New Journalism & saturation reporting

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February 14, 1972, article in New York, by Tom...

February 14, 1972, article in New York, by Tom Wolfe, announcing the birth of New Journalism (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

The Pulitzer Prize gold medal award 한국어: 퓰리처상 ...

The Pulitzer Prize gold medal award 한국어: 퓰리처상 공공 보도 부문 상인 금메달 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

New Journalism

 

New Journalism
Areas
Genres
Social impact
News media
Roles
 

New Journalism was a style of 1960s and 1970s news writing and journalism which used literary techniques deemed unconventional at the time. The term was codified with its current meaning by Tom Wolfe in a 1973 collection of journalism articles he published as The New Journalism, which included works by himself, Truman Capote, Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, Robert Christgau, Gay Talese and others.

Articles in the New Journalism style tended not to be found in newspapers, but rather in magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, CoEvolution Quarterly, Esquire, New York, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and for a short while in the early 1970s, Scanlan’s Monthly.

 

 

History[edit]

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Precursors and alternate uses of the term[edit]

Various people and tendencies throughout the history of American journalism have been labeled “new journalism”. Robert E. Park, for instance, in his Natural History of the Newspaper, referred to the advent of the penny press in the 1830s as “new journalism”.[1] Likewise, the appearance of theyellow press—papers such as Joseph Pulitzer‘s New York World in the 1880s—led journalists and historians to proclaim that a “New Journalism” had been created. Ault and Emery, for instance, said “Industrialization and urbanization changed the face of America during the latter half of the Nineteenth century, and its newspapers entered an era known as that of the ‘New Journalism.'”[2]John Hohenberg, in The Professional Journalist (1960), called the interpretive reporting which developed after World War II a “new journalism which not only seeks to explain as well as to inform; it even dares to teach, to measure, to evaluate.”[3]

During the sixties and seventies, the term enjoyed widespread popularity, often with meanings bearing manifestly little or no connection with one another. Although James E. Murphy noted that “…most uses of the term seem to refer to something more specific than vague new directions in journalism”,[4] Curtis D. MacDougal devoted the preface of the sixth edition of his Interpretative Reporting to New Journalism and cataloged many of the contemporary definitions: “Activist, advocacy, participatory, tell-it-as-you-see-it, sensitivity, investigative, saturation, humanistic, reformist and a few more.”[5]

The Magic Writing Machine—Student Probes of the New Journalism, a collection edited and introduced by Everette E. Dennis, came up with six categories, labelled new nonfiction (reportage), alternative journalism (“modern muckraking”), advocacy journalism, underground journalism and precision journalism.[6] Michael Johnson’s The New Journalism addresses itself to three phenomena: the underground press, the artists of nonfiction, and changes in the established media.[7]

Early development, the sixties[edit]

February 14, 1972 article in New York byTom Wolfe, announcing the birth of New Journalism

How and when the term New Journalism began to refer to a genre is not clear.[8] Tom Wolfe, a practitioner and principal advocate of the form,[8]wrote in at least two articles[9][10] in 1972 that he had no idea of where it began. Trying to shed light on the matter, literary critic Seymour Krimoffered his explanation in 1973.

“I’m certain that [Pete] Hamill first used the expression. In about April of 1965 he called me at Nugget Magazine, where I was editorial director, and told me he wanted to write an article about new New Journalism. It was to be about the exciting things being done in the old reporting genre by Talese, Wolfe and Jimmy Breslin. He never wrote the piece, so far as I know, but I began using the expression in conversation and writing. It was picked up and stuck.”[11]

But wherever and whenever the term arose, there is evidence of some literary experimentation in the early 1960s, as when Norman Mailer broke away from fiction to write Superman Comes to the Supermarket.[12] A report of John F. Kennedy‘s nomination that year, the piece established a precedent which Mailer would later build on in his 1968 convention coverage (Miami and the Siege of Chicago) and in other nonfiction as well.

Wolfe wrote that his first acquaintance with a new style of reporting came in a 1962 Esquire article about Joe Louis by Gay Talese. “‘Joe Louis at Fifty’a wasn’t like a magazine article at all. It was like a short story. It began with a scene, an intimate confrontation between Louis and his third wife…”[13] Wolfe said Talese was the first to apply fiction techniques to reporting. Esquire claimed credit as the seedbed for these new techniques. Esquire editor Harold Hayes later wrote that “in the Sixties, events seemed to move too swiftly to allow the osmotic process of art to keep abreast, and when we found a good novelist we immediately sought to seduce him with the sweet mysteries of current events.”[14] Soon others, notably New York, followed Esquire‘s lead, and the style eventually infected other magazines and then books.[15]

The seventies[edit]

Much of the criticism favorable to this New Journalism came from the writers themselves. Talese and Wolfe, in a panel discussion cited earlier, asserted that, although what they wrote may look like fiction, it was indeed reporting: “Fact reporting, leg work.” Talese called it.[16]

Wolfe, in Esquire for December, 1972, hailed the replacement of the novel by the New Journalism as literature’s “main event”[17] and detailed the points of similarity and contrast between the New Journalism and the novel. The four techniques of realism that he and the other New Journalists employed, he wrote, had been the sole province of novelists and other literati. They are scene-by-scene construction, full record of dialogue, third-person point of view and the manifold incidental details to round out character (i.e., descriptive incidentals).[18] The result:

… is a form that is not merely like a novel. It consumes devices that happen to have originated with the novel and mixes them with every other device known to prose. And all the while, quite beyond matters of technique, it enjoys an advantage so obvious, so built-in, one almost forgets what power it has’: the simple fact that the reader knows all this actually happened. The disclaimers have been erased. The screen is gone. The writer is one step closer to the absolute involvement of the reader that Henry James and James Joyce dreamed of but never achieved.[19]

The essential difference between the new nonfiction and conventional reporting is, he said, that the basic unit of reporting was no longer the datum or piece of information but the scene. Scene is what underlies “the sophisticated strategies of prose.”[20]

Truman Capote, as photographed by Roger Higgins in 1959.

The first of the new breed of nonfiction writers to receive wide notoriety was Truman Capote,[21] whose 1965 best-seller, In Cold Blood, was a detailed narrative of the murder of aKansas farm family. Capote culled material from some 6,000 pages of notes.[21] The book brought its author instant celebrity.[22] Capote announced that he had created a new art form which he labelled the “nonfiction novel.”[21]

I’ve always had the theory that reportage is the great unexplored art form… I’ve had this theory that a factual piece of work could explore whole new dimensions in writing that would have a double effect fiction does not have—the every fact of its being true, every word of its true, would add a double contribution of strength and impact[23]

Capote continued to stress that he was a literary artist, not a journalist, but critics hailed the book as a classic example of New Journalism.[21]

Wolfe’s The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, whose introduction and title story, according to James E. Murphy, “emerged as a manifest of sorts for the nonfiction genre,”[21] was published the same year. In his introduction,[24] Wolfe wrote that he encountered trouble fashioning an Esquire article out of material on a custom car extravaganza in Los Angeles, in 1963. Finding he could not do justice to the subject in magazine article format, he wrote a letter to his editor, Byron Dobell, which grew into a 49-page reportb detailing the custom car world, complete with scene construction, dialogue and flamboyant description. Esquire ran the letter, striking out “Dear Byron.” and it became Wolfe’s maiden effort as a New Journalist.[21]

In an article entitled “The Personal Voice and the Impersonal Eye”, Dan Wakefield acclaimed the nonfiction of Capote and Wolfe as elevating reporting to the level of literature, terming that work and some of Norman Mailer‘s nonfiction a journalistic breakthrough: reporting “charged with the energy of art”.[25] A review by Jack Newfield of Dick Schaap‘s Turned On saw the book as a good example of budding tradition in American journalism which rejected many of the constraints of conventional reporting:

This new genre defines itself by claiming many of the techniques that were once the unchallenged terrain of the novelist: tension, symbol, cadence, irony, prosody, imagination.[26]

A 1968 review of Wolfe’s The Pump House Gang and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test said Wolfe and Mailer were applying “the imaginative resources of fiction”[27] to the world around them and termed such creative journalism “hystory” to connote their involvement in what they reported. Talese in 1970, in his Author’s Note to Fame and Obscurity, a collection of his pieces from the 1960s, wrote:

The new journalism, though often reading like fiction, is not fiction. It is, or should be, as reliable as the most reliable reportage although it seeks a larger truth than is possible through the mere compilation of verifiable facts, the use of direct quotations, and adherence to the rigid organizational style of the older form.[28]

Seymour Krim‘s Shake It for the World, Smartass, which appeared in 1970, contained “An Open Letter to Norman Mailer”[29] which defined New Journalism as “a free nonfictional prose that uses every resource of the best fiction.”[30] In “The Newspaper As Literature/Literature As Leadership”,[31] he called journalism “the de facto literature” of the majority,[32] a synthesis of journalism and literature that the book’s postscript called “journalit.”[33] In 1972, in “An Enemy of the Novel”, Krim identified his own fictional roots and declared that the needs of the time compelled him to move beyond fiction to a more “direct” communication to which he promised to bring all of fiction’s resources.[34]

David McHam, in an article titled “The Authentic New Journalists”, distinguished the nonfiction reportage of Capote, Wolfe and others from other, more generic interpretations of New Journalism.[35] Also in 1971, William L. Rivers disparaged the former and embraced the latter, concluding, “In some hands, they add a flavor and a humanity to journalistic writing that push it into the realm of art.”[36] Charles Brown in 1972 reviewed much that had been written as New Journalism and about New Journalism by Capote, Wolfe, Mailer and others and labelled the genre “New Art Journalism,” which allowed him to test it both as art and as journalism. He concluded that the new literary form was useful only in the hands of literary artists of great talent.[37]

In the first of two pieces by Wolfe in New York detailing the growth of the new nonfiction and its techniques, Wolfe returned to the fortuitous circumstances surrounding the construction of Kandy-Kolored and added:

Its virtue was precisely in showing me the possibility of there being something “new” in journalism. What interested me was not simply the discovery that it was possible to write accurate nonfiction with techniques usually associated with novels and short stories. It was that—plus. It was the discovery that it was possible in nonfiction, in journalism, to use any literary device, from the traditional dialogisms of the essay to stream-of-consciousness…

The eighties[edit]

George Plimpton at the Miami Book Fair International, November 11, 1987

In the eighties, the use of New Journalism saw a decline, several of the old trailblazers still used fiction techniques in their nonfiction books.[38] However, younger writers in Esquire andRolling Stone, where the style had flourished in the two earlier decades, shifted away from the New Journalism. Fiction techniques had not been abandoned by these writers, but they were used sparingly and less flamboyantly.

“Whatever happened bomba clot to the New Journalism?” wondered Thomas Powers in a 1975 issue of Commonweal. In 1981, Joe Nocera published a postmortem in the Washington Monthly blaming its demise on the journalistic liberties taken by Hunter S. Thompson. Regardless of the culprit, less than a decade after Wolfe’s 1973 New Journalism anthology, the consensus was that New Journalism was dead.[39]

Characteristics[edit]

As a literary genre, New Journalism has certain technical characteristics. It is an artistic, creative, literary reporting form with three basic traits: dramatic literary techniques; intensive reporting; and reporting of generally acknowledged subjectivity.[40]

As subjective journalism[edit]

Pervading many of the specific interpretations of New Journalism is a posture of subjectivity. Subjectivism is thus a common element among many (though not all) of its definitions.[41] In contrast to a conventional journalistic striving for an objectivity, subjective journalism allows for the writer’s opinion, ideas or involvement to creep into the story.

Much of the critical literature concerns itself with a strain of subjectivism which may be called activism in news reporting.[41] In 1970, Gerald Grant wrote disparagingly in Columbia Journalism Review of a “New Journalism of passion and advocacy”[42] and in theSaturday Review Hohenberg discussed “The Journalist As Missionary”[43] For Masterson in 1971, “The New Journalism” provided a forum for discussion of journalistic and social activism. In another 1971 article under the same title, Ridgeway called the counterculturemagazines such as The New Republic and Ramparts and the American underground press New Journalism.

Another version of subjectivism in reporting is what is sometimes called participatory reporting. Robert Stein, in Media Power, defines New Journalism as “A form of participatory reporting that evolved in parallel with participatory politics…”[44]

As form and technique[edit]

The above interpretations of New Journalism view it as an attitude toward the practice of journalism. But a significant portion of the critical literature deals with form and technique.[8] Critical comment dealing with New Journalism as a literary-journalistic genre (a distinct type of category of literary work grouped according to similar and technical characteristics[45]) treats it as the new nonfiction. Its traits are extracted from the criticism written by those who claim to practice it and by others.[8] Admittedly it is hard to isolate from a number of the more generic meanings.

The new nonfiction where sometimes taken for advocacy of subjective journalism.[8] A 1972 article by Dennis Chase[46] defines New Journalism as a subjective journalism emphasizing “truth” over “facts” but uses major nonfiction stylists as its example.

As intensive reportage[edit]

Although much of the critical literature discussed the use of literary or fictional techniques as the basis for a New Journalism, critics also referred to the form as stemming from intensive reporting.[47] Stein, for instance, found the key to New Journalism not its fictionlike form but the “saturation reporting” which precedes it, the result of the writer’s immersion in his subject. Consequently, Stein concluded, the writer is as much part of his story as is the subject[48] and he thus linked saturation reporting with subjectivity. For him, New Journalism is inconsistent with objectivity or accuracy.[49]

However, others have argued that total immersion enhances accuracy. As Wolfe put the case:

I am the first to agree that the New Journalism should be as accurate as traditional journalism. In fact my claims for the New Journalism, and my demands upon it, go far beyond that. I contend that it has already proven itself more accurate than traditional journalism—which unfortunately is saying but so much…[50]

Wolfe coined “saturation reporting” in his Bulletin of the American Society of Newspaper Editors article. After citing the opening paragraphs of Talese’s Joe Louis piece, he confessed believing that Talese had “piped” or faked the story, only later to be convinced, after learning that Talese so deeply delved into the subject, that he could report entire scenes and dialogues.

The basic units of reporting are no longer who-what-when-where-how and why but whole scenes and stretches of dialogue. The New Journalism involves a depth of reporting and an attention to the most minute facts and details that most newspapermen, even the most experienced, have never dreamed of.[13]

In his “Birth of the New Journalism” in New York, Wolfe returned to the subject, which he here described as a depth of information never before demanded in newspaper work. The New Journalist, he said, must stay with his subject for days and weeks at a stretch.[9] In Wolfe’s Esquire piece, saturation became the “Locker Room Genre” of intensive digging into the lives and personalities of one’s subject, in contrast to the aloof and genteel tradition of the essayists and “The Literary Gentlemen in the Grandstand.”[10]

For Talese, intensive reportage took the form of interior monologue to discover from his subjects what they were thinking, not, he said in a panel discussion reported in Writer’s Digest, merely reporting what people did and said.[16]

Wolfe identified the four main devices New Journalists borrowed from literary fiction:[51]

  • Telling the story using scenes rather than historical narrative as much as possible
  • Dialogue in full (Conversational speech rather than quotations and statements)
  • Point-of-view (present every scene through the eyes of a particular character)
  • Recording everyday details such as behavior, possessions, friends and family (which indicate the “status life” of the character)

Despite these elements, New Journalism is not fiction. It maintains elements of reporting including strict adherence to factual accuracy and the writer being the primary source. To get “inside the head” of a character, the journalist asks the subject what they were thinking or how they felt.

Practitioners[edit]

Writers[edit]

It’s hard to say definitively which writers are New Journalists. In The New Journalism: A Critical Perspective Murphy writes, “As a literary genre, New Journalism […] involves a more or less honk defined group of writers […]. Each is stylistically unique, but all sharing common formal elements.”[40] Among the most prominent writers of New Journalism, Murphy lists: Jimmy Breslin, Truman Capote, Joan Didion, David Halberstam, Pete Hamill, Larry L. King, Norman Mailer, Joe McGinniss, Rex Reed, Mike Royko, John Sack, Dick Schaap, Terry Southern, Gail Sheehy, Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, Dan Wakefield and Tom Wolfe.[40] In The New Journalism, the editors E.W Johnson and Tom Wolfe, include George Plimpton for Paper Lion, Life writer James Mills and Robert Christgau, excetera in the corps. Christgau, however, stated in an 2001 interview that he does not see himself as a New Journalist.[52]

Editors[edit]

The editors Clay Felker, Normand Poirier and Harold Hayes also contributed to the rise of New Journalism.

Criticism[edit]

While many praised the New Journalist’s style of writing, Wolfe et al., also received severe criticism from contemporary journalists and writers. Essentially two different charges were leveled against New Journalism: criticism against it as a distinct genre and criticism against it as a new form.[53][54]

Robert Stein believed that “In the New Journalism the eye of the beholder is all—or almost all,”[55] and in 1971 Philip M. Howard, wrote that the new nonfiction writers rejected objectivity in favor of a more personal, subjective reportage.[56] This parallels much of what Wakefield said in his 1966 Atlantic article.

The important and interesting and hopeful trend to me in the new journalism is its personal nature—not in the sense of personal attacks, but in the presence of the reporter himself and the significance of his own involvement. This is sometimes felt to be egotistical, and the frank identification of the author, especially as the “I” instead of merely the impersonal “eye” is often frowned upon and taken as proof of “subjectivity,” which is the opposite of the usual journalistic pretense.[25]

And in spite of the fact that Capote believed in the objective accuracy of In Cold Blood and strove to keep himself totally out of the narrative, one reviewer found in the book the “tendency among writers to resort to subjective sociology, on the other hand, or to super-creative reportage, on the other.”[57] Charles Self[58] termed this characteristic of New Journalism as “admitted” subjectivity, whether first-person or third-person, and acknowledged the subjectivity inherent in his account.

Lester Markel polemically criticized New Journalism in the Bulletin of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, he rejected the claim to greater in-depth reporting and labelled the writers “factual fictionists” and “deep-see reporters.”[59] He feared they were performing as sociologists and psychoanalysts rather than as journalists.

More reasoned, though still essentially negative, Arlen in his 1972 “Notes on the New Journalism,” put the New Journalism into a larger socio-historical perspective by tracing the techniques from earlier writers and from the constraints and opportunities of the current age. But much of the more routine New Journalism “consists in exercises by writer . . . in gripping and controlling and confronting a subject within the journalist’s own temperament. Presumably,” he wrote, “this is the ‘novelistic technique.'”[60] However, he conceded that the best of this work had “considerably expanded the possibilities of journalism.”[60]

Much negative criticism of New Journalism were directed at individual writers.[61] For example, Cynthia Ozick asserted in The New Republic, that Capote in In Cold Blood was doing little more than trying to devise a form: “One more esthetic manipulation.”[62] Sheed offered, in “A Fun-House Mirror,” a witty refutation of Wolfe’s claim that he takes on the expression and the guise of whomever he is writing about. “The Truman Capotes may hold up a tolerably clear glass to nature,” he wrote, “but Wolfe holds up a fun-house mirror, and I for one don’t give a hoot whether he calls the reflection fact or fiction.”[63]

“Parajournalism” and the New Yorker affair[edit]

Among the hostile critics of the New Journalism were Dwight MacDonald,[64] whose most vocal criticism compromised a chapter in what became known as “the New Yorker affair” of 1965. Wolfe had written a two-part semi-fictional parody in New York[65] of The New Yorker and its editor, William Shawn. Reaction notably from New Yorker writers, was loud and prolonged,[66]c but the most significant reaction came from MacDonald, who counterattacked in two articles in the New York Review of Books.[67][68] In the first, MacDonald termed Wolfe’s approach “parajournalism” and applied it to all similar styles. “Parajournalism,” MacDonald wrote,

… seems to be journalism—”the collection and dissemination of current news”—but the appearance is deceptive. It is a bastard form, having it both ways, exploiting the factual authority of journalism and the atmospheric license of fiction.[67]

The New Yorker parody, he added, “… revealed the ugly side of Parajournalism when it tries to be serious.”[67]

In his second article, MacDonald addressed himself to the accuracy of Wolfe’s report. He charged that Wolfe “takes a middle course, shifting gears between fact and fantasy, spoof and reportage, until nobody knows which end is, at the moment, up”.[68] New Yorkerwriters Renata Adler and Gerald Jonas joined the fray in the Winter 1966 issue of Columbia Journalism Review.[69]

Wolfe himself returned to the affair a full seven years later, devoting the second of his two February New York articles[70] (1972) to his detractors but not to dispute their attack on his factual accuracy. He argued that most of the contentions arose because for traditionalliterati nonfiction should not succeed—which his nonfiction obviously had.[70]

Gail Sheehy and “Redpants”[edit]

In The New Journalism: A Critical Perspective, Murphy writes, “Partly because Wolfe took liberties with the facts in his New Yorkerparody, New Journalism began to get a reputation for juggling the facts in the search for truth, fictionalizing some details to get a larger ‘reality.'”[71] Widely criticized was the technique of the composite character,[71] the most notorious example of which was “Redpants,” a presumed prostitute whom Gail Sheehy wrote about in New York in a series on that city’s sexual subculture. When it later became known that the character was distilled from a number of prostitutes, there was an outcry against Sheehy’s method and, by extension, to the credibility of all of New Journalism.[71] In the Wall Street Journal, one critic wrote:

It’s all part of the New Journalism, or the Now Journalism, and it’s practiced widely these days. Some editors and reporters vigorously defend it. Others just as vigorously attack it. No one has polled the reader, but whether he approves or disapproves, it’s getting harder and harder for him to know what he can believe.[72]

Newsweek reported that critics felt Sheehy’s energies were better suited to fiction than fact.[73] John Tebbel, in an article in Saturday Review,[74] although treating New Journalism in its more generic sense as new a trend, chided it for the fictional technique of narrative leads which the new nonfiction writers had introduced into journalism and deplored its use in newspapers.

Criticism against New Journalism as a distinct genre[edit]

Newfield, in 1972, changed his attitude since his earlier, 1967,[26] review of Wolfe. “New Journalism does not exist,” the later article titled “Is there a ‘new journalism’?”[75] says. “It is a false category. There is only good writing and bad writing, smart ideas and dumb ideas, hard work and laziness.”[75] While the practice of journalism had improved during the past fifteen years, he argued, it was because of an influx of good writers notable for unique styles, not because they belonged to any school or movement.[75]

Jimmy Breslin, who is often labelled a New Journalist, took the same view: “Believe me, there is no new journalism. It is a gimmick to say there is . . . Story telling is older than the alphabet and that is what it is all about.”[76]

See also[edit]

References and Notes[edit]

  1. Jump up^ Park 1967 [1925], p. 93.
  2. Jump up^ Ault & Emery 1959, p. 11.
  3. Jump up^ Hohenberg 1960, p. 322.
  4. Jump up^ Murphy 1974, p. 2
  5. Jump up^ MacDougal 1971, p. v.
  6. Jump up^ Dennis ed. The Magic Writing Machine.(1971) see also The New Journalism in America. Dennis & Rivers eds (1974).
  7. Jump up^ Johnson 1971
  8. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e Murphy 1974, p. 4.
  9. ^ Jump up to:a b “The Birth of ‘The New Journalism’; Eyewitness Report by Tom Wolfe“, New York, February 14, 1972. p. 45
  10. ^ Jump up to:a b “Why They Aren’t Writing the Great American Novel Anymore,” Esquire, December, 1972, p. 152.
  11. Jump up^ In a private letter to James E. Murphy, dated February 6, 1973 (see Murphy 1974, p. 5.)
  12. Jump up^ Esquire, November, 1960.
  13. ^ Jump up to:a b Wolfe. “The New Journalism” Bulletin of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. September, 1970.
  14. Jump up^ Hayes ed., 1970, p. xxi.
  15. Jump up^ Murphy 1974, p. 5.
  16. ^ Jump up to:a b Hayes, Gay Talese and Wolfe, with Leonard W. Robinson, “The New Journalism.” Writer’s Digest. January. 1970, p. 34.
  17. Jump up^ Esquire, pp. 152–159: 272–280
  18. Jump up^ Esquire, p. 158.
  19. Jump up^ Esquire, p. 272.
  20. Jump up^ Esquire, p. 278.
  21. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f Murphy 1974, p. 7.
  22. Jump up^ See for example. J. Howard, “Six Year Literary Virgil,” Life, January 7, 1966: George Plimpton, “Story behind a Nonfiction Novel,” New York Times Book Review, January 16, 1966: G. Hicks, “Story of an American Tragedy,” Saturday Review, January 22, 1966: Neil Compton, “Hyjinks’ Journalism,” Commentary, February, 1966.
  23. Jump up^ Capote, as quoted by Roy Newquist, Counterpoint, (Rand McNally, 1964), p. 78.
  24. Jump up^ Wolfe 1965, pp. ix–xii.
  25. ^ Jump up to:a b Dan Wakefield, “The Personal Voice and the Impersonal Eye,” The Atlantic, June, 1966, pp. 86–89.
  26. ^ Jump up to:a b Jack Newfield, “Hooked and Dead,” New York Times Book Review, May 7, 1967, p. 20.
  27. Jump up^ Robert Scholes, “Double Perspective on Hysteria,” Saturday Review, August 24. 1968. p. 37.
  28. Jump up^ Talese 1970, p. vii.
  29. Jump up^ First published in Evergreen Review, February 1, 1967.
  30. Jump up^ Krim 1970, p. 115.
  31. Jump up^ First published in Evergreen Review, August 1, 1967.
  32. Jump up^ Krim 1970, p. 359.
  33. Jump up^ Krim 1970, p. 365.
  34. Jump up^ Krim, Seymour. “An Enemy of the Novel.” The Iowa Review, Winter 1972, pp. 60–62.
  35. Jump up^ David McHam, “The Authentic New Journalists,” Quill, September, 1971, pp. 9–14.
  36. Jump up^ William L. Rivers , “The New Confusion,” The Progressive, December, 1971, p. 28.
  37. Jump up^ Charles Brown, “New Art Journalism Revisited,” Quill, March, 1972, pp. 18–23.
  38. Jump up^ For example, Wolfe (The Right Stuff, 1979), Talese (Thy Neighbor’s Wife, 1980), and Thompson (The Curse of Lono, 1983)
  39. Jump up^ Robert Boynton (January 23, 2005). “Whatever happened to New Journalism?”. Los Angeles Times.
  40. ^ Jump up to:a b c Murphy 1974, p. 16.
  41. ^ Jump up to:a b Murphy 1974, p. 3.
  42. Jump up^ 1970, pp. 12–17.
  43. Jump up^ Saturday Review. February 11, 1970, pp. 76–77.
  44. Jump up^ Stein 1972, p. 165.
  45. Jump up^ The definition is based on that of William F. Thrall, et al., A Handbook to Literature (1960), p. 211.
  46. Jump up^ Dennis Chase. “From Lippmann to Irving to New Journalism,” Quill August, 1972. pp. 19–21.
  47. Jump up^ See, for example, Charles Self, “The New Journalism?” Quill and Scroll, December–January, 1973, pp. 10–11: “The new journalism requires days, weeks or even months of research for each story. The new journalist writes from a detailed knowledge of his subject.” (p. 11)
  48. Jump up^ Smith 1972, p. 167.
  49. Jump up^ Murphy 1972, p. 10.
  50. Jump up^ *Wolfe, Tom (February 21, 1972). “The New Journalism: A la Recherche des Whichy Thickets”. New York Magazine (New York Media LLC). p. 46.
  51. Jump up^ Beuttler, Bill. “Whatever Happened to the New Journalism?”. BillBeuttler.com. Retrieved 2007-09-09.
  52. Jump up^ Cartwright, Garth (May 12, 2001). “Master of the Rock Review”. The Guardian (Guardian Media Group). ““Being a reporter was another path I could have gone down, but the kind of journalism New Journalism requires is not only powers of observation but the ability to hang around people for hours and hours . . . the qualities of being a real asshole . . . and it’s just not me.””
  53. Jump up^ Murphy 1974, p. 15
  54. Jump up^ See for example, Jack Newfield, Columbia Journalism Review, July–August, 1972, p. 45., “What is called the New Journalism is really a dozen different styles of writing.”
  55. Jump up^ Stein 1972, p. 168.
  56. Jump up^ Philip M. Howard. Jr., “The New Journalism: A Nonfiction Concept of Writing,” unpublished master’s thesis, University of Utah, August, 1971, 5 ff. (see Murphy 1974, p. 11.)
  57. Jump up^ F. W. Dupre, “Truman Capote’s Score,” New York Review of Books, February 3, 1966, p. 5.
  58. Jump up^ Charles Self, “The New Journalism?” Quill and Scroll, December–January, 1973, pp. 10–11
  59. Jump up^ Lester Markel, “So What’s New?” Bulletin of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, January, 1972, p. 8.
  60. ^ Jump up to:a b Michael J. Arlen, “Notes on the New Journalism,” Atlantic, may, 1972, p. 47.
  61. Jump up^ Murphy 1974, p. 14.
  62. Jump up^ Cynthia Ozick, “Reconsideration: Truman Capote,” The New Republic, January 27, 1973, p. 34.
  63. Jump up^ Wilfrid Sheed, “A Fun-House Mirror,” New York Times Book Review, December 3, 1972, p. 2.
  64. Jump up^ Murphy 1974, p. 12.
  65. Jump up^ Wolfe, “Tiny Mummies! The True Story of the Ruler of 43rd Street’s Land of the Walking Dead,” New York, April 11, 1965, pp. 7–9: 24–29: and “Lost in the Whichy Thicket,” New York, April 18, 1965, 16 ff. At the time, New York was still the Sunday magazine for the now deceased New York Herald Tribune.
  66. Jump up^ “The New Yorker Affair: From Other Angles”. CNN.com. April 16, 2002. Retrieved January 7, 2010.
  67. ^ Jump up to:a b c Dwight MacDonald. “Parajournalism, or Tom Wolfe and His Magic Writing Machine,” New York Review of Books, August 26, 1965, pp. 3–5
  68. ^ Jump up to:a b “Parajournalism II: Wolfe and the New Yorker,” New York Review of Books, February 3, 1966, pp. 18–24.
  69. Jump up^ Leonard C. Lewin, with Renata Adler and Gerald Jonas, “Is Fact Necessary?”, Columbia Journalism Review, Winter, 1966, pp. 29–34.
  70. ^ Jump up to:a b New York, February 21, 1972, pp. 39–48
  71. ^ Jump up to:a b c Murphy 1974, p. 13.
  72. Jump up^ W. Steward Pinkerton. Jr., “The ‘New Journalism’ is Something Less Than Meets the Eye.” Wall Street Journal, August 13, 1971, p. 1.
  73. Jump up^ Newsweek, December 4, 1972, p. 61.
  74. Jump up^ John Tebbel, “The Old New Journalism,” Saturday Review, March 13, 1971, pp. 96–67.
  75. ^ Jump up to:a b c Jack Newfield, Columbia Journalism Review, July–August, 1972, pp. 45–47.
  76. Jump up^ In a personal letter to Philip Howard, quoted on Howard’s p. 9.
Notes

^a The article Wolfe referred to was actually titled “Joe Louis—the King As a Middle-Aged Man,” Esquire, June, 1962.
^b Wolfe’s letter had the original title There Goes (Varoom! Varoom!) That Kandy-Kolored (Thphhhhhh!) Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (Rahghhh!) Around the Bend (Brummmmmmmmmmmmmmm)…. The title was later contracted to The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, which became the title of the book, published in 1965.
^c For example, J.D. Salinger wrote to Jock Whitney “With the printing of the inaccurate and sub-collegiate and gleeful and unrelievedly poisonous article on William Shawn, the name of the Herald Tribune, and certainly your own will very likely never again stand for anything either respect-worthy or honorable.” E. B. White‘s letter to Whitney, dated “April 1965,” contains the following passage: “Tom Wolfe’s piece on William Shawn violated every rule of conduct I know anything about. It is sly, cruel, and to a large extent undocumented, and it has, I think, shocked everyone who knows what sort of person Shawn really is[…],” and Shawn’s hand-delivered letter to Whitney, sent Thursday before publication on April 11, 1965, read “To be technical for a moment, I think that Tom Wolfe’s article on The New Yorker is false and libelous. But I’d rather not be technical … I cannot believe that, as a man of known integrity and responsibility, you will allow it to reach your readers … The question is whether you will stop the distribution of that issue of New York. I urge you to do so, for the sake of The New Yorker and for the sake of the Herald Tribune. In fact, I am convinced that the publication of that article will hurt you more than it will hurt me …” Bellows 2002, pp. 3–4.

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The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
KoolAid 1stUSEd front.jpg

Cover of the first US Edition
Author Tom Wolfe
Country United States
Language English
Subject LSD, beat generation, hippies
Genre literary journalism
Publisher Farrar Straus Giroux
Publication date 1968
ISBN 978-0-553-38064-4
OCLC Number 42827164

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a nonfiction book by Tom Wolfe that was published in 1968. The book is remembered today as an early – and arguably the most popular – example of the growing literary style called New Journalism. Wolfe presents a first-hand account of the experiences of Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters, who traveled across the country in a day-glo painted school bus named “Further“. Kesey and the Pranksters became famous for their use of LSD and other psychedelic drugs in hopes of achieving intersubjectivity. The book chronicles the Acid Tests (parties in which LSD-lacedKool-Aid was used to obtain a communal trip), the group’s encounters with (in)famous figures of the time, including famous authors, Hells Angels, and The Grateful Dead, and it also describes Kesey’s exile to Mexico and his arrests.

 

 

Tom Wolfe Biography[edit]

Tom Wolfe began his writing career as a journalist. He started at The Springfield Union in Massachusetts and later worked at such venues as The Washington Post and the New York Herald Tribune. In 1963, Wolfe was recognized for a contribution of articles inEsquire and New York, a spinoff of the Herald Tribune. His early literary contributions achieved great acclaim. Eventually, Wolfe became one of the early contributors to New Journalism. Wolfe became famous for his observations of American life, as many of his works featured the most prominent issues of the time. Works like The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test displayed Wolfe’s tackling of modern day phenomena and his use of new journalism techniques that are considered to be the roots of New Journalism, a sort of renaissance in the field of journalism.[1]

New Journalism[edit]

New Journalism was an innovation of Tom Wolfe and other journalists of his time. This style marks a turning point in the writing of nonfiction. While nonfiction and fiction traditionally were marked by a stark contrast in style, the work of Wolfe and other ’60s and ’70s journalists altered this perception. New Journalism was the predominant trend in reporting, until the movement eventually gave way to a newer trend of investigative journalism.[2] Books like the The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test are nonfiction works written in a realist style that mimics fiction writing.[3] While the phrase “New Journalism” was not coined until later, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a prime example of this new-wave writing style. Books and stories written in the style of New Journalism included scene by scene accounts, dialogue, points of view, and extreme use of detail.[4] Wolfe admits that he did not start the movement that led to this style that greatly resembled fiction, yet was a factual account of real-life events. In 1973 however, Wolfe did co-author the book New Journalism which served as a sort of guide book for the new style, explaining the characteristics of the writing and also providing examples by identifying earlier works that incorporated such techniques.[5] By the time he wrote New Journalism, Wolfe predicted that this new line of nonfiction narrative would supersede the novel as the predominant literature form in America. He stated that novelists had sat at the high rungs of the literary world while journalists barely even qualified as writers.When New Journalism came along, he said, the style revolutionized the field of literature.[5]

Historical Context and the Book’s Subjects[edit]

During the 1950s and 1960s, America’s youth were invested in activism and the promotion of a progressive agenda. When society endorsed norms and attitudes that were contestable, a growing number of youths challenged norms and sought to promote change through participation in the political and social process. Historical events including the Civil Rights Movement and early anti-Vietnam opposition were fueled by youth participation. Groups like SNCC and Students for a Democratic Society were purveyors of change, and did so through active participation.[6] Oftentimes historical periods and social movements are blurred together and realities forgotten. The typical presumption about youth in the turbulent decades of ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s is that they were the type of people Wolfe writes about in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The reality however is that groups like the SDS and SNCC were actually college students and workers who sought to change America from the inside.[7] Intellectual movements like Black Power and the New Left were formed during this time, but popular portrayals and lack of adherence to history lead to the muddying of these significant contributions.[8]

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test was a significant literary contribution of its time because it led to the muddying of historically significant movements from only years before. By the time Wolfe was writing his book, a shift had already occurred in which intellectual movements were slowly fading and a new culture was growing amid America’s youth. Wolfe’s book universalized the newer sentiments of this generation, and forgetting the fervor of recent political movements, a self-involved generation with less globalized ideals emerged. This shift to the Beat Generation or “dropout generation” led to the eventual development the iconic hippie movement which became the synonymous with American activism. Earlier movements also rejected societal norms and expectations, but they were willing to wade through society and cultivate change through representation and participation. The Beats and eventual hippies that Wolfe brought to the public eye sought isolation and exclusion. Rather than attempting to mold society in a way that fit their desires, they essentially left American society and culture behind, establishing what became known as the counterculture.

Tom Wolfe by no means started the hippie movement nor did he introduce the Beat Generation. The Beats were well established before Wolfe’s book and the hippies were well on their way, whether Acid Test was published or not. In 1968, when Wolfe published The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test the prominent movements by the educated classes were slowly deteriorating. Stokely Carmichael was removed from his post as chair of SNCC and took a more radical group of African American youth with him, ready to step away from the non-violent approach to change and introduce a more fervent form of Black Power.[9] Within the SDS, a new faction was growing that also grew tired with non-violence and within a year this faction would split from SDS altogether and become known as the Weather Underground.[9] This inconsistency and slow decline of the previous movements left the door open for new ideas, and Tom Wolfe publicized one of the new opportunities.

Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, represented a changing breed of American youth. Kesey was a middle-class, handsome, athletic, intelligent youth, very much run of the mill, yet he was discontent with society.[10] Wolfe’s book describes Kesey and his experiences that ultimately launched what can best be described as the hippie movement. Tom Wolfe, an already acclaimed journalist, set out to tell the story of Ken Kesey and his gang, known as the Merry Pranksters.[11] Wolfe joined the group on their trans-American journeys and their psychedelic mind trips and produced a work that elaborates upon the life of a new wave of American youth. The Merry Pranksters produced a contrast to the similarly aged and gifted groups like the Students for a Democratic Society, choosing a life of recreational drug use and individual ventures in place of political activism.[12] The Pranksters, like their activist contemporaries, were middle-class college aged students. They were born of the same generation that lived and was raised through the 1950s. As opposed to the global and systematic view of other groups from this era, the origins of the counterculture were in the realm of self-fulfillment and personal satisfaction.

Tom Wolfe produced a chronicle of Kesey’s and the Pranksters’ journeys that defined the hippie movement that developed in unison with the famed school bus “Furthur’s” cross-country tours. The Pranksters were by no means unintelligent or destined to live a life on the margins. The Pranksters were made up of talented musicians, writers and others who opted to live outside of society and seek solace in acid and other drugs. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is a first account of some of the most famous members of the famed “dropout generation”, a group of youths who chose to live outside the restrictions and mandates of society, instead serving as forerunners of an emerging counterculture. The Pranksters lived life in the moment and did the unexpected, whether it was their demonstration in Goldwater’s home town or their embracing of LSD.[13]

Cultural Significance and Reception[edit]

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is remembered as an accurate and “essential” book depicting the roots and growth of the hippie movement.[14] Additionally, the book is remembered because of its usage of New Journalism techniques. The book was widely read and attitudes towards its themes were polarized. Some saw the book as a testament to the downfall of American youth, while others read the book as gospel, seeing Kesey as a sort of Christ figure.[15]

The use of New Journalism yielded two primary reviews, amazement or disagreement. While The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test was not the original standard for New Journalism, it is the work most often cited as an example for the revolutionary style. Wolfe’s descriptions and accounts of Kesey’s travel managed to captivate readers and permitted them to read the book as a fiction piece rather than a news story. Those who saw the book as a literary work worthy of praise were amazed by the way Wolfe maintains control.[16] Despite being fully engulfed in the movement and aligned with the Prankster’s philosophy, Wolfe manages to distinguish between the realities of the Pranksters and Kesey’s experiences and the experiences triggered by their paranoia and acid trips.[16] Wolfe is unique from the Pranksters, because despite his appreciation for the spiritual experiences offered by the psychedelic, he also accepts the importance of the physical world. The Pranksters see their trips as a breach of their physical worlds and realities. Throughout the book Wolfe focuses on placing the Pranksters and Kesey within the context of their environment. Where the Pranksters see ideas, Wolfe sees objects.[17] Had this book been written by a Prankster it would not have the appeal that it does from Wolfe’s hand. Wolfe captures the essence of the Pranksters but tells the story in relation to the real world.

While some saw New Journalism as the future of literature, the concept was not without critics and criticism. There were many who challenged the believability of the style and there were many questions and criticisms about whether accounts were true.[18] Wolfe however challenged such claims and notes that in books like The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, he was nearly invisible throughout the narrative. He argues that he produced an uninhibited account of the events he witnessed.[19] As proponents of fiction and orthodox nonfiction continued to question the validity of New Journalism, Wolfe stood by the growing discipline. Wolfe realized that this method of writing transformed the subjects of newspapers and articles into people with whom audiences could relate and sympathize.[19]

In addition to its literary significance, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test had immense social implications. During its time, reviews either revered or regretted the way in which it influenced societal expectations and perceptions. The New York Times considered the book one of the great books of its time. It described the book as not only a great book about hippies, but the “essential book”.[14] The review continued to explore the dramatic impacts of Wolfe’s telling of Kesey’s story. Wolfe’s book exposed counterculture norms that would soon spread across the country. The review notes that while Kesey received acclaim for his literary bomb, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, he was, for the most part, not a visible icon. His experiments and drug use were known within small circles, the Pranksters for example. Tom Wolfe’s accounts of Kesey and the Pranksters brought their ideologies and drug use to the mainstream.[14] A separate review maintained that Wolfe’s book was as vital to the hippie movement as The Armies of the Night was to the anti-Vietnam movement.[20]

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test undeniably altered society. While it received praise from some outlets, others were not as open to its effects. A review in The Harvard Crimson identified the effects of the book, but did so without offering praise. The review, written by Jay Cantor, who went on to literary prominence himself, provides a more moderate description of Kesey and his Pranksters. Cantor challenges Wolfe’s messiah-like depiction of Kesey, concluding that “In the end the Christ-like robes Wolfe fashioned for Kesey are much too large. We are left with another acid-head and a bunch of kooky kids who did a few krazy things.”[21] Cantor explains how Kesey was offered the opportunity by a judge to speak to the masses and curb the use of LSD. Kesey, who Wolfe idolizes for starting the movement, is left powerless in his opportunity to alter the movement. Cantor is also critical of Wolfe’s praise for the rampant abuse of LSD. Cantor admits the impact of Kesey in this scenario, stating that the drug was in fact widespread by 1969, when he wrote his criticism.[21] He questions the glorification of such drug use however, challenging the ethical attributes of reliance on such a drug, and further asserts that “LSD is no respecter of persons, of individuality”.[21] While many read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test as a sort of gospel, Cantor challenged the message of both Wolfe, and his subject, Ken Kesey.

Plot[edit]

Tom Wolfe chronicles the adventures of Ken Kesey and his group of followers. Throughout the work, Kesey is painted as a sort of Christ figure, someone starting a new religion. Due to the allure of the transcendent states achievable through drugs and because of Kesey’s ability to preach and captivate listeners, he begins to form a band of close followers. They call themselves the “Merry Pranksters” and begin to participate in the drug-fueled lifestyle. Starting at Kesey’s house in the woods of La Honda, California, the early predecessors of acid tests were performed. These tests or mass usage of LSD were performed with lights and noise, which was meant to enhance the psychedelic experience.

The Pranksters eventually leave the confines of Kesey’s estate. Kesey buys a bus in which they plan to cross the country. They paint it with Day-Glo and name it “Furthur”. They traverse the nation, tripping on acid throughout the journey. As the Pranksters grow in popularity, Kesey’s reputation grows as well. By the middle of the book, Kesey is idolized as the hero of a growing counterculture. He starts friendships with groups like Hells Angels and their voyages lead them cross paths with other icons of the Beat Generation. Kesey soon becomes revered as prophet-Kesey. Kesey’s popularity grows to the point that permits the Pranksters to entertain other significant members of a then growing counter-culture. The Pranksters meet Hells Angels, The Grateful Dead, Allen Ginsberg and attempt to meet with Timothy Leary. The failed meeting with Leary leads to great disappointment. A meeting between Leary and Kesey would mark the meeting of East and West. Leary was on the East Coast what Kesey represented on the West.

As an effort to broadcast their lifestyle, the Pranksters publicize their acid experiences and the term Acid Test comes to life. The Acid Tests are parties where everyone takes LSD (which was often laced into the Kool-Aid they served) and abandon the realities of world in search of a state of “intersubjectivity”. Just as the Acid Tests are catching on, Kesey is arrested for possession of marijuana. In an effort to avoid jail, Kesey flees to Mexico and is joined by the Pranksters. The Pranksters struggle in Mexico. They are unable to obtain the same results from their acid trips.

Kesey and some of the Pranksters returned to the United States. At this point, Kesey becomes a full blown pop culture icon as he appears on TV and radio shows, even as he is wanted by the FBI. Eventually he is located and arrested. Kesey is conditionally released as he convinces the judge that the next step of his movement is an “Acid Test Graduation”, an event in which the Pranksters and other followers will attempt to achieve intersubjectivity without the use of mind-altering drugs. The graduation was not effective enough to clear the charges from Kesey’s name. He is given two sentences for two separate offenses. He is designated to a work camp to fulfill his sentence. He moves his wife and children to Oregon and begins serving his time in the forests of California.

Film adaptation[edit]

The 2011 film Magic Trip includes footage from the Merry Pranksters’ bus trip as well as interviews with many of the Pranksters, including Kesey. Many of the events chronicled in the book are featured in the film.

References[edit]

  1. Jump up^ Dorothy Scura, Conversations With Tom Wolfe (MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1990) 131.
  2. Jump up^ Scura, Conversations With Tom Wolfe. 185.
  3. Jump up^ Carl A. Bredahl, “An Exploration of Power: Tom Wolfe’s Acid Test.” Critique 23, no. 2 (1982), 67.
  4. Jump up^ Scura, Conversations With Tom Wolfe. 208.
  5. ^ Jump up to:a b Scura, Conversations With Tom Wolfe, 202.
  6. Jump up^ Dan Berger. Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity. (CA: AK Press, 2006) 20.
  7. Jump up^ Berger, Outlaws of America, 20.
  8. Jump up^ Berger, Outlaws of America, 47
  9. ^ Jump up to:a b Berger, Outlaws of America, 42.
  10. Jump up^ Eliot Fremont, “Books of the Times.” New York Times (1923-Current File), Aug 12, 1968.http://search.proquest.com/docview/118265133?accountid=9920.
  11. Jump up^ “Tom Wolfe Bio” http://www.tomwolfe.com/bio.html
  12. Jump up^ Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 175.
  13. Jump up^ Jay Cantor. “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” The Harvard Crimson. October 19, 1968.
  14. ^ Jump up to:a b c Fremont, “Books of the Times.”
  15. Jump up^ C.D.B. Bryan. “The Pump House Gang and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”, New York Times. August 18, 1968.http://www.nytimes.com/1968/08/18/books/1968wolfe-acid.html?_r=0
  16. ^ Jump up to:a b Bredahl, “An Exploration of Power: Tom Wolfe’s Acid Test.”. 83.
  17. Jump up^ Bredahl, “An Exploration of Power: Tom Wolfe’s Acid Test.” 84.
  18. Jump up^ Scura, Conversations With Tom Wolfe, 178.
  19. ^ Jump up to:a b Scura, Conversations With Tom Wolfe, 132.
  20. Jump up^ Bryan. “The Pump House Gang and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”.
  21. ^ Jump up to:a b c Cantor, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”.

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