Riveting real-life stories by sensitive, insightful writers
Reviewed by: Nancy Chapple
What is this genre? Who are the greats in the field and why? What if I choose to write about people and events in the real world from a personal perspective – who has gone before me and hewed an interesting path?
This book is not handsome: it’s printed on newsprint, which means the full-page photos of the highlighted authors look a bit dingy. And I’m not fond of the term literary journalism: the first word sounds awfully high-falutin’, taking itself ever so seriously; the second tells me it needs to be topical, up-to-the-moment, somehow interesting to newspaper editors.
But a book is more than either its title or its look. And I find I can’t get the stories here out of my head: months later I’m still struggling with the memory of the crack addict on Staten Island abandoned to her fate by her middle-class Italian-American family, the Russian mathematician geniuses who’ve built their own supercomputer and work buried under mountains of paper, the uninformed but well-meaning Central African truck drivers carrying AIDS among prostitutes as they transport tires or beer or mattresses across swathes of wild countryside.
I’ve come to believe that the way to bring a real-life story to life, to make people and places interesting, is to personalize them. Traditional journalism is supposed to be objective reporting – but it seems to me more honest to admit that I’m an individual looking at an event from my own perspective and not to claim objectivity. Or perhaps more honest is unfair – more engrossing is quite enough.
A couple tips from authors of these articles: "The defining mark of literary journalism is the voice of someone naked, without bureaucratic shelter, speaking simply in his or her own right, someone who has illuminated experience with private reflection, but who has not transcended crankiness, wryness, doubtfulness, and who doesn’t blank out emotional realities of sadness, glee, excitement, fury, love." "People want to read factual narrative. Tell me a story. That’s what this still comes down to."
What is this genre? Who are the greats in the field and why? What if I choose to write about people and events in the real world from a personal perspective – who has gone before me and hewed an interesting path?