REVIEW: Searching for the truth of book-length journalism

  • Bonita Mason
Keywords: creative writing, journalism practice, literary journalism, long-form journalism, narrative journalism, narratives, reportage, reviews, truth

Abstract

Mason, Bonita. (2015). Searching for the truth of book-length journalism. Pacific Journalism Review, 21(2): 200-203. Review of Telling True Stories: Navigating the challenges of writing narrative non-fiction, by Matthew Ricketson. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2014. 282pp. ISBN 978-1-742379-35-7

Australian journalism academic and practitioner Matthew Ricketson’s new book opens with two quotes: one from South African writer Nadine Gordimer on the enduring presence of ‘beauty’ in the quest for truth; the other from US comparative literature professor Peter Brooks on the impossibility of separating our own humanity and imaginations from what we write. Gordimer has also written elsewhere of the writer’s responsibility, as a social being, to take part in their world through their writing—to become ‘more than a writer’ (1985, p. 141). The kind of writing Ricketson seeks to define, and describes, analyses and advocates in this book (much of which is also investigative), comes closest to meeting these roles and responsibilities for the non-fiction writer.

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Published
31-10-2015
How to Cite
Mason, B. (2015). REVIEW: Searching for the truth of book-length journalism. Pacific Journalism Review : Te Koakoa, 21(2), 200-203. https://doi.org/10.24135/pjr.v21i2.134