The critical marginalization of American literary journalism

Abstract

This essay traces historical evidence of the critical ambivalence toward American literary journalism not only by belle lettres and the literature academy, but also by the journalism community and the journalism and mass communications academy. Paradoxically, such ambivalence stems from similar attempts by both scholars of literature and journalism to base their studies on critical assumptions that could only prove exclusionary of the serious consideration of American literary journalism as an identifiable discourse. This examination is necessary if one is to understand why a narrative form that has proved as durable as it has since at least the latter part of the nineteenth century has received relatively little acknowledgment by the academy until recently. By engaging in such an examination, the form can be further defined by the historical presence it was not permitted to have.

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