English 2783
The Art of Fact: Contemporary Literary Journalism
Prompt # 18
18 November 2013

Through the basement with gun and camera

What we learn about literary journalism by browsing

There's been a fair bit of reporting and responding on the "finding literary nonfiction" forum. I hope everybody has had a chance to read everything; I want to spend most of the time we have together tonight discussing people's different experiences. I'm expecting people will have some things to say about the way their finding the article gives them some ideas about the status of such articles in the world, about what characteristics of the article made them comfortable -- and uncomfortable -- with the ideas about literary journalism we've been discussing, and about the context in which they found the article.

Given people's reaction to this week's work, I think it's pretty clear it will be useful to do this in very much the same way for next week. So here's an assignment: pick another year -- at least ten years different from the one you were assigned last time -- and a random volume from that year. This time, look for a piece that's (1) not by anybody whose name you know, (2) about a subject that you have no pre-existing interest in, and (3) is, on the basis of your leafing through it and sizing it up, pretty clearly literary journalism as you understand it. We'll do what we did last week: post it to the forum (we can use the same one) in time that everyone will have a chance to read your report and post a thoughtful reply before class.

I'd very much like to have been able to give people the chance to go back and go through The New Yorker from an earlier era -- the seventies, especially -- when the kind of literary journalism it was known for was even more ambitious. We can't browse, but we may find a way to locate some classic examples of literary journalism from that period.

I'm also going to be asking everyone to be doing some more reading about literary journalism, against the background of what you've come to know about it so far. More on that next week; in the meantime, have a look back at the postings in the bibliography wiki and the list of relevant texts.

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