Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Some of the best and most original prose in America today is being written by literary journalists. Memoirs and personal essays, profiles, science and nature reportage, travel writing -- literary journalists are working in all of these forms with artful styles and fresh approaches. In Literary Journalism, editors Norman Sims and Mark Kramer have collected the finest examples of literary journalism from both the masters of the genre who have been working for decades and the new voices freshly arrived on the national scene.The fifteen essays gathered here include:
-- John McPhee's account of the battle between army engineers and the lower Mississippi River
-- Susan Orlean's brilliant portrait of the private, imaginative world of a ten-year-old boy
-- Tracy Kidder's moving description of life in a nursing home
-- Ted Conover's wild journey in an African truck convoy while investigating the spread of AIDS
-- Richard Preston's bright piece about two shy Russian mathematicians who live in Manhattan and search for order in a random universe
-- Joseph Mitchell's classic essay on the rivermen of Edgewater, New Jersey
-- And nine more fascinating pieces of the nation's best new writing In the last decade this unique form of writing has grown exuberantly -- and now, in Literary Journalism, we celebrate fifteen of our most dazzling writers as they work with great vitality and astonishing variety.
Customer Reviews:
Review #1: Outstanding
1999-08-19 
Ted Conover's piece on Africa, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's "Trina and Trina" -- well, basically everything the editors chose was outstanding. What I especially valued were the introductions on the art of "literary journalism" and the introductions to each of the journalists. I'm teaching a workshop this fall at The Writers Center in Bethesda and I'm putting on the reading list with a great big star.
Review #2: A great tribute to the craft of journalism
1999-07-04
Great feature writing is often notable for its transparency, drawing the reader into the story with the power and immediacy of the subject matter. Not surprising then that the craft and quality of the writing itself is sometimes overlooked. Sims and Kramer have produced an eclectic mix of fine writing which challenge the reader to regard it from the perspective of literary attributes and construction, as well as its fascinating and obscure topics of human interest. These are some of the finest feature journalists in the country, each with his own style and emphasis, and all with the ability to look at small stories with great insight into their human dimensions. It's an excellent book for prospective writers and for anyone interested in stories of sometimes mundane matters which are given transcendant implications by a keen journalistic sense and prowess. (Literary Journalists, another Sims collection from 1984 is also recommended.. it's not dated at all!) |
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