The Mesmerizing Power of Literary Journalism
By Siobhan McKenna, written June 2021
from the creative nonfiction summer 2021 series
“Frank Sinatra, holding a glass of bourbon in one hand and a cigarette in the other, stood in a dark corner of the bar between two attractive but fading blondes who sat waiting for him to say something. But he said nothing; he had been silent during much of the evening, except now in his private club in Beverley Hills he seemed even more distant. . . . Sinatra had been working in a film that he now disliked, could not wait to finish; he was tired of all the publicity attached to dating the twenty-year-old Mia Farrow, who was not in sight tonight. . . . Sinatra was ill. He was the victim of an ailment so common that most people would consider it trivial. But when it gets to Sinatra it can plunge him into a state of anguish, deep depression, panic, even rage. Frank Sinatra had a cold.”
~ Gay Talese, Esquire, 1966 (1)
I remember listening to the rich tone of Gay Talese’s voice as I walked between campus buildings during college. Through my earphones, This American Life played an entire podcast episode dedicated to Sinatra and had included Talese’s piece, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.” As I listened, I puzzled over how a writer could incorporate so many intimate details about the subject into his piece. How did he know what the “fading blondes” or even Sinatra were thinking? After all, the piece came about because Sinatra wouldn’t grant Talese an interview because his agency kept claiming Sinatra had a cold, therefore Talese interviewed anyone he could find who knew Sinatra (1). Amused and fascinated, I loved being immersed in the world of Sinatra through Talese’s vivid descriptions; I thought, is this what writing can sound like? Later, in a creative nonfiction class, I would come to study the same piece and discover that Talese’s “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” is heralded as one of the most iconic examples of literary journalism.
Literary journalism is known by a variety of names including new journalism, narrative journalism, and literary nonfiction—to name only a few (2). Over the years, the exact boundaries of literary journalism have been subject to debate but broadly are described as nonfiction essays that employ fiction techniques to develop the reporting (3). Different techniques that literary journalists use include dialogue, first-person narration, and scene-setting for the piece to read like a novel (2).
Although literary journalism has been around for a long time with some scholars citing Mark Twain as an early example, the genre became more defined after Tom Wolfe and E.W. Johnson released The New Journalism in 1973 (2). The New Journalism was a collection of essays that included a piece the anthology was named for, by Wolfe, as well as 21 other works that fit Wolfe’s definition of literary journalism, by writers such as Talese, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, and Joan Didion.
One of my favorite contemporary writers within this genre is Jordan Kisner. I love Kisner’s essays because of her ability to glide effortlessly between reporting and self-reflection—one of the gems that make literary journalism separate from traditional “unbiased” journalism. In her essay, “Las Marthas,” Kisner describes a Martha Washington pageant in the Texas border town of Laredo all the while inserting bits about her struggle with racial identity in order to make the piece fit into a larger context of what it means to be White, to be Hispanic, to be American in our country today (4). Other essays of hers find the seemingly incongruent connections between subjects: the opioid crisis in an Ohioan county and her mortality, the history of tattoos, and the quest to encapsulate that which is indefinable (5).
Kisner’s writing runs on the notion that “subjectivity [can] foster credibility,” something that Joan Didion helped pave the way for as she reported on such events like the Manson Murders and the chaos of 1960s Los Angeles with a front seat view from her own couch and neighbors’ living rooms in the Hollywood Hills (6). Didion capitalized on the concept that not all journalism must be written without feeling. Literary journalism takes you to the scene of the crime and candidly inserts emotions because humans fail time after time to be dispassionate creatures. Literary journalism’s brilliance lies in the spaces where the writing can transport the reader as we all try to make sense of our own place in the nooks and crannies of the world. And perhaps Didion defines literary journalism best of all when she begins her essay, “The White Album,” with the words:
We tell ourselves stories in order to live. . . . We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the “ideas” with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience. (7)
Dive into some literary journalism:
Gay Talese: “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold”
Jordan Kisner: “Las Marthas”
Joan Didion: “Holy Water”
Rachel Kadzi Ghansah: “A Most American Terrorist: The Making of Dylann Roof”
(1) Talese, Gay. “Frank Sinatra has a Cold.” Esquire. April 1966. www.esquire.com/features/ESQ1003-OCT_SINATRA_rev_
(2) Masterclass Staff. How to Recognize and Write Literary Journalism. 8 Nov. 2020. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-recognize-and-write-literary-journalism
(3) Keeble, Richard Lance. “Literary Journalism.” Oxford Research Encyclopedias. 30 July 2018. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.836
(4) Kisner, Jordan. “Las Marthas.” The Believer. 1 Oct. 2019. https://believermag.com/las-marthas/
(5) Kisner, Jordan. Thin Places: Essays from the In Between. Macmillian, 2020.
(6) Whitefield, Jack. “New Journalism: What Can the Media Learn?” The Indiependent. 9 Feb. 2021. https://www.indiependent.co.uk/new-journalism-what-can-the-media-learn/
(7) Didion, Joan. “The White Album.” The White Album. Simon & Schuster, 1979. eBookCollection. (HooplaDigital).
Siobhan McKenna was born and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia. She stumbled upon Yellow Arrow while living in Baltimore and has loved every minute of working as an editorial associate. Siobhan recently began working as a travel nurse in Seattle. As she moves to a different city every three months to work as an ICU nurse, Siobhan looks forward to writing about all that this crazy, broken, and beautiful country holds. She holds a bachelor’s degree in writing and biology from Loyola University Maryland and an MSN from Johns Hopkins University. You can follow her on Instagram @sio_han.
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