The Art Of Fact

A comprehensive and illuminating survey of literary journalism with both historical and international scope, this anthology is the only one of its kind. In a series of sparkling readings, Kevin Kerrane and Ben Yagoda trace the evolution of the so-called "new" journalism back to the 18th century.

The Art of Fact in the Digital Age is a showcase of the most powerful and moving journalism of the past 25 years. Selections include stories originally published in established bastions of literary journalism (The New York Times, The Atlantic and The New Yorker), as well as those from specialized and online publications (Runner's World, The Atavist). It features writers of extraordinary style (including Carina del Valle Schorske, Brian Phillips, and Jia Tolentino), as well as those who have profoundly influenced public discourse on the 21st century's most urgent issues: Mitchell S. Jackson, Clint Smith, and Ta-Nehisi Coates on race; Susan Dominus and Luke Mogelson on migration; and Kathryn Schulz and David Wallace-Wells on environmental threats. It even includes one story that expanded literary journalism's repertoire into audio (This American Life). This collection, assembled for students, scholars, and practitioners alike, also charts the evolution of digital longform journalism through its greatest achievements, from transitioning readers to screens to the integration of multimedia with words in service of meaning. The art of fact in the 21st century opened new ranges of expression to address such issues, while uniquely bearing the imprint of their generation's digital cultures and technologies. Although many forces compete for attention in the digital age, story triumphs. The works in this anthology show us why.

The artistry of nonfiction is the great unexplored territory of contemporary criticism. Although the American book clubs now emphasize nonfiction and The New York Times Book Review publishes almost three times as many reviews of nonfiction as fiction, critical appreciation of this work has lagged behind. The Art of Fact is the first comprehensive examination of five of today's most popular and important nonfiction artists: Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, John McPhee, Joan Didion, and Norman Mailer. By discussing contemporary literary nonfiction in relation to the early prose narrative forms and to the news/novels of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the opening chapter defines the discourse known as literary or artistic nonfiction. Dr. Lounsberry then describes four characteristics of literary nonfiction and grounds these characteristics in contemporary works. The five chapters which follow this introduction thoroughly examine the works of five prominent, contemporary nonfiction artists. While critics to date have tended to focus on only one or two of each writer's works, these chapters trace themes across each writer's entire body of work and even project likely future directions, given current artistic trajectories. Also addressed is the role of literary nonfiction in the American literary tradition and how each of the five writers exemplifies a strand of nonfiction narrative. The Art of Fact draws from personal interviews with Gay Talese and John McPhee and includes new interpretations of the works of Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion and Norman Mailer as well as unpublished material from Gay Talese's current book-in-progress. The Art of Fact is a timely call for critical appreciation of the artistry of nonfiction and offers valuable insights to both students and fans of contemporary nonfiction.

NOW A BROADWAY PLAY STARRING DANIEL RADCLIFFE 'Provocative, maddening and compulsively readable' Maggie Nelson In 2003, American essayist John D'Agata wrote a piece for Harper's about Las Vegas's alarmingly high suicide rate, after a sixteen-year-old boy had thrown himself from the top of the Stratosphere Tower. The article he delivered, 'What Happens There', was rejected by the magazine for inaccuracies. But it was soon picked up by another, who assigned it a fact checker: their fresh-faced intern, and recent Harvard graduate, Jim Fingal. What resulted from that assignment, and beyond the essay's eventual publication in the magazine, was seven years of arguments, negotiations, and revisions as D'Agata and Fingal struggled to navigate the boundaries of literary nonfiction. This book includes an early draft of D'Agata's essay, along with D'Agata and Fingal's extensive discussion around the text. The Lifespan of a Fact is a brilliant and eye-opening meditation on the relationship between 'truth' and 'accuracy', and a penetrating conversation about whether it is appropriate for a writer to substitute one for the other. 'A fascinating and dramatic power struggle over the intriguing question of what nonfiction should, or can, be' Lydia Davis

A revealing look at the irrevocable change in art during the 1960s and its relationship to the modern culture of fact This refreshing and erudite book offers a new understanding of the transformation of photography and the visual arts around 1968. Author Joshua Shannon reveals an oddly stringent realism in the period, tracing artists’ rejection of essential truths in favor of surface appearances. Dubbing this tendency factualism, Shannon illuminates not only the Cold War’s preoccupation with data but also the rise of a pervasive culture of fact. Focusing on the United States and West Germany, where photodocumentary traditions intersected with 1960s politics, Shannon investigates a broad variety of art, ranging from conceptual photography and earthworks to photorealist painting and abstraction. He looks closely at art by Bernd and Hilla Becher, Robert Bechtle, Vija Celmins, Douglas Huebler, Gerhard Richter, and others. These artists explored fact’s role as a modern paradigm for talking, thinking, and knowing. Their art, Shannon concludes, helps to explain both the ambivalent anti-humanism of today’s avant-garde art and our own culture of fact.

Politics and media are constantly dealing with the shifting definitions of facts, truth, reality, and fiction. Yet this is something the field of documentary art has been addressing for much longer. The contributions in this volume are from and about artists who explore the boundaries between fact and fiction by playing with the notion of the ?documentary?. The book draws from a wide range of documentary art practices, such as working with archival materials or scrutinising one?s own subjective stance as an artist. It observes how artists deploy the fine line between fact and fiction as a means to imagine versions of the future, and how it can still have an impact in the world of today.

Graa's work critically examines the continual rebirth of cultural romances on the part of literary intellectuals. His disdain for contrived rejections of modernity and for grand destructive gestures is combined with his intense appreciation of the romantic sensibility. Fact and Symbol embodies Graa's views of the enterprise of cultural sociology in which both words are given equal play.

How the structure of news, information, and knowledge is evolving and how news media can foster social connection. While the public believes that journalism remains crucial for democracy, there is a general sense that the news media are performing this role poorly. In The Social Fact, John Wihbey makes the case that journalism can better serve democracy by focusing on ways of fostering social connection. Wihbey explores how the structure of news, information, and knowledge and their flow through society are changing, and he considers ways in which news media can demonstrate the highest possible societal value in the context of these changes. Wihbey examines network science as well as the interplay between information and communications technologies (ICTs) and the structure of knowledge in society. He discusses the underlying patterns that characterize our increasingly networked world of information—with its viral phenomena and whiplash-inducing trends, its extremes and surprises. How can the traditional media world be reconciled with the world of social, peer-to-peer platforms, crowdsourcing, and user-generated content? Wihbey outlines a synthesis for news producers and advocates innovation in approach, form, and purpose. The Social Fact provides a valuable framework for doing audience-engaged media work of many kinds in our networked, hybrid media environment. It will be of interest to all those concerned about the future of news and public affairs.