Sometimes the
limits between the fiction and the journalist style are really closer. In the
60’s in United States grown a new tendency called “New Journalism”: is a new
way of stylistic process to enrich the frame stories: with realistic dialogs,
detailed description and a metalanguage.
As in
traditional investigative reporting, writers in the genre immersed themselves
in their subjects, at times spending months in the field gathering facts
through research, interviews, and observation. Their finished works were very
different, however, from the feature stories typically published in newspapers
and magazines of the time.[1]
The concept is
consolidated today, and the mix between genres is already gaining importance
although The New Journalists’ ideas continue to be explored and refined by new
generations of reporters and editors. Here there is a list of the most
important books:
Operación
Masacre
("Operation Massacre") is a nonfiction novel of investigative journalism,
written by noted Argentine journalist and author Rodolfo Walsh. It is
considered by some to be the first of its genre. The novel details the José
León Suárez massacre, which involved the 1956 capture and shooting of Peronist
militants, including rebel leader Juan José Valle.[2]
In Cold
Blood is a
non-fiction book first published in 1966, written by American author Truman
Capote; it details the 1959 murders of Herbert Clutter, a farmer from Holcomb,
Kansas, his wife, and two of their four children. The book examines the complex
psychological relationship between two parolees who together commit a mass
murder. Capote's book also explores the lives of the victims and the effect of
the crime on the community in which they lived. In Cold Blood is regarded
by critics as a pioneering work of the true crime genre, though Capote was
disappointed that the book failed to win the Pulitzer Prize.
As he explained
in Music for Chameleons Preface “Many people thought I was crazy to spend six
years wandering around the plains in Kansas; others rejected my whole concept
of the “non-fiction novel”[3]
Relato de un naufrago, Gabriel García Márquez. The full
title is The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor: Who Drifted on a Liferaft for
Ten Days Without Food or Water, Was Proclaimed a National Hero, Kissed by
Beauty Queens, Made Rich Through Publicity, and Then Spurned by the Government
and Forgotten for All Time. The story is written in the first-person from
the perspective of the sailor, 20 year-old Luis Alejandro Velasco, and was in
fact signed by Velasco as author when it was first published in 1955. Not until
1970 when it was published as a book was García Márquez's name first publicly
associated with the story.
Crónica de una muerte anunciada (Chronicle
of a Death Foretold ) is a novel by Gabriel García Márquez, published
in 1981. It tells, in the form of a pseudo-journalistic reconstruction, the
story of the murder of Santiago Nasar by the two Vicario brothers.
The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe,1987. Is considerate the novel of New York
City. A broker have to solve his life after one night in Bronx District when he
is traveling with his lover. The novel is a critics to the manners of the high
society of New York.
Sources:
[1]Encyclopedia
Britannica
[2]Wikipedia
[3]Music for
Chameleons. Truman Capote.
ISBN:0-394-50826-2
