Among Janet Malcolm’s many memorable sentences, the one whose repetition wearied her opened a two-part article that was published by the New Yorker magazine in March 1989. The piece’s title was The Journalist and the Murderer and in the following year it appeared as a book – one of several by Malcolm, who has died of lung cancer aged 86, that warned readers of narrative nonfiction, especially journalism and biography, that the truth was never simple; that it wasn’t buried conveniently like treasure, to be discovered and faithfully recounted by some sufficiently inquisitive and all-knowing narrator; that everything was subjective, fluid and incomplete. Featuring the real-life lawsuit of Jeffrey MacDonald, a convicted murderer, against Joe McGinniss, the author of Fatal Vision. 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. One Saudi dissident living in exile compared the administration’s actions to convicting a man of murder, but then allowing him to walk out of court. In the Freud Archives. Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0394538692. Reissued in 2002 with an afterword by Janet Malcolm by New York Review Books. ISBN 9781590170274

The Journalist and the Murderer Summary | SuperSummary

Announcing the National Book Critics Awards Finalists for Publishing Year 2013". National Book Critics Circle. January 14, 2014 . Retrieved January 14, 2014. Janet Malcolm’s The Journalist and the Murderer (1990) is, among other things, a polemic assailing several kinds of naivety about the dubious relationship between a journalist and their subject. Moral naivety, most famously: what journalists do – gain and then betray their subject’s confidence – is “morally indefensible”, as Malcolm puts it in her notorious opening sentence. But the book also takes aim at literary naivety. Journalists are like novelists with their hands tied by reality: they need good characters just as badly but, since they can’t invent them, they must find them “ready-made”, scouted from “a small group of people of a certain rare, exhibitionistic, self-fabulising nature”. The journalist themselves, meanwhile, “is almost pure invention”: “Superman” to the real writer’s “Clark Kent”, an “over-reliable narrator”. Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, told NPR that the report could complicate relations in the future. “I am sure it is not going to make things easier,” she said. 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. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse. Like the credulous widow who wakes up one day to find the charming young man and all her savings gone, so the consenting subject of a piece of nonfiction writing learns—when the article or book appears— his hard lesson. Journalists justify their treachery in various ways according to their temperaments. The more pompous talk about freedom of speech and “the public’s right to know”; the least talented talk about Art; the seemliest murmur about earning a living. Adelson, Joseph (September 27, 1981). "Not Much Has Changed Since Freud". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved April 30, 2019.

On June 16, 2021, Janet Malcolm died of lung cancer at the age of 86 at a Manhattan hospital. [6] Works [ edit ] Non-fiction [ edit ]

The Journalist and the Murderer: Malcolm, Janet The Journalist and the Murderer: Malcolm, Janet

Purchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from Bookshop.org, who support independent bookshops In the published Fatal Vision, McGinniss depicted MacDonald as a "womanizer" and a "publicity-seeker", [14] as well as a sociopath who, unbalanced by amphetamines, had murdered his family. But to Malcolm, MacDonald in person seemed sturdy, unremarkable, and incapable of such a crime. [15] McGinniss drew upon the works of a number of social critics, including the moralist Christopher Lasch, to construct a portrait of MacDonald as a "pathological narcissist." [16] Italie, Hillel (June 17, 2021). "Janet Malcolm, provocative author-journalist, dies at 86". Associated Press . Retrieved June 17, 2021. Her book is a work of journalism as well as an essay on journalism: it at once exemplifies and dissects its subject. In her interviews with the leading and subsidiary characters in the MacDonald-McGinniss case — the principals, their lawyers, the members of the jury, and the various persons who testified as expert witnesses at the trial — Malcolm is always aware of herself as a player in a game that, as she points out, she cannot lose. The journalist-subject encounter has always troubled journalists, but never before has it been looked at so unflinchingly and so ruefully. Hovering over the narrative — and always on the edge of the reader’s consciousness — is the MacDonald murder case itself, which imparts to the book an atmosphere of anxiety and uncanniness.A seminal work and examination of the psychopathology of journalism. Using a strange and unprecedented lawsuit by a convicted murder againt the journalist who wrote a book about his crime, Malcolm delves into the always uneasy, sometimes tragic relationship that exists between journalist and subject. a b c d Seelye, Katharine Q. (June 17, 2021). "Janet Malcolm, Provocative Journalist With a Piercing Eye, Dies at 86". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved June 17, 2021. While Khashoggi had been assured by Saudi officials that he would be safe inside the consulate’s walls, details later emerged – pieced together through recording and other evidence gathered by Turkish authorities – that described how a team of Saudi agents, who had arrived in Istanbul on state-owned planes for the intended purpose of killing the journalist – subdued, killed and then dismembered Khashoggi using a bone saw.

Jamal Khashoggi: All you need to know about Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi: All you need to know about Saudi journalist

I'm not sure why it took me this long to finally read this classic, brief book on the ethics of the journalist-subject relationship. This was a book mentioned often by my professors when I was in journalism school, but only now (through the course of research for a PhD program I'm in) did I get a chance to read it. Roiphe, Katie (September 23, 2007). "Portrait of a Marriage". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved June 18, 2021. The news story gets big. MacDonald goes on a talk show and acts like everything is fine, which is weird because his family literally just died. MacDonald hires noted inside scoop lover Joe McGinniss to write a book about his upcoming court case, giving McGinniss access to the entire defense team and experience. McGinniss signs a contract saying he can write what he wants as long as he maintains MacDonald's personal integrity. While preparing the case, MacDonald and McGinniss become best friends with homoerotic undertones. It's uncomfortable. Malcolm's second husband was long-time New Yorker editor Gardner Botsford, [5] a member of the family that had originally funded The New Yorker. [8] The author of A Life of Privilege, Mostly: A Memoir, [36] Botsford died at age 87 in September 2004. [37] Death [ edit ] In 1975, three years after her husband died, Malcolm married her editor at the New Yorker, Gardner Botsford. That same year, she began to develop her trademark writing voice, while attempting to quit smoking; believing she couldn’t write without cigarettes, she distracted herself by working on a long piece on family therapy, titled The One-Way Mirror. By the time she had finished, she could write without smoking – and had found her voice.In the MacDonald-McGinniss case we have an instance of a journalist who apparently found out too late (or let himself find out too late) that the subject of his book was not up to scratch -- not suitable for a work of nonfiction, not a member of the wonderful race of auto-fictionalizers, like Joseph Mitchell's Joe Gould or Truman Capote's Perry Smith, on whom the New Journalism and the 'nonfiction novel' depend for their life. MacDonald was simply a guy like the rest of us, with nothing to offer but a tedious and improbable story about his innocence of a bad crime." Randolph, Eleanor (August 5, 1989). "New Yorker Libel Suit Dismissed". Washington Post . Retrieved April 10, 2023. 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." Malcolm, Janet (1981). Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession. Jason Aronson. ISBN 978-1-56821-342-2. Chekhov, Anton (2018). The Lady with the Little Dog and Other Stories. Translated by Constance Garnett; selected, with a preface by Janet Malcolm. riverrun.