The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism [Hardcover]

Kevin Kerrane (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 8, 1997

Historical and international in scope, a unique anthology traces the course of literary journalism and nonfiction prose from its origins in the eighteenth century to today, from Daniel Defoe to Joseph Mitchell to Richard Ben Cramer. 15,000 first printing."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Kevin Kerrane and Ben Yagoda, journalists and journalism teachers, saw a need for a textbook that celebrated and organized outstanding examples of literary journalism. In this compendious volume spanning 372 years, the editors focus on the evolution of New Journalism, a term which, we learn, "was originally coined by Matthew Arnold in 1887 to describe the style of Stead's Pall Mall Gazette: brash, vivid, personal, reform-minded, and--occasionally, from Arnold's conservative viewpoint--'featherbrained.'"

The editors position Daniel Defoe's The True and Genuine Account of the Life and Actions of the Late Jonathan Wild (1725) as the prototype for the true-crime narrative. The collection's first section, entitled "Pioneers," includes such staples as Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, Walt Whitman's Specimen Days, and Jack London's daring 1902 exposé of life among the city of London's impoverished East Enders. Brief introductions to each selection set the historical context and explain innovative aspects of the piece. The second section compares two distinctly contemporary journalistic points of view: the "I Am a Camera" school and the unabashedly subjective approach exemplified by Norman Mailer and Hunter S. Thompson, among others. "Style as Substance" makes up the lively and often moving third section.

Many rich voices describe all angles of the human experience in this impressive volume. Through author Piers Paul Read we crash-land with a Uruguayan rugby team in the Andes; Lillian Ross gives us a notoriously devastating portrait of Ernest Hemingway; Ted Conover assimilates into illegal Mexican culture and smuggles us back and forth across the border. The only anthology of its kind, The Art of Fact almost doubles as a travel book.

From Library Journal

The authors (both English and journalism, Univ. of Delaware) compiled this excellent anthology for their students in a college course in literary journalism. In their introductions, they define literary journalism as factual, innovative, and current stories about an event, making the point that this "new" journalism is not really new but has been practiced for many years. The journalists included range from Charles Dickens and Jack London to Gay Talese and Joan Didion. Kerrane and Yagoda give brief biographies of the writers, usually telling why they chose the particular work, when the piece was written, and where it first appeared. This book is recommended for journalism collections but it could easily find interested readers in most libraries.?Rebecca Wondriska, Trinity Coll. Lib., Hartford, Ct.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 560 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; First Edition edition (August 8, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684830418
• ISBN-13: 978-0684830414
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #731,350 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best survey of non-fiction and its development I've seen, July 6, 1998

By 

Michael Ruhlman (Cleveland Heights, OH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism (Hardcover)

As a writer of non-fiction, I'm grateful to the editors of this book. It's the best and most complete survey of the development of non-fiction writing I've found, reaching back to Defoe for examples of techniques we've come to think of as recent developments non-fiction reporting, and moving through the "new journalism" writers to contemporary writers such as Ted Conover and Michael Winerip. The editors have written elegant prefaces not only to the book but to each of the dozens of writers included,giving biographical information, historical context, and information on the writing they've chosen to include (why they chose an early Hemingway column from the Toronto Star, for instance; the importance of Joseph Mitchell's profile on a bearded lady as opposed to his more well-known pieces). I would have liked to have seen something from Ian Frazier's Great Plains or Janet Malcolm's meditation on the art and impossibility of objective biography The Silent Woman, both of which push the craft of non-fiction writing into original territory. Nonetheless, this is a great book for students of non-fiction, non-fiction writers and especially for teachers of non-fiction. And as a collection of great writing, it's also great reading.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is Writing, not typing; and it's worth reading, May 29, 2006

By 

JackOfMostTrades "Jack" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism (Paperback)

Perhaps the reduction in reading of 'literary novels' is due to the general decline in other forms of writing: evidence of this possibility can be found by comparing the original styles of prose collected in this anthology with the general journalistic style today that is either turgid, 'stylishly hip (meaning writing TO the audience, not FOR the audience,' or just plain banal. Every newspaper on-line or off now has a 'new journalist' feature or features, but there are two problems with most of the writers who work on them: they are mediocre writers because they have not learned from people who write well nor have they taken the time to become keen observers of human behavior; To take just two examples from this book, Gary Smith writes about basketball and Native Americans in Montana and finds the soul of his subject while R. Ben Kramer takes a look at Bob Dole in the 1988 primaries and finds the hurt spirit beneath his mediated image. Such observation and expression requires a devotion to understanding one's subject, not a devotion to drawing attention to one's self. Literary journalists nowadays cater to the desires of their editors, which means too often, the desires of their publishers and in turn the desires of the corporation that owns the entity, and most likely the corporation doesn't know anything about writing or humanity, and couldn't care less. True 'literary journalism' is an art form, but like other skills it requires lots of apprenticeship, honing, and maturation. Right now such values are on hiatus owing to our need to quickly fill the 'information hole' of a vast array of media: the results being cloned authors coming off an assembly line.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinarily Fine, November 21, 2008

By 

Diego Banducci (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism (Paperback)

While familiar with most of the writers in this book (Defoe, Boswell, Dickens, Whitman, Crane, Richard Harding Davis, London, Hersey, Lillian Ross, Talese, Capote, Tom Wolfe, Kidder, Orwell, Liebling, Mailer, Hunter Thompson, Hemingway, Agee, Joseph Mitchell, Rebecca West, Steinbeck, Breslin, Didion, and McPhee), I generally was not familiar with the works included. Additionally, there are numerous other writers I was not familiar with, so most of the reading experience was new to me.

The variety of the works chosen is as impressive as their general excellence. In sum, the editors (both of whom teach English and journalism at the University of Delaware) have succeeded in producing a volume that is a delight to read. The only book that I'm aware of that is in the same league is Literary Journalism.

Highly recommended.