Literary Journalism

The Undeclared War between Journalism and Fiction

“…Flood is a world you want to read about not because it's utter fantasy but because it seems real-in fact, it's a world that seems more real, more pressing in its moral accounting than those you find in many well-documented but dull examples of magazine journalism." 80 Forde notes that the critics and academics who study "new" or literary journalism as a scholarly discipline, and who subscribe to the journalism industry's standards for distinguishing fictional from nonfictional writing, have been challenged by what she calls "the post-modern critique of objectivity," particularly in the field of literary studies, where adherents argue that all perception is governed by self-limiting human perspectives. The contesting of the factual standards of the establishment press reflects a "gestalt shift in Western epistemology," she says, and a reaction to an emerging postmodern worldview in the scholarly community that can be attributed to "profound social and political dislocations of the 1960s" that affected journalism in various ways, including in the creation of a growing discontent among some journalists (as well as many academics and members of the public) with the Enlightenment ideal of objectivity.…”

“…In a postmodern worldview, she says, there can be a multiplicity of histories that are based upon perceived truths; and yet, while not necessarily acknowledged as universal in nature or growing out only of first principles, one can still embrace meaningful shared knowledge as a basis to inform principled insight and action. 82 In applying Forde's viewpoint to the contentious questions that have absorbed scholars, journalists, and fiction writers about where and whether it is appropriate to make distinctions between fact and fiction-and what is the best way to study writing that appears to fall between those categories-one can sensibly reach a compromise position. The essence of literary journalism means that its production exists in tension (or harmony) with fictional techniques, and it can be vexing to try to limit discussion to where it is decided that the "facts" can be ascertained and where examples of "nonfictional" narrative definitively established.…”