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The Big Tent Approach
I’ve never been a big fan of defining “literary” journalism—or coming up with a specific set of aesthetic criteria for studying it. To be sure, what I often call this “is it or isn’t it” question was once seen as important to for achieving broader academic acceptance.… Read More
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Good Reads: Janet Malcolm’s Voice
When scholars talk about why readers sink their teeth into works of literary or narrative journalism, customarily they focus on a feeling of immersion, or being “caught up in the story” and/or its descriptive details. As John Hartsock has emphasized, the longform writer dispenses with the so-called… Read More
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Good Reads: Deborah Nelson’s Tough Enough
It isn’t often remembered that one of the leading entries in Norm Sims’ field-opening collection Literary Journalism in the 20th Century (2007) was a pairing of two essays by Mary McCarthy, “Artists in Uniform” and “Settling the Colonel’s Hash,” both from the 1950s. (The latter sometimes appears as “Unsettling…”).… Read More
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