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79 Chapter 4 The Counter-Coriolis Effect Contemporary Literary Journalism in a ShrinkingWorld David ABRahamson I must Confess that with this essay, I hope to start an argument, to present more questions than answers, to offer a provocation. If, dear reader, you will permit a moment’s digression, it might be helpful if I shared an aside or two suggesting just how modest my goals are. Early in my career in the academy, one of my mentors made what I thought then—and still believe today—to be a telling observation about scholarship. He said that even though all of the scholarly effort attempts actually to create new knowledge, perhaps as little as 10 percent of what is produced results in something truly valuable: concepts that other scholars might build on, ideas that are incorporated into the canon, knowledge that proves to be of actual value. At the other end of the value scale, he said, there is the vast mass of the scholarly product, perhaps as much as 80 percent of the total output, which—though it may count as an item on a vita or may be part of a tenure or promotion portfolio—is actually of quite modest value. At very best, it will be cited infrequently by later scholars; much more likely, not at all. And then, he said, there is the remaining 10 percent, below the upper 10 and above the lower 80. The work here will probably not end up in anyone’s canon. It will not be celebrated fifty, or even five, years from now. But it does, at a minimum, raise interesting arguments and pose useful questions that may be of service to others, though the actual conclusions themselves may not be of the highest order. With respect to this essay, I can say with some confidence that it will not be regarded as a candidate for the top 10 percent. And if I am lucky, it will not find its place in the lower 80. It is therefore my hope that, fortune willing, it will be allowed to rest comfortably in the middle range. As I have already confessed, I am here to start an argument. 80 David ABRahamson Literary Journalism Goes Global The title of this essay, with its invention of a presumed “Counter-Coriolis Effect,” is an obvious conceit. With all due deference to Monsieur Coriolis, I have unabashedly appropriated the name of a phenomenon in the geophysical world to describe one whose existence I will hypothesize in the world of arts and letters.1 It is, of course, an imaginary construct, but one I hope might have some heuristic purpose. First, however, a bit of context might be helpful. Despite the economic turmoil and discontinuities of recent times, it is likely that Thomas L. Friedman, author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree and The World Is Flat, is correct.2 For much of the world today, the primary reality for the foreseeable future will continue to be globalization, in all its forms: political, social, cultural, and economic. The world is most certainly shrinking.3 If this is true, then the question arises: What, if any, might be the journalistic dimensions of this phenomenon? Is there, in effect, a journalistic aspect to globalization? And if, at least for the sake of argument, one posits that such a journalistic dimension exists, what then would be the role of literary journalism in the consideration of journalism as a whole? Following this axis of inquiry leads one to examine literary journalism in a relatively novel light: one that allows us to consider the genre from what might be termed a deliberately geopolitical perspective. This attempt may not actually be as strange as it sounds. Literary journalism , after all, most certainly has the potential for profound long-term, even world-historical effects. I doubt there is much disagreement on this point, simply because there are so many apt examples: Silent Spring by Rachel Carson and the emergence of a global environmental awareness;4 John Hersey’s Hiroshima and the ban-the-bomb movement in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere;5 and more recently the dispatches by Seymour Hirsch about Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the changing tide of public opinion about the American misadventure in that country.6 With this in mind, it seems fairly safe to posit that literary journalism can both shape and reflect larger social, cultural, and political currents—at the regional level, at the national level...

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