The important conundrum that Malcolm imparts in her short and magnificently complicated volume is why we bother to read or write journalism at all if we know the game is rigged. The thorny morality can extend to biography (Malcolm’s The Silent Woman is another excellent book which sets forth the inherent and surprisingly cyclical bias in writing about Sylvia Plath). And even when the seasoned journalist is aware of ethical discrepancies, the judgmental pangs will still crop up. In “A Girl of the Zeitgeist” (contained in the marvelous collection, Forty-One False Starts), Malcolm confessed her own disappointment in how Ingrid Sischy failed to live up to her preconceptions as a bold and modern woman. Malcolm’s tendentiousness may very well be as incorrigible as McGinnis’s, but is it more forgivable because she’s open about it?I have a strangely dispassionate regard for details, which prompts me to simply chronicle the purported facts of a matter. I also do not like to insert myself into anything I write (hence, the fondness for the third-person in the poetry I write). Like this piece, I prefer to leave the conclusions up to the reader.
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Ambiguity and imprecision …
… The Journalist and the Murderer (Modern Library Nonfiction #97) | Reluctant Habits.
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"One of the mistakes often made by those who immerse themselves in Janet Malcolm’s The Journalist and the Murderer is believing that MacDonald’s guilt or innocence is what matters most."
ReplyDeleteOn the face of the linked post, what matters most is establishing that Janet Malcolm is a) right, and b) smarter than any persons (particularly men) who complain about her.
If that's what you choose to see, George, that's what you choose to see. The problem with the quibblers I cited is that they don't wish to consider that Malcolm is more concerned with journalism's tendentious elements, not her purported self-hate or malice (both dispelled by Malcolm herself) or MacDonald's guilt or innocence. Her points are well worth arguing over. Indeed, I criticized Malcolm for, in the process of kvelling over MacDonald's betrayal by McGinniss (as seen through the Mike Wallace interview), seeing what she wanted to see in FATAL VISION.
DeleteMy comment was too snide. My real complaint about the piece is that it proceeds from an assumption I do not share, of the importance of Ms. Malcolm and her literary context. It is an aspect of my provincialism that I am wary of The New Yorker and generally avoid it; yet provinces and provincialism flourish cis-Hudson as well as trans-Hudson.
DeleteGeorge: Speaking as someone who may share more of your provincial mistrust than you may know (and who lives quite close to the den of operations and maintains a New Yorker subscription: so that's quite a pickle of inconsistencies!), I'm wondering why you can't allow for the possibility certain GOOD material can come out of the New Yorker, even as you maintain a prejudice against it. Malcolm's books are quite short and thoughtful, and are worth examining on their own merits and complexities -- even if you dislike her, her work is worth arguing with. And one does not need to trot out one's allegiance (or lack thereof) to the New Yorker to do so. The work is the work, no matter where it comes from. But heartfelt cheers, nonetheless, to your principles, sir!
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