Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking [Paperback]

Jessica Mitford (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0374521190 | ISBN-13: 978-0374521196 | Publication Date: October 1988

Jessica Mitford was a member of one of England’s most legendary families (among her sisters were the novelist Nancy Mitford and the current Duchess of Devonshire) and one of the great muckraking journalists of modern times. Leaving England for America, she pursued a career as an investigative reporter and unrepentant gadfly, publicizing not only the misdeeds of, most famously, the funeral business (The American Way of Death, a bestseller) and the prison business (Kind and Usual Punishment), but also of writing schools and weight-loss programs. Mitford’s diligence, unfailing skepticism, and acid pen made her one of the great chroniclers of the mischief people get up to in the pursuit of profit and the name of good. Poison Penmanship collects seventeen of Mitford’s finest pieces—about everything from crummy spas to network-TV censorship—and fills them out with the story of how she got the scoop and, no less fascinating, how the story developed after publication. The book is a delight to read: few journalists have ever been as funny as Mitford, or as gifted at getting around in those dark, cobwebbed corners where modern America fashions its shiny promises. It’s also an unequaled and necessary manual of the fine art of investigative reporting.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"For my part, I can’t remember when I enjoyed a collection of journalism so much, or laughed out loud so often. Spirited, extremely witty and sharp and, perhaps most importantly, driven by a powerful sense of social justice, Mitford was, quite simply, one of the most useful journalists of the 20th century. That she could also make you laugh while exposing the shenanigans of the corrupt, or, as she preferred to call it, muckraking, makes this book indispensable."—Nicolas Lezard, The Guardian

"Poison Penmanship was originally published in 1979….Its current reissue by New York Review Books is a welcome reminder of the author’s reporting ingenuity. The book includes 17 pieces of journalism—a mere slice of the work that Mitford produced over the course of a 40-year career in letters, but a choice one….Poison Penmanship would make an apt addition to any reporter’s reading list. Mitford supplies research tips and instructive anecdotes alongside the pieces that her self-education yielded, providing a satisfying synthesis of theory and practice."—The Economist

“[Mitford’s] excellent collection Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking has just been republished…A number of essays here concern the funeral business and how her exposé affected her life….Other selections include witty and trenchant pieces on the Famous Writers School, a shameful scam; the censoring of the subject of syphilis by NBC in 1964; race relations in the American South in the mid-1960s; a fat farm, ‘Egyptomania,’ and touring the U.S.A."—Katherine Powers, The Boston Globe

"Mitford is an author who has a talent for getting to the root of things, and to the dirt surrounding the roots."—The New York Times

"An excellent how-to manual for all aspiring investigative journalists."—Los Angeles T... --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

About the Author

Jessica Mitford (1917–1996) was the daughter of Lord and Lady Redesdale, and she and her five sisters and one brother grew up in isolation on their parents’ Cotswold estate. Rebelling against her family’s hidebound conservatism, Mitford became an outspoken socialist and, with her second cousin and husband-to-be Esmond Romilly, ran away to fight against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Romilly was killed in World War II, and Mitford moved to America, where she married the lawyer and political activist Robert Treuhaft. A brilliant muckraking journalist, Mitford was the author of, among other works, a memoir of her youth, Hons and Rebels (also published as an NYRB Classic); a study of the funeral industry, The American Way of Death; and Kind and Unusual Punishment: The Prison Business. She died at the age of seventy-eight while working on a follow-up to The American Way of Death, for which, with characteristic humor, she proposed the title “Death Warmed Over.” 


Jane Smiley, winner of the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, is the author of many novels and other works. In 2010 she published Private Life, a novel; A Good Horse, a book for young adults; and The Man Who Invented the Computer, the first volume of the Sloane American Inventors series.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Noonday Pr (October 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374521190
• ISBN-13: 978-0374521196
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,733,794 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deserves to be reprinted, December 4, 2000

By 

C. Ebeling "ctlpareader" (PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking (Paperback)

I was sorry to see that this has gone out of print. The late Jessica Mitford, author of the American Way of Death, was a fine investigative journalist and just plain good writer. In Poison Penmanship she gleefully shares her adventures in the trade. She was fearless and zestful; obviously enjoyed the ruckus she kicked up, whether taking on the "death industry," the penal system, or a restaurant review. She is missed; so is this book.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, March 31, 2006

By 

Shantell Powell "The ShanMonster" (Kitchener, ON, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking (Paperback)

I've been reading, with great relish, Jessica Mitford's Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking. It's an excellent book, and it's a bloody shame it's out of print. Although the articles date from the 50s-70s, the writing is fresh, fresh, fresh! The book is set out as a collection of investigative articles followed by note sections describing the writing and research process. The subject matter varies from exposés on the funeral industry and the difficult birth of desegregation in the American south to life in an exclusive Arizona spa retreat and the censorship process on public service announcements on syphilis. Each of the stories is written with a delicious sense of humour.

From "You-All and Non-You-All: A Southern Potpourri" comes this:

"Once you start out with the integrationists, they are likely to pass you from hand to hand and from town to twon without giving you much chance to peer at the other side. I mentioned this to a young attorney, originally from Jackson, whom I met in Nashville. He laughed and said, "You should tra meetin' Kissin' Jim Folsom. That'd open yo' ass." For a moment, I was frozen with astonishment--until I realized he was saying "eyes.""

And...

"The reaction of my Montgomery hostesses to the piece, as reported by Virginia Durr, was illuminating. She said they were not in the least disturbed by my remarks about their mindless bigotry--but were exceedingly offened by my description of the FOOD as being uniformly bland and creamy: "We didn't have cream sauce, we had roast lamb the night she came." "She never mentioned my lettuce-and-walnut salad.""

If you can find yourself a copy at the library or second-hand shop, count yourself lucky. It's brilliant.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars How the muck was raked, December 5, 2009

By 

Andrew C Wheeler (Pompton Lakes, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking (Hardcover)

Jessica was once the most famous Mitford on this side of the Atlantic -- her The American Way of Death being of more interest locally than her older sister Nancy's almost autobiographical novels of the backbiting British aristocracy in love -- but her position may be slipping. And any of the Mitford sisters are always in danger of being subsumed into the myth of the Mitfords, that legendary six-headed female aristocrat that was simultaneously fascist and communist, married to all of the crowned heads of the world after being the most famous debutante ever, and speaking in private tongues to itself.

Poison Penmanship is a collection of Jessica Mitford's shorter journalism, most of it -- as the subtitle, "The Gentle Art of Muckraking," makes clear -- in the declamatory, j'accuse style of the '60s and '70s. It's been out of print since the original trade paperback edition of 1980, though, coincidentally, NYRB Press has a reprint planned for the middle of next year. (So this may perhaps be the time for a Jessica Mitford revival.)

Mitford structured Poison Penmanship as a primer in muckraking -- journalism that goes after a practice or industry hated by the writer, taking a strong position but also doing solid research to aid in the attack -- with a long introduction on the principles of her work and afterwords for each article bringing them up to date (to 1979) and providing background. She doesn't seem to have noticed that the articles collected here show her moving from advocacy and muckraking (tackling large issues like prison reform, racism in the South, newspaper prejudice and the funeral industry) towards more general journalism -- particularly since she closes with the long piece "Egyptomania," from the German travel magazine Geo, in which she investigates the then-current digs in the Valley of Kings without any particular point of view. So an unfriendly reader -- someone inclined to muckrake Mitford, perhaps -- could use this book as evidence that success ruined Mitford, turning her to puffier pieces like "Egyptomania" and a similar investigatory journalism piece on a super-expensive Elizabeth Arden desert beauty clinic.

In 1979, muckraking was still exclusively the province of the Left; the very idea of similar work being done by the Right would be ludicrous. But the world has changed since then, in part because of Mitford and her fellow muckrakers, and now muckraking is not only bipartisan, but universal. (What are Perez Hilton and Gawker if not muckrakers of the most frivolous sort?) The Internet sometimes seem to exist purely for the raking of muck, and subsequent lobbing of said muck at one's targets. We are all in the world Jessica Mitford built, but we have found that it's no longer "we" who attack "them" -- the war is now general, a Hobbesian war of all against all.

And so Poison Penmanship might be more useful now than ever before. Its specific examples might be old and out-of-date -- though the causes are still strong, often complaining about exactly the same abuses as Mitford did forty years ago -- but the lessons in advocacy journalism, in research and in getting the story solid before a reporter confronts a major hostile witness, are still as strong as ever before. And looking at the poor quality of muckraking currently -- since most of it could more honestly be called mud-flinging, with no serious attempt at research, analysis, or coherent thought behind it -- shows that Poison Penmanship is sorely needed now. Kudos to NYRB Books for bringing it back, and we should all hope for a rise in the general quality of muck raked about a year from now.