A DEMAND FOR [MORE]
Kuehl, Linda
On Saturday, July 6, 1963, Norman Mailer told an interviewer: "If what you write is a reflection of your own consciousness, then even journalism can become interesting. One wouldn't...
...My curiosity was stimulated Also published in 1948 was a very but to Mailer's access to tapes and film by a promised list of programmed pandifferent but notable American novel, of the events described...
...They wouldn't it incumbent upon himself to...
...fidant-told Lofton, in effect, to go to And if that's the point, then is jourhell for holding out so long on his nalism still the simple business of anti-Nixon position, that some fire memorably the hassle-of-conscience material-gathering...
...That is, they were national conscience, our moral verifier for me...
...Yet it remained ungrappled ity-at this "point in time"-of where In fact, I enjoyed this third confabula- with and sungly, safely at bay...
...porter, Truman Capote...
...He, too, how- new-fangled eclectic reportage...
...Film as Journalism...
...The un- to journalism is precisely because of the masking of Press-emasculating Tricky absence of controversy and risk within Dick acted as a laughing gas, an en- the ranks...
...Or the seducand it was this that gave me pause-the chievous, goading wit...
...True, hind a pay-off car and the car was spot- their next mission impossible...
...a Watergate explosion on McNamara -front page or back...
...An American Dream mean, both novelists clung to their self-vindication propelled by his characis probably best remembered for its ostensibly higher calling...
...wing syndicated columnist, John Lof- Because where is this silent press...
...Or, the re'68...
...Even right- equals a thousand words...
...A self-con- turned back to novel-writing and why gratulatory celebratory tone permeated Capote can be seen on TV advertising the Hotel Roosevelt's Grand Ballroom the Daily News and its picture which on 45th and Madison...
...Call it what you will- pear sui generis, particularly when their McLuhan's souped-up elliptical homejournalism, creative journalism, creative influencers are infinitely more talented, spun philosophy, but this piece just hapreporting, creative nonfiction-it was it is not surprising that Wolfe should pened to appear on the same day as the unique and it did become his major ac- deal his Big Daddy a more revealing- opening of the Third A. J. Liebling tivity, the chalice of his new literary than-revealed blow in his anthology of Counter-Convention, sponsored by art...
...Whatever the terms Times Op-Ed page with an updated two novels to date...
...And who...
...We land below...
...Generic reporters straight d-vis Nixon and Watergate, that the went out one night on a double date from the city were metamorphorizing tape recorder and tape had become our and it turned out to be a fair evening into new journalists...
...energy and eloquence and risk-taking, scooping...
...in '72...
...bied for the written word to be com- "Violence Runs Amok in the NewsLINDA KUEHL teaches a nonfiction work- mensurate to the primitive pictorial room: Is Crime Coverage Simpleshop on the contemporary press at The drawings found on wall drawings in Minded...
...fact-finding...
...spring numero uno...
...Frankly I had forgotten female sensibility, men's magazines, 14 June 1974: 334 women's magazines, women in the news- being a fool...
...His only major by calling Armies of The Night-I between fiction and fact, old journalism novel-the million dollar bonanza to be mean, really!-"quite a charming and new, print and visual media, writreckoned with in good time-remains book...
...down the gauntlet to all those journal- subject matter...
...over his own role in the matter...
...Then some- such a resort is needed for journalists...
...First of all by includ- the muckraking journalism review, at Chicago and Miami, JFK, LBJ, the ing Mailer at all, Wolfe shows pre- [MORE...
...Did it relate back to McLu- nam era...
...regard to SLA and Patricia Hearst...
...McLusnazzy opening lines: "I met Jack switch was felt in the non-fiction nether- han rather gleefully non-reasoned, visKennedy in November, 1946...
...The gist- or els-"Kidnapping: Is The Press Held Other Voices, Other Rooms, by the joust-of course is nix on old-fashioned for Ransom...
...mental to the identity of any sincere reportage was all about...
...Then he betrays oepidal spite questions about the uneasy relationship Monroe and graffiti...
...Because suddenly everyone was feel so uneasy about their relationship a sage, a prophet, a good guy...
...One wouldn't want to spend one's life at it, and I wouldn't want ever to be caught justifying journalism as a major activity (it's obviously less interesting than to write a novel), but it's better, I think, to see journalism as a venture of one's ability to keep in shape than to see it as an essential betrayal of the chalice of your literary art...
...Why Are We in Vietnam...
...Is it still the dull, flared on the pulpit-like stage...
...Paul flat, city desk, old endeavor: the You'd think that every journalist Jacobs had some hilarious words to five/W's-when, where, why, what, alive and well had and/or would have say on the Jewish bias in the press...
...From Pumpkin Patch to Pentagon ever, showed ambivalence toward the Which puts Wolfe more in league Papers-National Security and The shift...
...Now there's no reason why a counter- and serious writer-novelist, journalist, They did not deal with the complexconvention should be grin-and-bear-it...
...Maybe one occasionally witnessed a shrug on ted and the victim killed...
...I seduced a girl who would appropriating devices of the storyteller's and forsooth truthsayer...
...nalists who put themselves on the line mumbled something about not feeling Which reminds me of the story I like Mailer and Capote...
...The Press & the Presidency...
...whatever...
...Yet their teristically spurious syllogisms...
...The written have been bored by a diamond as big art-congealing fiction-making with word could be expanded once and for as the Ritz...
...At least Mailer covered himself Capote made a big to-do about label- about McLuhan until he turned up unthat much, because within the next ling In Cold Blood a so-called "non- expectedly on the May 10 New York four years he was to write his last fiction novel...
...There were also panels on New School in New York City...
...Events were well- Still, there were substantive highs...
...And it did bring back to mind Pentagon, le deuxieme sexe, Marilyn sumption...
...And so it was that Mailer turned to -legitimate or otherwise-yearn to ap- Now, I never could cotton to nonfiction...
...Commonweal: 335...
...He took on the moon, conventions new journalism...
...At taining objective, close-to-the-belt poswould get from novelists-turned jour- which point Morton relit his pipe and tures...
...On Saturday, July 6, 1963, Norman Mailer told an interviewer: "If what you write is a reflection of your own consciousness, then even journalism can become interesting...
...rightly about the Pentagon paper re- editor/to the people/to the court that's Was it that the Press-at large-and porting lag, and Dan Ellsberg reiterated ready and eager to lay a subpoena on not a few courageous reporters and you...
...Just as Mailer felt compelled to with Marshall McLuhan-remember Press...
...Or the proceeding amounted to a festival, the Presidency with delicious, mis- the seduction of power...
...Is There subtitle his non-roman-a-clef-Armies McLuhan...
...White Elephants & other novelist turned major-domo re- fictioneering and three cheers for a Sacred Cows-The Editorial Page...
...It wasn't until Helen related the parting words of his own Thomas-White House correspondent editor: "Don't say anything newswhom Martha Mitchell took as con- worthy...
...crucial issue: shouldn't a reporter risk nobody picked up on either Borgen's counter-convention is the acid test...
...the press should and could be with tion of journalists...
...once heard-and it may be apocryphal let a panel become a paridigm of the On the subject of violence, Chris -that there actually exists, somewhere Presidential press conference with its Borgen admirably related a hair-raising in West Germany a resort where spies pat, preconceived and unchallenged story about the time a TV camera crew, go to unwind, spill their beans, and opening statements, with the obliga- headed by Gabe Pressman, trailed be- get a fresh start before they set out on tory question-and-answer format...
...Maybe that's why Mailer balming fluid for debate...
...ton, almost appeared hail-hearty-well- Can the silence cynically be summed met on a panel with Anthony Lewis and up by the panelist who good-humoredly Daniel Ellsberg...
...Egyptian caves...
...stage, a nudge, a sneer, a guffaw, a body said, "This is the era of kidnap- It certainly doesn't look like they're bristling at a colleague's remark...
...Tony ping and journalists have to define what willing to come out and dig in and Lucas, an editor of [MORE], raised the kidnapping reportage is all about...
...Yet where were Halperin-former Kissinger aide-to at least he attacks old journalists for they then and why didn't they-then...
...Only thresh out in the open-not journalists...
...all as protector of our perpetual nais possibly not remembered at all be- New journalist designe, of course, tional-political lie...
...He also laid tion of sentimentality towards one's high, the light-hearted prevailing air...
...He outmoded the reflections a Jewish Bias-Coverage of the Middle of The Night-a novel as history, of the Mailerian consciousness, and lob- East...
...Or the fear/laziness of For a convention of hardnosed writers, ists out there (in the audience) to do doing more than the perfunctory story this surely wasn't anything tough...
...Or planned and pulled-off with skill...
...Seymour Hersh spoke forth- sponsibility to one's sources/to one's han's out-of-synch glee over Watergate...
...Surely this is the quest- story or its implication-let alone atroom, and, for a finale, "What is Fail- tion dear to Mailer's heart, and funda- tempted to redefine what kidnapping ure...
...But Mike Wallace led a panel on Press and what the risks and ethics should be...
...Or how far to Could such a mood have prevailed in and his silent vigil over the LBJ-Viet- go in getting facts, man...
...But since children our disguise and disgrace...
...Surely Tom Wolfe's gloss is no had the guts to pursue and/or break someone in the audience called Morton alternative to the guts of the issues, but the Watergate affair...
...task: "Tell us, Morton, what's the real playing the safety game, for mainThis was not the kind of forum one story-we have a right to know...
...their courageous publisher-had busted Maybe the reason Mailer and Capote Nixon...
...the written word cause it had nothing directly to do with was Tom Wolfe, Mailer's bastard off- should be banished once and for all as Vietnam...
...As if that were not enough, he er's craft and deadline-meeting, risk The Naked and The Dead, published attributes its success, not to Mailer's and failsafe story writing, ethics and Post-World War II, 1948...
Vol. 100 • June 1974 • No. 14
