This week for literary journalism we started reading a new book, it is called “True Stories: A Century of Literary Journalism” by Norman Sims. Each chapter in this book starts by talking about some specific part of literary journalism and then provides an article written in literary journalism style. Chapter 1 introduction included details of how literary journalism has evolved throughout history. Examples include some authors who were not one hundred percent honest in their articles, including James Fry’s “A Million Little Pieces,” the book was so well written Oprah had made it part of her booklist. However, on air on Oprah’s show, he confessed that he had made up several different parts of the book. The introduction also includes names of several literary journalists who were known for their work. Lillian Ross is one of those people who was an American journalists who has worked at The New Yorkers magazine since 1945. In her writing, she tries to make the narrator invisible.The literary journalism piece included with this chapter was called “The Long Fall of One-Eleven Heavy” by Michael Paterniti who wrote a piece regarding a plane crash. He started the piece in a very unique with discussing what other people were doing that lived where the plane crashed when the plane went down. He then went back into the past and discussed different people who were all going to be boarding the plane later in time, but were completely disconnected at this time. There were very few names given to characters (real people) in this article. People were identified either by physical description, occupations or family members. The hard part to think about a story like this is that the reporter and author had to talk to so many different people to figure how exactly what took place that day because he himself was not there.
The next week we had to read another chapter from the same book, Chapter 4. The introduction discussed how newspaper during the depression did not report on what was going on. The only places stories were published about the depression were the different magazines. Although this chapter started off and later used a quote that I think really sums up literary journalism. Harry Hopkins told this to his reporters before they set out, “go out around the country and look this thing over. I don’t want statistics from you. I don’t want the social-worker angled. I just want your own reactions, as an ordinary citizen…Tell me what you see and hear. All of it. Don’t ever pull your punches.” I think this quote can be applied to my own literary journalism writing because I need to add more detail and explain exactly what I do see and hear and feel is going on with what I am doing a story on. The article included with this chapter was titled “The Jumping-Off Place” by Edmund Wilson. The first two and a half pages are describing a hotel; there is so much description and detail in this article. This article also links back to the quote and can inspire me to write with more detail, and there is no much thing that too much detail.
We as a class opted to read, “Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town” by Nick Reding. After reading the Prologue and the first two chapters, I really was not too enthused to have to continue to reading. There were so many facts about meth that I had to force myself to continue reading. Also lots of events described that took place regarding meth were terrible to think about. An example of this would be the story of Roland Jarvis who to avoid going back to jail and to cover all evidence of his meth lab in the house of his mother, poured everything (all his chemicals) down the drain and then light a cigarette. This led the house to catch the fire. Jarvis kept running back into the house and even started to help. At the end his has lost his fingers and his nose. However, he still found a way to smoke the meth rather than inject it because without his fingers he didn’t possess the physical ability to inject it into this body. For my own ideas, I have been seriously considering something that would actually be possible and fun to read for my own literary journalism piece. I would really love to do a piece on my dad who has been in the military since he has been 18, but my dad is not a very talkative guy when it comes to this kind of us stuff. Over the years, I have heard bits and pieces of things that he has experienced but I think it would take a lot of persuading of my dad to get those details.
Great examples of literary journalism can be found in the dining section of the New York Times. In this weeks paper, there was a great article titled, " There's the Wrong Way and Jacques Pepin's Way." The article is a great example, the article started on the front page of the section but later on had a full page of several photos of the chef and even a few of his recipes. The article starts with a very catching unique topic of how a the kitchen sounds when this great chef is cooking. Then he moves into the topic of knives being used for cooking, which I learned than several amateur cooks tend to keep their knives to dull for proper use. He also explains the proper way that a knife should be used, then the author mentions that he himself traveled to the the chef's house. I found this aspect to be very unique because (even thought at this point I have read several literary journalism sample pieces) I still find it hard to believe that this would ever be okay in a news article, but literary journalism is about breaking the rules. Next, the author mentions that the chef has a new book coming out, which is the overall point of writing this article. I also learned that most literary journalism pieces need a lesson learned or have a reason for writing. Overall, this was an awesome example of this kind of writing.
Great examples of literary journalism can be found in the dining section of the New York Times. In this weeks paper, there was a great article titled, " There's the Wrong Way and Jacques Pepin's Way." The article is a great example, the article started on the front page of the section but later on had a full page of several photos of the chef and even a few of his recipes. The article starts with a very catching unique topic of how a the kitchen sounds when this great chef is cooking. Then he moves into the topic of knives being used for cooking, which I learned than several amateur cooks tend to keep their knives to dull for proper use. He also explains the proper way that a knife should be used, then the author mentions that he himself traveled to the the chef's house. I found this aspect to be very unique because (even thought at this point I have read several literary journalism sample pieces) I still find it hard to believe that this would ever be okay in a news article, but literary journalism is about breaking the rules. Next, the author mentions that the chef has a new book coming out, which is the overall point of writing this article. I also learned that most literary journalism pieces need a lesson learned or have a reason for writing. Overall, this was an awesome example of this kind of writing.
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