Janet Malcolm (1934–2021)

As a journalist I've often experienced the condition Janet Malcolm dissects so masterfully here--the way my job--and just the act of writing 'nonfiction' itself--requires me to don a persona with interview subjects that will give me the best chance of getting the information I need for a story, or to shape the events I report on into a narrative that will give satisfaction to my readers. Malcolm isn't talking about breaches of journalistic ethics here, but rather, she examines the simple, show more unavoidable necessity journalists have to make their stories compelling. Journalists do this by choosing sides, even if they believe themselves to be balanced (or "fair and balanced," as some would say). They tell the story in a way that bolsters their points of view and that appeals to their readers. Just committing the act of writing one word after another commits a writer to a certain set of conclusions. Malcolm examines this process with a greatness of heart that left me with a far greater awareness of the way I've been making these choices throughout my career.

Malcolm goes deeper than just examining the journalist's role, however. She also drills home the message that in many contexts the people with the best story to tell are the people who get what they want, and who get people to believe their story...whether it be lawyers telling the "true story" to a jury, or journalists adopting a certain level of jovial banter with interview subject they plan to excoriate in print, or suspected criminals trying to convince others that they are telling the truth. Why do we care so much that a suspect sound 'truthful?' What does that mean, anyway? Do we convict people because we don't like them? How is our idea of "truth" shaped by our human desire to hear a good story, or to fit people into certain categories that match our perception of "a good person" or "a wicked person" or "a trustworthy person?"

These are the kinds of questions Malcolm examines. The book is all the more rewarding for her willingness to put her own journalistic practices and beliefs under intense scrutiny as the book progresses.

A marvelous, eye-opening, self-reflective book. show less

A dense, learned, and thoroughly illuminating book. At less than two hundred pages, this one is a slow read that deserves your full attention. Malcom begins by disabusing the reader of much of the myths associated with the psychology behind journalism and book writing: it's faux-confessional nature, it's necessary betrayals. This might have been enough, but Malcom's an erudite enough author to take these ideas to all sorts of places, from Freudian psychoanalysis to the differences between show more literature and real life.

This isn't to say that I agree with everything that Malcom puts forth here: she seems, at one point, to argue that real people are both more ambiguous and more tediously predictable than literary characters, a contradiction I can't quite square. And it's likely that readers will probably come to their own conclusions about the murder case discussed in this book before they finish it, a disquieting but wholly predictable parallel to the defendant we meet in its pages. But the author's ability to draw out multiple enormously important intellectual lines of argument when any one of them might have made a good-enough book marks her as an intellect of the first order. The fact that she seems to keep these arguments both cogent and separate throughout the text testifies to her ability as a writer. Janet Malcom was undoubtedly the real thing.

It's also worth noting that she doesn't exempt herself from the theories presented here: as "The Journalist and the Murderer" draws to a close, she expresses her own boredom and emotional exhaustion with the project. This seems like a brave move, and one she did not necessarily have to take. We meet many not-so-honorable people in the pages of this brief work -- including one that may have murdered his family -- and relatively few honest ones, an acerbic, socially committed college professor who also considered writing a book on the events described in the book being among perhaps the best candidates for that distinction. Another, probably, is the author herself, who deserves real credit for taking a hard, honest look at the unavoidable contradictions of her chosen profession. Unsettling in the extreme, but recommended. show less

This is the first time I'm reading Janet Malcolm, and I really appreciated her insights into the tricky question of journalists writing about real-life crimes and the relationships they must create with the crimes' perpetrators. We all know that readers love salacious stories of violent crimes; sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll are great bonuses, too. But what does writing about these topics mean for journalists? How far is too far?

This book strikes an engrossing balance between covering what show more happened between MacDonald and McGinnis and philosophy from Malcolm about the proper roles of all involved. I found it fascinating. Interestingly, I don't come out of the book with a strong position on who was right or wrong, and I think that might be Malcolm's goal. I didn't think MacDonald deserved something better than he got, but I also thought McGinnis crossed a line in his behavior toward MacDonald.

I would read more from Malcolm. I'm thinking next up will be Iphigenia in Forest Hills, which appears to be her own true crime expose. How does she balance these concerns? show less

I could read Malcolm all day - her prose is quietly masterful, every book she produces a minor masterpiece. This is no exception, and teaches you much of what you need to know about Freud without getting bogged down in specifics.