pdf - William McKeen

JOU 4301 Section 6524 Spring 2010
LITERARYJOURNALISM
The Man in the
white suit
Tom Wolfe is not only
literary journalism’s
most celebrated
practitioner,
he is also its first
historian.
Professor
WILLIAM
McKEEN
Office
2070 Weimer Hall
Phone
392-0500
Email
wmckeen@ jou.ufl.edu
Office hours
Tuesdays, 3 and 4
Wednesdays, 3 and 4
and by appointment
Home page
williammckeen.com
Follow the
Department of
Journalism on
Twitter at
GatorJSchool
About this course
In Literary Journalism, we study
great non-fiction writing and try
some experiments that go beyond
the norm of everyday journalism.
We analyze writing and
discuss its merit as a chronicle of
human life and as art.
Our emphasis is on postSecond World War American
writing.
We read books, excerpts from
books and several short articles
We also study the lives and
works of the writers.
You will become an expert on
one writer and share everything
you learn with your classmates.
After studying all of these
great writers, you will write a
1
couple works of literary
journalism.
This class will be a weenie
roast.
Here’s the reading list:
✓ Truman Capote, In Cold
Blood (Random House, 1966)
✓ Joan Didion, Slouching
Towards Bethlehem (Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 1968)
✓ John Hersey, Hiroshima
(Alfred A. Knopf, 1946)
✓ Mary Roach, Bonk (W.W.
Norton, 2007)
✓ Lillian Ross, Picture
(Rinehart, 1952)
✓ Gay Talese, Thy Neighbor’s
Wife (Doubleday, 1980)
Hunter S. Thompson,
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
(Random House, 1972)
✓ Tom Wolfe, The Electric
Kool-Aid Acid Test (Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 1968)
✓ A daily New York Times
subscription also is required. Each
week, we will share examples of
literary journalism -- or, by golly,
just plain old good writing -- from
the pages of the Times. It’s a
great way to start class.
By the way, the course is
officially named Literary
Journalism, but shows up on your
schedule under its old name,
Specialized Journalism. It’s one of
life’s little mysteries.
✓
LITERARYJOURNALISM Spring 2010
Grading and attendance
There will be a lot of reading and a lot of
writing.
You will write a research paper and two
articles, take a short exam, do a class presentation
and turn in reflection papers on each book we read.
Details to follow. We will discuss the relative weight
of these assignments at the midpoint of the
semester, but most of your final grade will be
determined by your performance on the research
paper and the major articles. Class participation
also counts.
Speaking of class participation: It should go
without saying that I expect you not to talk, dance
or make rude noises while I’m trying to lecture or
while other classmates are speaking. Any sort of
disruptive behavior will be damaging to your grade.
Attendance is critical. The class is small, so I’ll
know when you’re not here.
Come to class fully prepared to participate on a
discussion based on the readings. You might not
even be aware of reading assignments, since they
will generally be made in class.
But this is the real reason attendance is so
important: We cannot have a successful class
without out. Be here every day. If you don’t show
up, the quality of class will be diminished.
Remember your John Donne (and, of course,
removed the gender bias from this centuries-old
quote): “No man is an island, entire of itself; every
man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the
less . . . (A)ny man’s death diminishes me, because I
am involved in mankind; and therefore never send
It really
happened
This is reporter
Hunter S.
Thompson in the
Great White
Whale as he
cruised the strip
in Las Vegas
during the
research of Fear
and Loathing in
Las Vegas.
2
"There is one
sacred rule of
journalism. The
writer must not
invent. The legend
on the license
must read: None
of this was
made up."
JOHN HERSEY
Hersey during the
Second World War
"The Legend on the License”
The Yale Review, 1980
to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
In short, don’t be a clod. But do be polite.
There’s no excuse for rudeness.
You will not be allowed to make up any missed
work unless the reason for your absence is extremely
grave (a death in the family or perhaps the
contraction of a loathsome disease), and you call
me or e-mail me before the class period to be
missed.
I have strong feelings about attendance. It
would be stupid to walk into Best Buy, pick out
several Blu-Ray discs, pay for them and then tell the
clerk, “Naw . . you keep ‘em.” But that’s what we
do in college. You should come to class because you
want to learn. But perhaps I can also appeal to you
to attend by evoking consumerism. Come get your
money’s worth. As Herman B Wells said,
“Education is the one thing we pay for, then don’t
insist upon receiving.”
LITERARYJOURNALISM Spring 2010
3
Things you need to know
Here’s our plan for the semester.
The first half of the course is reading heavy. Plan
accordingly. We’ll march through the books in
chronological order, but we’ll switch Bonk and Thy
Neighbor’s Wife. Thy Neighbor’s Wife is a big bastard, so
you’ll need more time.
This looks like a lot of work, but trust me – this is
so much fun you’ll think you should be arrested. A
class this fun shouldn’t be legal.
Some words about the assignments:
✓ Bring a short reflection paper to class each
time we discuss a book. These can be as short
as a paragraph but no longer than a page.
These are conversation starters. You will get
credit for doing the papers, but they are not
graded.
✓ Just past the midway point of the semester, we
will have a short exam about the major figures
of literary journalism we’ve discussed. This is
mostly to see if you’ve been paying attention.
✓ Your first writing assignment should be in the
350-500 word range. It can be a column or a
vignette. All I ask is that it be something out of
the ordinary . . . but also publishable.
✓ The second writing assignment is a more
significant piece. I hate to impose word limits,
but it probably should be at least 1,200-1,500
words. The subject matter is up to you but
again, it must be something that could be
published. Think of a specific audience
(Esquire readers, McSweeney’s readers, etc.)
✓ You will study a writer of your choosing. You
will make a work-in-progress presentation to
the class near the end of the semester. Your
research paper should be a pretty significant
piece of work. It can be due any time near the
end of the semester, but must be turned in by
April 27, which falls during finals week.
✓ You will be asked to read the New York Times
daily. We will use this reading to fuel
discussion at the start of class this week.
Since I’m giving the historical overview in the
first half of the class, I hope that you will focus your
energies on contemporary writers for your
presentations and papers.
This is another reason that we will read the New
York Times this semester. It allows us to assess the
state of literary journalism today.
At right, the day-by-day outline of the course. I
hope to follow this, but occasionally acts of God
intervene. Be sure to check your ufl.edu account now
and then, because I will send news of any changes to
the class listserv. I’ll also post changes (and lots of
other interesting stuff) on the Literary Journalism page
on Facebook. I urge you to sign up for that page.
Spring calendar
Jan. 5: INTRODUCTION
Jan.
THE UNFORGETTABLE FIRE.
• Jan.12:
5: INTRODUCTION
John
Hersey
and UNFORGETTABLE
Hiroshima. ReflectionFIRE.
paper
John
• Jan. 12: THE
due
at
the
beginning
of
class.
Hersey and Hiroshima. Reflection paper due at
Jan.
19: THE
MOTHER OF LITERARY
the
beginning
of class.
JOURNALISM.
Lillian
Ross OF
andLITERARY
Picture.
• Jan. 19: THE MOTHER
Reflection
paper
due
at
the
beginning
of class.
JOURNALISM. Lillian Ross and Picture.
Jan.
26:
No
class.
I
will
be
at
a
press
Reflection paper due at the beginning of class.
meeting
in Tallahassee.
This
week
to
No class. I will
beisata agood
press
meeting
• Jan. 26:
get
ahead
on
your
reading.
in Tallahassee. This is a good week to get ahead
THE NEW ART FORM. Truman
onFeb.
your2:reading.
Capote
In Cold
Reflection
paperCapote
due
2: THE
NEWBlood.
ART FORM.
Truman
• Feb. and
atand
theIn
beginning
of class.
Cold Blood.
Reflection paper due at the
Feb. 9: SHE
WHO USES SHYNESS AS A
beginning
of class.
WEAPON.
Joan
Didion
and Slouching
USES
SHYNESSTowards
AS A
• Feb. 9: SHE WHO
Bethlehem.
Reflection
paper
at the Towards
WEAPON. Joan Didion and due
Slouching
beginning
of class.
First paper
writingdue
assignment
Bethlehem.
Reflection
at the due.
Feb.
16:
PANDEMONIUM
WITH
A BIG due.
beginning of class. First writing assignment
GRIN.
Tom
Wolfe
and
The
Electric
Kool-Aid
• Feb. 16: PANDEMONIUM WITH A BIG GRIN.
Acid
paper due
at the Acid Test.
TomTest.
WolfeReflection
and The Electric
Kool-Aid
beginning
of
class.
Reflection paper due at the beginning of class.
Feb. 23:
23: A
A SAVAGE
SAVAGE JOURNEY
JOURNEY TO
TO THE
THE
• Feb.
HEART
OF
THE
AMERICAN
DREAM.
HEART OF THE AMERICAN DREAM.Hunter
Hunter S.
S.Thompson
Thompsonand
andFear
Fearand
andLoathing
LoathingininLas
LasVegas.
Vegas.
Reflection
the beginning
of
Reflection
paper paper
due atdue
the at
beginning
of class.
class.
• March 2: TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO
March 2: TO HAS
BOLDLY
GOBEFORE.
WHERE NO
JOURNALIST
GONE
Mary
JOURNALIST
HAS
GONE
BEFORE.
Mary
Roach and Bonk. Reflection paper due
at the
Roach
and Bonk.
Reflection paper due at the
beginning
of class.
beginning
of No
class.
class; spring break
• March 9:
March
9:
No
class;
spring
KING
OF break
HANG• March 16: THE
March
16:
THE
KING
OF
OUTOLOGY. Gay Talese and Thy Neighbor’s
HANGOUTOLOGY.
Gaydue
Talese
and
Thy
Wife. Reflection paper
at the
beginning
of
Neighbor’s
Wife.
Reflection
paper
due
at the
class. Short exam.
beginning
of class.
Short
exam.
Second
writing
assignment due.
• March 23:
March
23:
Second
writing
assignment due.
Individual conferences.
Individual
30: Student Presentations
• March conferences.
Student
Presentations
April 6:30:
Student
Presentations
• March
April
6:
Student
Presentations
• April 13: Student Presentations
April13:
20:Student
StudentPresentations
Presentations
• April
April 20:
27: Student
ResearchPresentations
paper due.
• April
April
27:
Research
•. 5: INTRODUCTIONpaper due
LITERARYJOURNALISM Spring 2010
Mother
knows
best
Lillian Ross,
who could easily
be called the
“mother of
literary
journalism,” out
for a stroll with
William Shawn,
the editor of the
New Yorker
whose hand
guided so many
writers to their
greatest work.
Your research paper
You will write a research paper
about a literary journalist. It can
be any writer whose work is
featured in the bibliography of
my Web site.
Once you find a writer who
interests you, check with me to be
sure you’ve made the sort of
choice that will yield a good
paper and class presentation.
The paper will be due at the
end of the semester, but you must
make a presentation about your
subject earlier in the term.
So pick your author early
and plunge into your research.
The body of your paper -exclusive of bibliography and
footnotes -- should run 20-25
double-space, typewritten pages.
The papers should be well
written, technically perfect and
thoroughly documented.
Here is some advice on
writing the paper: pick a subject
that interests you. You will have
to live with the writer -figuratively, at least. Do
interviews. However, this will only
work with writers who are alive. If
you are writing about a living
writer, what do you have to lose
4
by tracking them down and
giving them a call?
For advice and counsel on
general research, I recommend
an excellent book called The
Modern Researcher by Jacques
Barzun and Henry Graff
(Wadsworth, 2002).
Here are some answers to
some questions you might ask:
✓ Style. Consistency is what
matters most. Historical papers
generally follow the style outlined
in A Manual for Writers of Term
Papers, Theses and Dissertations by
Kate Turabian (University of
Chicago Press, 1996). This is
recommended. But you do not
have to follow what those of is in
the trade call “Turabian style.”
Just be consistent, attribute
everything, and supply me with
the needed bibliographic
information.
✓ Citations. Follow the
simple practice of indicating a
citation with a superior number,
then put all of your notes at the
end or at the bottom of the
page.For book citations, follow
the style we’re using in this course
outline.
✓ Page numbering.
Some beefwits apparently think
that if they don’t number the
pages I won’t notice that they
didn’t make the minimum page
length. I can count.
✓ Title page. Nothing
fancy. Just the title, your name,
the course number and the date.
✓ Errors. Fact errors
seriously damage your grade.
Spelling and grammatical errors
hurt.
✓ Revision. I may ask you
to revise your paper. This will not
affect your grade, but I will not
record your grade and give you
credit for the work if the paper is
a mess.
✓ Report covers. I hate
those flimsy little things. I am,
however, fond of staples and
paper clips.
✓ General quality. Do not
think of this as a boring term
paper. You are in the Department
of Journalism. I expect your
paper to be well-written It should
read like a magazine article, not a
research paper.
Above all, have fun.
LITERARYJOURNALISM Spring 2010
Course policies
This university has a student honor
code. Read it. Memorize it. Live it.
It contains this pledge: “On my
honor, I have neither given nor
received unauthorized aid in doing
the assignment.”
I will not tolerate cheating. If I
discover that you have violated the
honor code, I will do everything I
can to boot you from the class and
from the college.
Although the University of
Florida allows minus grades, we
count the final project twice and
then divide the final number by
five to get your final average.
Be sure to check out my
Web site to read the
Department of Journalism’s
Statement on Academic
Honesty. You can also read the
statement from the Dean of
Students Office.
Look under the Courses tab
to find those things.
We take this stuff seriously.
Bibliography
Also on that same action-packed
Web site (mine) you will find a
bibliography available for
download.
I use the Journalism
Bibliography in every class I teach,
Culture
chronicler
Joan Didion was known for
her dissections of California
in the 1960s, writing the
“Points West” column for
the Saturday Evening Post.
These pieces became the
books Slouching Towards
Bethlehem and The White
Album.
5
won’t be using them. We will follow
the standard grading scale: 90-100
is an A; 87-89 is a B+, 80-86 is a B,
77-79 is a C+, 70-76 is a C, 67-69 is
a D+, 60-66 is a D. Everything
below 60 is an E. (I still call them
F’s, so excuse me if I slip up.)
Here’s how I figure final
grades:
I count the final project
twice. So if we have four major
assignments, (two articles, one
test, one research paper), I’ll
so don’t expect everything you find
will relate to Literary Journalism.
A good bibliography is a
living, breathing thing, and so this
thing needs constant updating. I
hope you can help me add to it by
finding great works of literary
journalism this semester.
Think of this as a reading list
for life.
If journalism is your calling,
you must be well read.
LITERARYJOURNALISM Spring 2010
That thing behind me
is a manual typewriter
Here I am giving a staff
photographer the evil eye in the
newsroom of the CourierTribune in Bloomington, Ind., in
September 1973. As you can
see, I am wearing the shirt that
Kurt Cobain later found in a
thrift store and made into a
significant early 1990s fashion
statement. It was while working
for that newspaper that I fell
under the spell of the writing of
Tom Wolfe. Hunter Thompson,
Truman Capote and many of
the other gods of literary
journalism. Speaking of
typewriters, I think the relative
permanence of writing on those
things made us more careful
writers than we are today.
Instructor biography
I was born in the center of the
universe (Indiana, of course) but
grew up all over the place -- in
England, Germany, Nebraska,
South Florida and Texas. I
earned my bachelor’s degree in
history and my master’s in
journalism from Indiana
University and my PhD in higher
education from the University of
Oklahoma.
I worked for newspapers and
magazines before starting my
teaching career. My first job was
at the Courier-Tribune in
Bloomington, Ind., where I was a
reporter and copy editor. I briefly
worked for the Palm Beach Post,
then became an editor for a small
but influential magazine called
the American Spectator. I worked
for the Saturday Evening Post for
two years and helped edit a book
called The American Story (Curtis,
1975).
I began teaching at Western
Kentucky University and taught
at the University of Oklahoma
before coming to Florida.
Since I started teaching, I’ve
taken several short-term jobs -sometimes in the summers,
6
sometimes night work on the
copy desk during the school year
-- on the Norman (Okla.)
Transcript, the Courier-Journal
(Louisville. Ky.), the St.
Petersburg Times and the
Gainesville Sun. I’ve written for
the Orlando Sentinel and the St.
Petersburg Times fairly regularly
since 1989. I also am book editor
of Creative Loafing, an altweekly in Tampa. I write a
monthly column about Florida
writers and maintain a weekly
blog on books and publishing.
I’ve written about music and
popular culture for most of my
career and have published books
on those subjects, including The
Beatles: A Bio-Bibliography
(Greenwood, 1989), Hunter S.
Thompson (Twayne, 1991), Bob
Dylan: A Bio-Bibliography
(Greenwood, 1993), Tom Wolfe
(Macmillan, 1995), Literary
Journalism: A Reader (Wadsworth,
2000), Rock and Roll is Here to Stay
(W.W. Norton, 2000), and
Highway 61 (W.W. Norton, 2003).
My latest book is Outlaw
Journalist (W.W. Norton, 2008),
available in paperback.
I have two books in the
works: Paradise Recalled, a
collection of stories about
childhood for the University Press
of Florida, and Mile Marker Zero,
the story of the writers, artists,
actors and musicians who lived in
Key West in the 1970s.
I am married to a saint
named Nicole and I have seven
children: Sarah, 30, an architect;
Graham, 27, an environmental
officer; Mary Grace, 22, a theater
major; Savannah Grace, 13, a
seventh grader; Jack, 7, a second
grader; Travis, 6, a kindergarten
student; and Charley, 4, who is in
preschool.
I enjoy this class. I hope you
will too.
!