital letter T, or as close to it as anyone can possibly come. | We owe much of that—although we have always been loathe to admit it and certainly do not do so now—to the best of American journalism, and in particular to those who have been the boldest, brightest, and most tenacious and passionate of the practitioners. They push, prod and knead the prosaic forms of their craft until what might otherwise be homely articles instead become illuminating stories that strain and tilt inexorably toward something more. Invariably, the goal is a keener, clearer, more circumspect knowledge: truth, in other words, with a capital letter T, or as close to it as anyone can possibly come. | ||
Their work on this last literary frontier has gone by various names, some invented by the journalists themselves, others by critics and academics who, for the sake of predictability or perhaps merely for wont of neatness, always feel compelled to categorize—fly-on-the-wall reporting, window-pane reporting, drop-out journalism, submersion journalism, immersion journalism, nonfiction fiction, fictional nonfiction, reporting from the worm’s-eye view, new journalism, gonzo journalism, creative nonfiction, narrative journalism. Well into the exercise, with labels flying everywhere, some pedant is likely to sniff, “Literary journalism? Isn’t that an oxymoron?” Eventually the effort mires in priggish declarations of what is literary and what is not. It is at roughly this juncture that someone is most apt to reel out Ezra Pound’s dictum that “Literature is news that stays news.”{{sfn|Pound|1934|p=29}} Curses are shouted, oaths taken, punches thrown. The police are called. ’Twas ever thus. | |||
. . . | |||
===Citations=== | |||
{{Reflist|15em}} | |||
===Works Cited=== | |||
{{Refbegin|30em|indent=yes}} | |||
* {{cite book | last=Doyle | first=Sir Arthur Conan | date=2006 | title=The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes | editor-last=Klinger |editor-first=Leslie S. |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton & Co. | pages=209-382 | ref=harv }} | |||
* {{cite book | last=Hersey | first=John |date=2006 | chapter=The Legend on the License |title=Journalism: The Democratic Craft | publisher=Oxford University Press |editor1-first=G. Stuart |editor1-last=Adam |editor2-first=Roy Peter |editor2-last=Clark | location=New York | pages=152-163 | ref=harv}} | |||
* {{cite book | last1=Hillstrom | first1=Kevin |first2=Laurie |last2=Collier | date=1998 | title=The Vietnam Experience: A Concise Encyclopedia of American Literature, Songs, and Films | publisher=Greenwood Press |location=Westport, CT | ref=harv}} | |||
* {{cite magazine | last=Jones | first=Malcolm |title=Sentry of a Century; Norman Mailer: 1923/2007 | magazine=Newsweek | pages=64-5 | date=November 19, 2007 | ref=harv}} | |||
* {{cite book | last=Mailer |first=Norman | date=1995 | title=Oswald’s Tale: An American Mystery | publisher=Random House | location=New York |ref=harv }} | |||
* {{cite web | title=Oswald's Ghost |website=The American Experience | publisher=PBS | date=January 14, 2008 |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/oswald/#transcript |access-date=2021-06-19 | ref=harv}} | |||
* {{cite book | last=Pound | first=Ezra | date=1934 | title=ABC of Reading | publisher=New Directions | location=New York | ref=harv}} | |||
{{Refend}} | |||
{{Review}} | |||
{{DEFAULTSORT:Favor for the Ages, A}} | |||
[[Category:Articles (MR)]] | |||