fbpx
  • Subscribe & Support
  • Sign up for Free Newsletter
  • Print Edition
    • Get Home Delivery
    • Read ePaper Online
    • Newsstand Locations
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Contact
    • Advertise
    • Customer Support
    • Submit A News Tip
    • Where’s My Paper?
  • Manage HV1 Account
Hudson Valley One
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Featured Events
      • Art
      • Books
      • Kids
      • Lifestyle & Wellness
      • Food & Drink
      • Music
      • Nature
      • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
    • Editorials
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Help Wanted
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Podcast
  • Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Featured Events
      • Art
      • Books
      • Kids
      • Lifestyle & Wellness
      • Food & Drink
      • Music
      • Nature
      • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
    • Editorials
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Help Wanted
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Podcast
  • Log In
No Result
View All Result
Hudson Valley One
No Result
View All Result

Ready for radical conflations?

by John Burdick
May 14, 2020
in Village Voices
0

Who knows? The tenets of the New Journalism associated with Tom Wolfe and others may have been a downstream expression of what had been going on in quantum theory. Certainly the powerful revelation of the observer effect, which demonstrates that the observer can’t help but change the thing observed, resonates in the New Journalism’s defiance of the traditional edict for news writers: “There is no you.”  To which a new journalist might have responded, then there is no story.

From the New Journalism descends an increasingly popular form of non-fiction writing in which all is fair game: literary techniques applied to non-fiction subjects, unfiltered autobiography intertwined with objective research and reporting, and radical conflations of the traditional expository modes — evocative and poetic descriptive writing and narrative woven in a tapestry with argument, polemics, and all kinds of critical analysis.

One of the first examples of this super-enriched texture can be found in the bestselling natural histories of the writer Diane Ackerman. Further downstream, we now seem to be in a flowering renaissance of mixed-mode non-fiction, and the deserving king of the cats is the former “food writer” Michael Pollan, whose books combine hard science, cultural history, autobiography, and a kind self-as-subject investigative writing similar to Barbara Ehrenreich’s big success, Nickel and Dimed.

And there are a million great young writers I haven’t heard of. This is of course the very same multi-strand texture that typifies NPR reporting these days and about half of all podcasts. But Pollan is the best, the best at the process and — by quite a distance — the best at the prose.

How to Change Your Mind, which I reviewed in these pages, combined a thorough history of psychedelics research in the United States with a deep swing into mycology and other plant sciences and another strand of in-gazing reporting from Pollan’s own first-hand studies. Most people reported that the book made them want to try acid, or try it again.

Now Pollan scores with a new multimode book about caffeine, the fuel of the West. Without even reading the abstract, I know that the book would make me want to quit caffeine. I will not, presently, be reading Michael Pollan’s Caffeine.

 

Read more installments of Village Voices by John Burdick.

Tags: John Burdick Village Voices
Thank you for reading Hudson Valley One. We rely on your support to continue providing local, substantive news. Please check out our subscription options to keep local journalism alive in the Hudson Valley.
- Geddy Sveikauskas, Publisher
Previous Post

After 30 years in business, Jack’s Rhythms in New Paltz closes

Next Post

Kingston Memorial Day parade cancelled

John Burdick

Related Posts

Village Voices are on hold
Village Voices

Village Voices are on hold

November 17, 2020
A liberal education
Village Voices

Keeping it all together

August 24, 2020
Writing about oneself
Village Voices

I need a day off

August 24, 2020
Saugerties initiative combating addiction and suicide adds more events
Village Voices

Time travel

August 24, 2020
Where to buy face masks locally
Village Voices

A story of three states

September 2, 2020
The kids talk politics
Village Voices

Stories on the ballot

August 23, 2020
Next Post
Exhibit documents Kingston’s past, from street level

Kingston Memorial Day parade cancelled

Trending News

  • SUV drives into Sunflower Market in Woodstock 13.3k views
  • Homeless in Woodstock doc draws crowd as officials seek answers 1.2k views
  • AutoCamp Catskills brings fleet of Airstreams to former Saugerties KOA 1.1k views
  • Small freedom convoy makes its way through the streets of Saugerties  1k views
  • Saugerties highway department saving with oil and chip road surfacing 715 views







Latest HV1 Podcast

Weather

Kingston
◉
64°
Clear
5:22am8:35pm EDT
Feels like: 64°F
Wind: 0mph NE
Humidity: 90%
Pressure: 30.1"Hg
UV index: 0
MonTueWed
79/54°F
77/54°F
82/57°F
Weather forecast Kingston, New York ▸

Ulster County COVID-19 Active Cases

Subscribe

Independent. Local. Substantive. Subscribe now.

  • Subscribe & Support
  • Sign up for Free Newsletter
  • Print Edition
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Contact
  • Manage HV1 Account

© 2022 Ulster Publishing

No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Featured Events
      • Art
      • Books
      • Kids
      • Lifestyle & Wellness
      • Food & Drink
      • Music
      • Nature
      • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
    • Editorials
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Help Wanted
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Podcast
  • Subscribe & Support
  • Contact Us
    • Customer Support
    • Advertise
    • Submit A News Tip
  • Print Edition
    • Read ePaper Online
    • Newsstand Locations
    • Where’s My Paper
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Manage HV1 Account
  • Log In

© 2022 Ulster Publishing