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Slide 01
Journalism as Literature.
- Vol. XI · Deck 13 · The Deck Catalog
- Defoe to Hersey to Didion. The hybrid form where reporting and literary craft meet.
- Defoe's Plague Year1722
- New Journalism manifestoWolfe, 1973
- Pages30
Slide 02
OpeningWhere reporting meets craft.
- Lede02
- Some journalism is literature. The work that happens when a reporter brings novelistic technique — scene, character, voice, pacing — to the documentary task produces a hybrid that is more than its parts.
- The lineage is older than "New Journalism" suggests. Defoe's 1722 A Journal of the Plague Year is structurally already there. Dickens's The Uncommercial Traveller (1860s) and Stephen Crane's reporting were too. The 1960s explosion gave the mode its name and its self-consciousness.
- This deck covers the antecedents, the New Journalism canon (Wolfe, Talese, Didion, Mailer, Capote), the post-1980s evolution, the contemporary literary-journalism scene, and the form's continuing tension with traditional reporting standards.
- Vol. XI— ii —
Slide 03
Chapter IThe first.
- Defoe03
- ['Daniel Defoe\'s A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) reconstructed the 1665 London plague through the eyes of a fictional first-person narrator ("H.F."). Defoe, then in his 60s, drew on memories from age 5 and on archival research.', 'The work is technically a novel but read for centuries as historical document. The technique — first-person observational narrative, accumulated detail, journalistic acuity — anticipates everything the form would later become.']
- Lit-Journ— i —
Slide 04
Chapter IIReportage and fiction.
- Dickens04
- ['Dickens worked as a journalist before and during his novelist career. Sketches by Boz (1836), the Household Words editing (1850-1859), The Uncommercial Traveller essays.', "Dickens's London reporting — workhouses, slums, the poor — fed his novels but is documentary in its own right. The boundary between journalist and novelist was already porous."]
- Lit-Journ— ii —
Slide 05
Chapter IIIWar and slum.
- Crane05
- ['Stephen Crane\'s reporting from the Cuban war (1898) and from New York slums ("An Experiment in Misery," 1894) brought literary precision to journalism.', "Crane's The Red Badge of Courage (1895) was novel-form but informed by his immersive journalism. The cross-pollination between fiction and reporting was visible in his career."]
- Lit-Journ— iii —
Slide 06
Chapter IVDown and out.
- Orwell06
- ["George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), Homage to Catalonia (1938) are immersive-reporting books that transcend ordinary journalism.", 'Orwell\'s principle: "to know what is going on, you have to see it for yourself." His own immersion (working as a dishwasher, mining, fighting in Spain) was the method. Style was unornamented; observation was sustained.']
- Lit-Journ— iv —
Slide 07
Chapter VHiroshima.
- Hersey07
- ["John Hersey's Hiroshima (1946) was published as the entire August 31, 1946 issue of The New Yorker. The day after, the magazine sold out everywhere.", "Hersey's account of six survivors of the atomic bomb — Father Kleinsorge, Mrs. Nakamura, Dr. Sasaki, Mr. Tanimoto, Dr. Fujii, Miss Sasaki — used novelistic technique (interleaved narratives, scene-by-scene reconstruction) for documentary purpose. Hiroshima remains the foundational text of post-war literary journalism."]
- Lit-Journ— v —
Slide 08
Chapter VIThe mid-century anchor.
- New Yorker08
- ['The New Yorker, under Harold Ross (1925-1951) and William Shawn (1952-1987), was the central venue for long-form literary journalism in mid-century America.', 'Lillian Ross\'s Picture (1952, on John Huston filming The Red Badge of Courage) and her later profile work. A.J. Liebling\'s boxing and food essays. Joseph Mitchell\'s New York reportage ("Up in the Old Hotel," "Joe Gould\'s Secret").']
- Lit-Journ— vi —
Slide 09
Chapter VIIJoe Gould.
- Mitchell09
- ["Joseph Mitchell's Up in the Old Hotel (1992 collected) and Joe Gould's Secret (1965) are among the great American works of literary journalism. Mitchell's style: low-key, attentive, deeply committed to his subjects.", "Mitchell stopped publishing in 1964 — but kept coming to The New Yorker every weekday for the next 30 years. The literary world's most-discussed silence."]
- Lit-Journ— vii —
Slide 10
Chapter VIIIIn Cold Blood.
- Capote10
- ["Truman Capote's In Cold Blood (1966, serialised in the New Yorker) is technically a 'nonfiction novel' but functionally the case for journalism-as-literature. Capote spent six years on the case (the 1959 Kansas Clutter family murders).", "The book sold over a million copies in its first year. The New Journalism's commercial viability was demonstrated."]
- Lit-Journ— viii —
Slide 11
Chapter IXThe manifesto.
- Wolfe11
- ["Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) used full novelistic technique on Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters. Italics, exclamation marks, sustained immersion in the characters' subjective experience.", "Wolfe's 1973 anthology The New Journalism (with E.W. Johnson) named and codified the movement. Four techniques: scene-by-scene construction, dialogue, point-of-view, status-detail observation."]
- Lit-Journ— ix —
Slide 12
Chapter XSlouching towards Bethlehem.
- Didion12
- ["Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968) and The White Album (1979) are the major Didion essay-journalism collections. Cool, observational, the personal-and-cultural fused.", "Didion's reportage on Haight-Ashbury, on Charles Manson, on the 1968 Democratic Convention, on Salvador, on Sentimental Journeys. The voice — controlled, painterly, absolutely particular — became among the most-imitated of the late 20th century."]
- Lit-Journ— x —
Slide 13
Chapter XIThe participant.
- Mailer13
- ["Norman Mailer's The Armies of the Night (1968, won Pulitzer) put Mailer himself in the third person, marching on the Pentagon. Subsequent Mailer journalism (Miami and the Siege of Chicago, Of a Fire on the Moon) maintained the participant-observer mode.", "The 'Mailer-as-character' trope took the form of literary self-conscious staging. Influence: Hunter S. Thompson, ornate later participant-journalism."]
- Lit-Journ— xi —
Slide 14
Chapter XIIThe observer.
- Talese14
- ["Gay Talese's 'Frank Sinatra Has a Cold' (Esquire, 1966) is the most-cited New Journalism magazine piece. Talese never interviewed Sinatra — he reported around him for three months.", "Talese's The Bridge (1964, Verrazzano-Narrows construction), The Kingdom and the Power (1969, the New York Times), Honor Thy Father (1971, Bonanno crime family). Sustained, deeply-reported book-length narratives."]
- Lit-Journ— xii —
Slide 15
Chapter XIIIGonzo.
- Thompson15
- ["Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971, Rolling Stone) and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 (1973) were the maximalist-participant version of New Journalism.", "'Gonzo' — first-person, intoxicated, deliberately mythologising — was a technique unique to Thompson but influential. His suicide (2005) closed the era's central figures."]
- Lit-Journ— xiii —
Slide 16
Chapter XIVNickel and Dimed.
- Ehrenreich16
- ["Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed (2001) updated Orwell's Down and Out immersive method for the contemporary US working poor. Ehrenreich worked as a waitress, hotel maid, and Walmart clerk.", "The 2024 reissue and the documentary adaptation (2024) confirmed the book's continued relevance. The form — sustained immersion in another life — remains a working method."]
- Lit-Journ— xiv —
Slide 17
Chapter XVAdventure journalism.
- Krakauer17
- ["Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild (1996, Chris McCandless) and Into Thin Air (1997, Everest disaster) brought novelistic narrative technique to adventure-and-disaster reporting.", "Subsequent: Under the Banner of Heaven (2003, Mormon fundamentalism), Where Men Win Glory (Pat Tillman), Missoula (campus rape). Krakauer's books typically reach mass-market scale."]
- Lit-Journ— xv —
Slide 18
Chapter XVIMemory and document.
- Sebald18
- ["W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn (1995), Vertigo (1990), Austerlitz (2001) are formally hybrid — fiction-and-essay, photography-and-prose, memoir-and-history. The category 'Sebaldian' has become its own descriptor.", "Sebald's influence on contemporary literary journalism has been substantial. Maggie Nelson, Olivia Laing, Geoff Dyer all work in adjacent modes."]
- Lit-Journ— xvi —
Slide 19
Chapter XVIIThe long-form magazine.
- LRB & NYRB19
- ['The London Review of Books (since 1979) and the New York Review of Books (since 1963) sustain long-form literary-journalism essays of 5,000-15,000 words.', "Both venues' political-literary essays — Perry Anderson, Mary Beard, Andrew O'Hagan, Hilary Mantel, Pankaj Mishra, Jonathan Raban — shape the contemporary form."]
- Lit-Journ— xvii —
Slide 20
Chapter XVIIIThe political-personal.
- Coates20
- ["Ta-Nehisi Coates's Between the World and Me (2015) and his Atlantic long-form ('The Case for Reparations,' 2014) established Coates as the major political essayist of his generation.", "The form: epistolary-personal voice, sustained historical research, political argument. Coates explicitly drew on Baldwin's The Fire Next Time."]
- Lit-Journ— xviii —
Slide 21
Chapter XIXAtavist, Longreads, the Substack era.
- Long-form online21
- ["The 2010s saw substantial migration of long-form journalism to digital. The Atavist (founded 2011), Longreads (founded 2009), Buzzfeed News's longreads, Quartz's longform, the New York Times Magazine's digital expansion.", 'The Substack newsletter era (2017-onward) further fragmented the venue landscape. Anne Helen Petersen, Casey Newton, Sam Adler-Bell, John Ganz, and many others publish substantial long-form directly to subscribers.']
- Lit-Journ— xix —
Slide 22
Chapter XXAuto-journalism.
- Memoir hybrid22
- ["The 2010s and 2020s blurred journalism and memoir further. Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts (2015), Olivia Laing's The Lonely City (2016), Sarah M. Broom's The Yellow House (2019, National Book Award), Hua Hsu's Stay True (2022, Pulitzer).", 'The boundary between memoir and reportage is genuinely contested in contemporary work. Some readers and reviewers find the hybridity productive; others find it a category problem.']
- Lit-Journ— xx —
Slide 23
Chapter XXIReporting at length.
- Investigative23
- ["Investigative journalism in book form: Ronan Farrow's Catch and Kill (2019, the Weinstein investigation), Jon Lee Anderson's Che, Patrick Radden Keefe's Empire of Pain (2021, the Sacklers).", 'The book-length investigative form has produced some of the major works of the past decade. The reporting-and-narrative integration is increasingly the high register.']
- Lit-Journ— xxi —
Slide 24
Chapter XXIIWhere it lives.
- The current scene24
- ['Working contemporary practitioners: Patrick Radden Keefe, Rachel Aviv, Jia Tolentino, Ronan Farrow, Kathryn Schulz, Ben Taub, Susan Glasser, Jane Mayer, Robert Caro (still working), Ronan Farrow.', "Major book-length recent: Aviv's Strangers to Ourselves (2022), Schulz's Lost & Found (2022), Hua Hsu's Stay True (2022), Keefe's Empire of Pain. The form is healthy."]
- Lit-Journ— xxii —
Slide 25
Chapter XXIIITwenty-five works.
- Reading list25
- 1722A Journal of the Plague YearDefoe
- 1843American NotesDickens
- 1898War DespatchesCrane
- 1933Down and Out in Paris and LondonOrwell
- 1937The Road to Wigan PierOrwell
- 1946HiroshimaHersey
- 1952PictureLillian Ross
- 1965Joe Gould's SecretMitchell
- 1966In Cold BloodCapote
- 1968The Electric Kool-Aid Acid TestWolfe
- 1968The Armies of the NightMailer
- 1968Slouching Towards BethlehemDidion
- 1971Fear and Loathing in Las VegasThompson
- 1973The New Journalism (anthology)Wolfe & Johnson
- 1979The White AlbumDidion
- 1996Into the WildKrakauer
- 2001Nickel and DimedEhrenreich
- 2007The Man with the Magic Eyeball (Sebald: Atlas)Various
- 2014'The Case for Reparations'Coates
- 2015Between the World and MeCoates
- 2019The Yellow HouseBroom
- 2019Catch and KillFarrow
- 2021Empire of PainKeefe
- 2022Strangers to OurselvesAviv
- 2022Stay TrueHsu
- Lit-Journ— xxiii —
Slide 26
Chapter XXIVWatch & read.
- Watch & Read26
- ↑ Tom Wolfe and the New Journalism — remembering
- More on YouTube
- Watch · Joan Didion — Goodbye to All That (1967)
- Watch · Frank Sinatra Has a Cold — Gay Talese profile
- Lit-Journ— xxiv —
Slide 27
Chapter XXVIf you want to learn it.
- How to start27
- Read the canon. Hersey's Hiroshima, Capote's In Cold Blood, Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Talese's 'Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,' Coates's 'The Case for Reparations.' Six pieces give a working introduction.
- For ongoing. The New Yorker's long-form, the Atlantic, n+1, the LRB, NYRB, the New York Times Magazine, Harper's. Subscribe to one or two; sustained reading at length is the best apprenticeship.
- For making. Robert Boynton's The New New Journalism (interviews with practitioners) is the working methodology guide. The Goldsmith MFA at Goldsmith's, NYU CRC, Columbia, the Iowa nonfiction program for formal training.
- Listen to. Audio long-form has become substantial. Serial, S-Town, This American Life, The Daily, the major podcast journalism is now a sister tradition.
- Lit-Journ— xxv —
Slide 28
Chapter XXVIWhy it matters.
- Argument28
- Some of the best writing of the past century has been journalism. Hersey's Hiroshima, Didion's essays, Capote's In Cold Blood, the Sebald and Coates traditions — these belong on the shelf with the major novels.
- The form has its own grammar. Sustained reporting, novelistic scene construction, voice that knows what it knows. The skills required — and the ethics — differ from both novelism and conventional reporting.
- It survives the digital transition. Long-form journalism continues to find audiences, in magazines, in books, in newsletters, in audio. The reading public for sustained literary journalism is real and durable.
- Lit-Journ— xxvi —
Slide 29
Chapter XXVIIThe next decade.
- Where it goes29
- The audio expansion. Podcast long-form has become a major venue. The audio essay (the Sam Anderson 'Animals' piece, etc.) has its own conventions and audiences.
- The political-essay rise. Coates, Tolentino, Aviv, Hsu, Broom — political-personal essay is a major contemporary form. The continued health is likely.
- The book-as-vehicle. Long-form journalism increasingly finds its highest expression in book-length work. Keefe, Aviv, Farrow, Mayer all work at book scale.
- The Substack question. Whether direct-to-reader newsletter journalism produces durable literary work or mostly produces personal-brand essay is open. The form's conventions are still being settled.
- Lit-Journ— xxvii —
Slide 30
The end of the deck.
- Colophon30
- Journalism as Literature — Volume XI, Deck 13. Set in Source Serif Pro. Newsprint-cream #f5efdc with ink-blue, vermilion, and olive accents.
- FINIS
- ↑ Vol. XI · Lit-Journ · Deck 13
