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1 Introduction John S. Bak At the end of the nineteenth century, several countries were developing journalistic traditions similar to what we identify today as literary journalism or literary reportage. Throughout most of the twentieth century, however, and in particular after World War I, that tradition was overshadowed and even marginalized by the general perception among democratic states that journalism ought to be either “objective,” as in the American tradition , or “polemical,” as in the European one. Nonetheless, literary journalism would survive and at times even thrive. How and why is a story unique to each nation. While many students, scholars, and practitioners of literary journalism have long acknowledged the form’s Anglo-American roots, this book takes a broader approach to examining the ways literary journalism has been practiced and read throughout the world. From China to Brazil, Scotland to Australia, and Finland to New Zealand, international literary journalism has established itself as one of the most significant and controversial forms of writing of the last century—significant because it often raises our sociopolitical awareness about a disenfranchised or underprivileged people; controversial because its emphasis on authorial voice jeopardizes our faith in its claims of accuracy. In the age of electronic news, however, when concerns about word count and article length have almost become a thing of the past, literary journalism seems poised to revolutionize the way we read journalism and appreciate literature. This book aims to assess the extent to which literary journalism over the past century has influenced reporting in various nations—some of which have only recently known democracy, while others are still under full or partial state control—and how it might shape journalistic heuristics and literary aesthetics in the twenty-first century. Several essays in this collection proclaim that, among the many nations today, literary journalism has proved itself a responsible and respectable voice of print media, one that struggles daily with the problem of maintaining a foundational readership. And if scholars of international media find these nations opting more for literary journalistic stories to attract readers—nar- 2 John S. Bak rative pieces that recount the factual news of the day in dramatic or emotive ways—literary aesthetes too are rediscovering the powerful and typically neglected form of literary journalism, which has earned its place among the traditional belles lettres of many nations. In short, there exists a rich international contingent of literary journalism and literary journalism scholars, and this book brings both together for the first time under one cover. Sixteen essays from the world’s leading scholars of literary journalism have been assembled here to exhibit how the form has been viewed, read, written , and studied throughout the world. Because not all nations are alike in their journalistic traditions, we cannot expect their literary journalism to be precisely the same. This book offers a look at how and where literary journalism varies (or does not), whether it is written in English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Slovene, Finnish, Dutch, German, Polish, Russian, or Mandarin. These essays, divided into three parts whose topics range from the taxonomic to the historical to the critical, provide both a window onto the past and a looking glass into the future of print media in North and South America, in Europe, and in Australia and Asia.1 They reexamine literary journalism’s historical roots in England and in America, but more from transnational perspectives of how writers in both nations—men and women alike—have influenced journalists abroad or were themselves influenced. They also look at the role that literary journalism has played in the building of nationhood or in the establishment of a national canon. Above all, they reveal how literary journalism, no matter in which language it appears, has remained loyal to its commitment to inform the world accurately and honestly about the magical in the mundane, the great in the small, and above all, the us in the them. E Pluribus Veritas Literary journalism has a long and complex international history, one built on a combination of journalistic traditions and transnational influences. Recovering these two dimensions of literary journalism as it is practiced throughout the world is complicated by several factors that need clarification. These obstacles suggest that scholars of international literary journalism need to adopt a phenomenological view of the form. Accepting literary journalism as a legitimate global form is not enough; we also need to exercise intercultural sensitivity to accompany our interdisciplinary awareness. If examples of an American-style New Journalism can be...

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