English 2783
The Art of Fact: Contemporary Literary Journalism
Prompt # 11
11 October 2010
Contextualizing things
Context for Wolfe's selections
After you've finished reading and posting about your choice from
Wolfe's anthology, you should spend an hour or three (more,
probably; remember the seven-hour a week rule for doing reasonably
well in this course) poking around the internet to see who has
written about your writer and about the work you just read. As I
looked for texts, I realized that for every one of these pieces
there are not only items written about them, but also items written
about journalism which mention them (sometimes only in passing;
sometimes with more to say). As you read, keep track of what you
find (sources, names, publication information), and what they say
(copy quotes to a file). You're aiming to produce, by next class
(Monday, October 21), two documents, each to be posted on a forum:
- A report on the context of your writer's work, especially the
focal piece you read. It should tell the rest of us what you
found that you think will help us, by understanding your writer
better, more about the history, character, definition of
"literary journalism" (or, of course, "new journalism,"
"creative nonfiction," or whatever it gets called. This is to be
posted as a Reply to your forum report on your selection from The New
Journalism.
- A report on what you have found in the way of longer works
about this genre more generally, that we might explore. Every
time you look for information about your specific writer, you'll
come upon people writing about larger subjects that mention your
writer or this piece. Keep a list of them, with notes explaining
what they are and why you think they might be valuable. Post
your annotated list in the
"Working Bibliography" wiki that will be on Moodle (and
will be linked from the main course Web page).
I suggest two initial strategies for finding materials. Simply
Google your author, and the work. You can do this by putting the
equivalent of this -- "John Gregory Dunne" "The Studio"
-- into the Google search bar. As a second move, put the same thing
into the Google Scholar search bar. Poke around. Skim things. Follow
links. See what you can learn. Tell us about it.
A note: there are more traditionally "academic" ways of searching
for context for a work, but one of the considerations about
journalism is that it's a "popular" form, and much about it exists
in the world accessible via Google.
A further note or two
Remember to keep track of your learning by posting to your learning
journal. Check the Learning Journals
page from the course Web site, and if you've posted an entry, make
sure the link on your name goes to your work. While you're at it,
take a look at what other people have had to say. Do better.
And have a Thanksgiving holiday. Make it a real one.
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