The New Journalism


The New Journalism is a 1973 anthology of journalism edited by Tom Wolfe and E. W. Johnson. The book is both a manifesto for a new type of journalism by Wolfe, and a collection of examples of New Journalism by American writers, covering a variety of subjects from the frivolous to the deadly serious. The pieces are notable because they do not conform to the standard dispassionate and even-handed model of journalism. Rather they incorporate literary devices usually only found in fictional works.

Manifesto

The first section of the book consists of four previously published texts by Wolfe: The Feature Game and Like a Novel ; Seizing the Power and Appendix.
The text is a against the American novel which Wolfe sees as having hit a dead end by moving away from realism, and his opinion that journalism is much more relevant. In effect, his manifesto is for mixing journalism with literary techniques to document in a more effective way than the novel. These techniques were most likely inspired by writers of social realism, such as Émile Zola and Charles Dickens. His manifesto for New Journalism has four main points.
Part two, which makes of the major part of The New Journalism, consists of twenty-four texts, collected by Wolfe and Johnson. Every text features a short introduction, written by Wolfe.

Texts

Truman Capote, ''In Cold Blood''

The excerpt from In Cold Blood, is the fifth text in the anthology. The excerpt is taken from the third chapter titled Answers. In Cold Blood was initially, published as a four-part serial in The New Yorker, beginning with the September 25, 1965 issue. Answers, which was the third part, was published in the October 25 issue. The book details the brutal 1959 murders of Herbert Clutter, a wealthy farmer from Holcomb, Kansas, and his wife and two of their children. When Capote learned of the quadruple murder before the killers were captured, he decided to travel to Kansas and write about the crime. Bringing his childhood friend and fellow author Harper Lee along, together they interviewed local residents and investigators assigned to the case and took thousands of pages of notes. The killers, Richard "Dick" Hickock and Perry Smith, were arrested not long after the murders, and Capote ultimately spent six years working on the book. It is considered the originator of the non-fiction novel and the forerunner of the New Journalism movement, although other writers, like Rodolfo Walsh, had already explored the genre in books like Operación Masacre.
In the introduction Wolfe writes “For all his attention to novelistic technique, however, Capote does not use point of view in as sophisticated way as he does in fiction. One seldom feels that he is really inside of the minds of the characters. One gets a curious blend of third-person point of view and omniscient narration. Capote probably had sufficient information to use point of view in a more complex fashion but was not yet ready to let himself go in nonfiction.”

Robert Christgau, ''Beth Ann and Macrobioticism''

Beth Ann and Macrobioticism, by Robert Christgau, is the 20th text in the anthology. It was Christgau's first magazine article In 1965 Christgau was a reporter for the Dorf Feature Service in Newark, NJ.
TitleAuthorFirst PublishedMagazine/Newspaper First Published inBook Published in
25 September 1965The New YorkerIn Cold Blood
Beth Ann and MacrobioticismNew York Herald Tribune
Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream7 May 1966The Saturday Evening PostSlouching Towards Bethlehem
''
Charlie Simpson's Apocalypse6 July 1972Rolling Stone
La Dolce Viva29 April 1968New York Magazine
GearThe Village Voice
KhesanhEsquire
3 December 1965LIFE
Paper Lion
Ava: Life in the AfternoonEsquire'Do You Sleep in the Nude?
Timing and a Diversion: The Cocoa Game New York World Journal Tribune
EsquireM
Twirling at Ole MissEsquireRed-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes
Esquire
Scanlan's Monthly
5 June 1966The Sunday Times
Martin Luther King is Still on the CaseEsquire
Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers8 June 1970New York Magazine''

Reception

Primary sources

Contemporary reviews

The New Journalism
Texts in the anthology

Secondary sources