“A grande dame of journalism, and still, somehow, its enfant terrible”
June 17, 2021 10:38 PM Subscribe
Janet Malcolm, journalist, essayist, and author has died at age 86. As a longtime writer for the New Yorker and other publications, with particular interests in psychoanalysis, literature, photography, and true crime, Malcolm became known for provocative critiques of her own profession. Her most famous book, “The Journalist and the Murderer”, can be found on the reading list of nearly every journalism student in the US. Originating in 1989 as a two-part essay in the New Yorker, it opens with one of the most arresting first sentences in literary nonfiction: “Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.”
Janet Malcolm, Remembered by Writers
“Janet Malcolm, The Art of Nonfiction No. 4” by Katie Roiphe in the Paris Review, 2011 [previously] (and source of the post title)
“Who’s Afraid of Janet Malcolm?” by Robert S. Boynton in Mirabella, 1992
Janet Malcolm's contributions to the New Yorker
Janet Malcolm's contributions to the New York Review of Books
Janet Malcolm, Remembered by Writers
“Janet Malcolm, The Art of Nonfiction No. 4” by Katie Roiphe in the Paris Review, 2011 [previously] (and source of the post title)
“Who’s Afraid of Janet Malcolm?” by Robert S. Boynton in Mirabella, 1992
Janet Malcolm's contributions to the New Yorker
Janet Malcolm's contributions to the New York Review of Books
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posted by Mental Wimp at 8:39 AM on June 18, 2021
posted by Mental Wimp at 8:39 AM on June 18, 2021
Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession is one of my favorite books ever. A reviewer once described her books thus: Malcolm's books are "so lean, so seamless, so powerfully direct, they read as if they have been written in a single breath". She was one of my idols.
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posted by MiraK at 8:56 AM on June 18, 2021 [2 favorites]
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posted by MiraK at 8:56 AM on June 18, 2021 [2 favorites]
I have a piece in the New York Times this week where I write this about her:
"As someone who writes nonfiction about topics many people don’t know they care about, I idolize Janet Malcolm. Her sentences are so perfectly measured; each one is like a little argument. Except the ones that are like little knives. Her essay “Forty-One False Starts” (about a contemporary painter I didn’t know I cared about) is a better explanation of how to write than any book I know that actually sets out to explain how to write."
posted by escabeche at 10:52 AM on June 19, 2021 [3 favorites]
"As someone who writes nonfiction about topics many people don’t know they care about, I idolize Janet Malcolm. Her sentences are so perfectly measured; each one is like a little argument. Except the ones that are like little knives. Her essay “Forty-One False Starts” (about a contemporary painter I didn’t know I cared about) is a better explanation of how to write than any book I know that actually sets out to explain how to write."
posted by escabeche at 10:52 AM on June 19, 2021 [3 favorites]
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posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 3:58 AM on June 18, 2021