Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Journalism and the rise of the novel, 1700–1875: Daniel Defoe to George Eliot
- Chapter 2 Literary realism and the fictions of the industrialized press, 1850–1915: Mark Twain to Theodore Dreiser
- Chapter 3 Reporters as novelists and the making of contemporary journalistic fiction, 1890–today: Rudyard Kipling to Joan Didion
- Chapter 4 The taint of journalistic literature and the stigma of the ink-stained wretch: Joel Chandler Harris to Dorothy Parker and beyond
- Epilogue: The future of journalistic fiction and the legacy of the journalist-literary figures: Henry James to Tom Wolfe
- Appendix: The major journalist-literary figures: their writings and positions in journalism
- Notes
- Index
Chapter 2 - Literary realism and the fictions of the industrialized press, 1850–1915: Mark Twain to Theodore Dreiser
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Journalism and the rise of the novel, 1700–1875: Daniel Defoe to George Eliot
- Chapter 2 Literary realism and the fictions of the industrialized press, 1850–1915: Mark Twain to Theodore Dreiser
- Chapter 3 Reporters as novelists and the making of contemporary journalistic fiction, 1890–today: Rudyard Kipling to Joan Didion
- Chapter 4 The taint of journalistic literature and the stigma of the ink-stained wretch: Joel Chandler Harris to Dorothy Parker and beyond
- Epilogue: The future of journalistic fiction and the legacy of the journalist-literary figures: Henry James to Tom Wolfe
- Appendix: The major journalist-literary figures: their writings and positions in journalism
- Notes
- Index
Summary
(Your literature is) all such truth – truth to life; everywhere your pen falls it leaves a photograph. I did imagine that everything had been said about life at sea that could be said – but no matter, it was all a failure and lies, nothing but lies with a thin varnish of fact – only you have stated it as it absolutely is.
– Mark Twain to William Dean HowellsI have known … men as truthful, but not so promptly, so absolutely, so positively, so almost aggressively truthful. He could lie, of course, and did to save others from grief or harm; he was not stupidly truthful; but his first impulse was to say out the thing and everything that was in him.
– William Dean Howells on Mark TwainI was never more confounded than by the discrepancy existing between my own observations and those displayed here, the beauty and peace and charm to be found in everything … Perhaps, as I now thought, life as I saw it, the darker phases, was never to be written about … I read and read, but all I could gather was that I had no such tales to tell, and however much I tried, I could not think of any.
– Theodore Dreiser in his memoirs, describing the magazines he read in the days when he was trying to establish himself as a serious writerThe art of depicting nature as seen by toads.
– Ambrose Bierce's definition of Realism in the Devil's Dictionary- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Journalism and the NovelTruth and Fiction, 1700–2000, pp. 84 - 134Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008