The politics and poetics of journalistic narrative : the timely and the timeless

The Politics and Poetics of Journalistic Narrative investigates the textuality of all discourse, arguing that the ideologically charged distinction between 'journalism' and 'fiction' is socially constructed rather than natural. Phyllis Frus separates literariness from aesthetic definitions, regarding it as a way of reading a text through its style to discover how it 'makes' reality. Frus examines narratives by Stephen Crane and Ernest Hemingway, showing that conventional understanding of the categories of fiction and non-fiction frequently determines the differences we perceive in texts. When journalists writing about historical events adopt the Hemingway-esque, understated narrative style that is commonly associated with both 'objectivity' and 'literature', it leads to an audience unable to face the historical and social conditions in which it must function. She interprets New Journalistic narratives, such as that of Truman Capote, as ways to counter the reification of modern consciousness to which both objective journalism and aestheticised fiction contribute. "The Politics and Poetics of Journalistic Narrative investigates the textuality of all discourse, arguing that the ideologically charged distinction between "journalism" and "fiction" is socially constructed rather than natural. Phyllis Frus separates literariness from aesthetic definitions, regarding it as a way of reading a text through its style to discover how it "makes" reality. Frus also takes up the problem of how we determine both the truth of historical events such as the Holocaust and the fictional or factual status of narratives about them." "Frus first examines narratives by Stephen Crane and Ernest Hemingway, showing that conventional understanding of the categories of fiction and nonfiction frequently determines the differences we perceive in texts, differences we imagine are determined by common sense. When journalists writing about historical events adopt the Hemingwayesque, understated narrative style that is commonly associated with both "objectivity" and "literature" (John Hersey is one example), the reader sees the damage done by the wholesale construction of literature as a "pure," nonfunctional art; it leads to an audience unable to face the historical and social conditions in which it must function. She interprets New Journalistic narratives by Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, and Janet Malcolm, suggesting by her critical practice ways to counter the reification of modern consciousness to which both objective journalism and aestheticized fiction contribute."--Jacket Early in the twentieth century, journalism and fiction suffered a forced separation as a result of two coinciding trends: a popular tendency to treat literature as an elevated, aesthetic category and the emergence of objective narrative in journalism. The effect of these two forces was to distance the subject of the narrative from its object, an estrangement later challenged by the writing of New Journalists and nonfiction novelists. In her book Frus recovers and renegotiates the process of writerly creation, and proves that, ultimately, the observer is implicated in the means of observation. This resource investigates the textuality of all discourse, arguing that the distinction between 'journalism' and 'fiction' is socially constructed rather than natural. Frus separates literariness from aesthetic definitions, regarding it as a way of reading a text through its style to discover how it 'makes' reality

Tells the story of the conflicted relationship between journalism and literature over the course of the twentieth century.