Word: mailer
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...NORMAN MAILER's recent contributions to the literature of the war in Vietnam and political conventions have stirred new interest in an old area of controversy in journalism...
...myth of objectivity," a staff reporter observed in the CRIMSON (Oct. 28, 1968). For newsmen who were angered by police attacks on young people (and reporters) the most traumatic thing they learned "was simply that they had these feelings, even in the line of duty," the writer said. Mailer's style of personal reporting "is at least the direction that journalism should move...
...Mailer in his account of the Miami and Chicago conventions makes use of a certain objectivity for literary purposes--he refers to himself in the third person. But this is more than a mere literary device--it is a matter of form, and necessary if he is to maintain an aesthetic distance from his material, and be able to describe his involvement and his feelings with the freedom that impersonality allows. This--when the substance is of permanent or universal interest--is, of course, what makes literature...
...that is what Mailer is--a litterateur, in the positive sense of the word. And he remains so even when he writes on subjects of topical interest. Mailer isn't revolutionizing journalism, any more than Harper's--the vehicle for his material--would relish being thought of as a revolutionary version of Time or Newsweek...
When a newspaperman strives for "objectivity"--an impossible goal if this means total detachment from his subject matter--what he truly seeks is fairness. Mailer's approach, with a couple of exceptions, in no way is intended to describe impartially the plight of human beings on the wrong (police) side of the barriers. Newspaper reporters do seek this sort of impartiality, or lack of bias--or, if you like, omniscience...