New journalism and the nonfiction novel

A Bastard Form: The Problem of Celebrity and the Rise of the New Journalism

“…to an objective eye," Mailer contends. 15 This suspicion was the result of a number of cultural, social, political, and even technological factors that cohered to destabilize the notion that an undeniably truthful version of reality even existed. The momentous events of the 1950s and '60s, which ranged from the chaotic violence of the Vietnam War to NASA's trip to the moon, were developments so complex and elusive, according to scholar John Hellmann, that they demanded tools nonexistent in fiction or journalism alone to be reported.…”