Abstract
John C. Hartsock, professor of Communication Studies at the State University of New York at Cortland (SUNY Cortland) and author of the critically acclaimed book A History of American Literary Journalism (2001) delivers another outstanding work of scholarship with his new book Literary Journalism and the Aesthetics of Experience (2016). The book elaborates upon his ideas about literary journalism as “narrative descriptive journalism,” which he describes as closely aligned to discourse and storytelling. Hartsock in his book uses well-chosen writing examples from both literature and journalism to illustrate his conceptualization of literary journalism as an aesthetic experience.
Hartsock sees a deep relationship between conventional fiction and literary journalism, and in the introduction of his book, he describes the separation between the latter two by stating that it is “ . . . not so much a hard-and-fast divide, but rather a space of complex and dynamic relationships between both sides” (p. 2). He posits that what literary narrative journalism attempts to do “is to engage in a revelation for the reader about our phenomenal world, one that is conjured imaginatively by means of sensate experience reflected in language . . . (p. 4).”
Hartsock views allude to an ideology of phenomenology in regard to language throughout his interpretations and analyses in Literary Journalism and the Aesthetics of Experience. For example, Hartsock describes a public appetite for fiction over factual or documentary accounts of events by stating that fiction has
. . . the greater cognitive freedom of the purely fictional, because it is unconstrained and unhindered, and draws on our existing accumulated knowledge—cultural and personal—to “see” the wholly invented fiction. Undoubtedly, a narra-descriptive journalism lacks this kind of freedom because to some extent it is constrained by the demands of maintaining some veracity to referentially based concrete metaphors. (p. 53)
Hartsock states in the introduction of his new book that his writing is influenced by critical perspective thinkers such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Walter Benjamin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Wolfpang Iser, and Hans Robert Jauss, among others (p. 7).
Hartsock delineates the differences between traditional news, feature journalism, and literary journalism in Chapter 1 of his new book. He is particularly clear and sharp in his critical analysis of the “inverted pyramid” model of news reporting. Hartford draws into his analysis and critique of the inverted pyramid model a number of empirical studies that found greater reader receptiveness and memory recall for narrative or expository journalism. In a summative explanation, Hartsock writes,
As it turns out, the critical hegemony of “objective” journalism was constructed on a false premise, one that has a tendency to result in more of an epistemological disconnect for readers in terms of what we can know or think we can know about the material world. In violating how we naturally inquire, it delivers the consequences of the phenomenal world to us as a cognitive fait accompli. This is the problem that is particularly inherent in the “inverted pyramid” model. It leaves us disengaged because we have not participated imaginatively in the journey or process of the story. (p.21)
Nonetheless, Hartsock states that as a former news reporter he still sees some utility in usage of the inverted pyramid model for covering some news and quick facts, and that he is not advocating the elimination of the model for reporting of news altogether. However, he does caution that those in the field of journalism should be cognizant of the inverted pyramid news model’s shortcomings.
In Chapter 2, “Telling the Leaves from the Forest,” Hartsock conducts an analysis of narrative descriptive journalism by examining how it is different from New Journalism as it was early defined. He does this by showing how narrative descriptive journalism is based on the experience of the writer in the material phenomenal world and his or her reader who draws upon his or her own experience. To illustrate the later, Hartsock uses a passage written by Ernest Hemingway about a 1927 Italy motor tour taken by the author that was published in the New Republic. The article by Hemingway is as important for what is stated as what is not stated, as well as the reader’s interpretation of it. Hartsock writes,
. . . in Hemingway’s motoring tour of Italy . . . the emphasis is on the differentiating qualities in the interest of a dialogic open to interpretation. We see this in the conclusion to the sketch because it is indeed left open to interpretation. Thus it serves to mock a rhetorical ambition that seeks to provide a global message. In the last line of “Italy 1927” Hemingway writes. “Naturally, in such a short trip, we had no opportunity to see how things were with the country or the people.” But this denial as to how things were in Fascist Italy is ironic understatement, for he has provided a carnival of evidence in concrete metaphors reflecting the inconclusive present in scenes and conversations committed to differentiating qualities . . .
In Chapter 3, “The Death of the Dream of Paradise,” Hartsock finds a common denominator to scrutinize in the different formations of literary journalism from its early New Journalism beginning—the subversion of myth. In Chapter 3, he chooses multiple writings to illustrate his point. In his first example, he uses the opening chapter of Tom Wolf’s novel The Right Stuff, an account of an accident that occurs in America’s early space program is which a jet malfunctions and the pilot’s parachute fails to open. In a few word description, onlookers from the scene on the ground watch as the world rises up to “smash him” and “when they lifted his body up off the concrete, it was like a sack of fertilizer.” This Hartsock juxtaposes to what mainstream journalism might write about the latter; “A Navy test pilot died yesterday, when his parachute failed to open after he bailed out of his malfunctioning jet.” At the end of the chapter, Hartsock writes,
. . . anti-mythic subversion runs throughout notable examples of narrative literary journalism from the New Journalism. To be sure, mythic archetypes can never be entirely escaped—these iterations of a qualitas occulta. But, the subversion is no small matter when we consider the total effect: the disruption of taken-for-granted ideological assumptions of how life should be prescribed—myth, in other words. It is a disruption that can only make such works all the more compelling as postmodern parody that reflects an “intrinsically political character” by challenging the conventional and the authoritative. (pp. 80-81)
In Chapters 4 to 6 (pp. 83-148), Hartsock expands upon and critiques the writing and reading and aesthetic experience of literary journalism using a catalog of different examples. Hartsock goes deeper in defining literary journalism or narra-descriptive journalism and traces its history on an international scale, including in Russia and Germany. Furthermore, Hartsock provides a critique of the different stages of the genre and its many labels, including New Journalism, narrative journalism, creative nonfiction, the nonfiction novel, literary reportage, and reportage literature, among other names. In the conclusion, (pp. 149-157), Hartsock offers some ways in which those in the field of journalism can apply the genre of narrative journalism to new convergence media to bring in new readers and new audiences.
Hartsock’s book is in many ways an enjoyable and stimulating read for anyone with an interest in journalism—students and faculty in the fields of journalism and mass communication studies, and practicing journalists. The book is especially informative and instructive to those with an interest in the history of literary journalism or with an interest in writing in the genre. Literary Journalism and the Aesthetics of Experience would be a useful text for teaching and learning in upper-level undergraduate courses or graduate courses in journalism, communication studies, and cultural studies.