'Novels' by Journalists

Reading Euclides Da Cunha's Backlands, an account of the War of Canudos, which is basically when the army moving in against Peasants (led by a Preacher) in North eastern Brazil.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Canudos

There is a lot that feels novelistic: the writing around the setting, with its breathtaking descriptions of nature, and how that is re-created by the weather and ecology (and how that has been further intensified by men's actions, an incredible book to read at a time of climate change).

Da Cunha's takes iffy theories on psychology, race, Darwinism to draw up a picture of the Canudos...which is even before we get to the battles (I am under halfway through)...but here he is displaying his reading and trying to use that to interpret and enrich the narrative, like a few classic novelists from the 19th century with would.

Looked in the archive and didn't see a thread like it, but I was wondering there must be a lot of these. I am looking for ones where that combination comes from someone who is parimarily a journalist who then uses narrative techniques and the book feels like a novel, more than a non-fiction book

Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger is, presuming based in reality, a pretty alarming treatment of Indian corruption and social disparity circa 10-15 years ago (how true it remains I'd be curious to find out about). A rare case of reading a Booker winner, a rarer case of it being quite good

Oh but I see...you mean accounts of literal history written in a fictional style. Hmm

Things that happened, that the person is witness to, so not a historical novel

Yes. The White Tiger is a borderline case, feels like an anonymisation and collation of various things Adiga was witness to into a single narrative. Curious to see what other examples people can come up with

Janet Malcolm specialized in this sort of thing.

I always think of Norman Mailer as popularizing the idea of the nonfiction novel.

Truman Capote's In Cold Blood is also usually mentioned.

Oh, I see. I was going to say Renata Adler "Speedboat" but you're more thinking of like Truman Capote? except if he was a journalist?

xp

I'm not sure if Didion's Salvador is novelistic enough to fall into this category, but it felt that way to me.

John Hersey's Hiroshima, first published in a single 1946 issue of The New Yorker (with no headsup to US Gov) in book form two months later, has always been considered a classic of The New Journalism, but reads to me more like a documentary somehow whole on the page. with that cinematic quality so many have tried for. tracking six interview subjects through this city built around the confluence of six(? several, anyway) on the day of the blast and several days after---but doesn't have much in the way of dialogue or verbatim quotes; more, "As she looked around, she realized--" Cinematic in terms of granular detail and concentrated narrative, with no stylistic distractions. I want to read the 1980s second edition, in which. he reengages with his interviewees and the city.
Also want to read this!

peración Masacre (English: "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.[1] It was published in 1957, nine years before the publication of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, a book often credited as the first major nonfiction novel of investigative journalism.[2]
Structure

The book is divided into three sections: in the first, Walsh provides portraits of the victims of the shooting; in the second, he reconstructs the events of the night in question; in the third, he shares testimonies from the head of the Buenos Aires Province Police, among others, that unequivocally betray the complicity of the de facto State and make a case for the unlawful and disgraceful execution of the men in question.

The most recent editions of the book in Spanish and English also include additions (listed as "Appendices") to the text written by Walsh for the various editions of the book that came out after its first publication in 1957.

The book details the José León Suárez massacre, which involved the June 9, 1956 unlawful capture and shooting by the Buenos Aires Province Police of a group of civilians suspected of being involved with a Peronist uprising that same night, including the rebel leader General Juan José Valle. Walsh claims that the men were arrested before the establishment in that very same night of the martial law and that they also were never properly charged, therefore they were unlawfully shot.

(Aren't you supposed to get a trial if you're charged and before you're shot, even under martial law? Not necessarily so?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operaci%C3%B3n_Masacre

...city built around the confluence..." of rivers, I meant, sorry.
Hiroshima's documentary associations also remind me of Jack London's memoirs The Road and People Of The Abyss, with at least one edition of the latter incl. JL's apt photographs.

"reads to me more like a documentary somehow whole on the page" than like a novel, I meant, with no dialogue or direct quotes, as we expect more in a novel.

I'm reluctant to bring Tom Wolfe into this, but it's the journalistic research and factual details that are their greatest strength.

Yeah, but also the way he deploys all that. especially in terms of timing, as he may have learned from In Cold Blood, having observed:

"The book is neither a who-done-it nor a will-they-be-caught, since the answers to both questions are known from the outset ... Instead, the book's suspense is based largely on a totally new idea in detective stories: the promise of gory details, and the withholding of them until the end."[42]

In 1995 the US composer Mikel Rouse released Failing Kansas, a one-person opera using live vocals and video that retells the story using transcripts and testimony from the original case as well as fragments of verse and songs by Robert W. Service, Thomas Gray and Perry Edward Smith

Thanks v much for the replies, everyone. I'd say I am mostly getting writers who are v ambitious novelists, this sort of "New Journalism" where the journo is part of the story in some way?

In Backlands it feels like Da Cunha puts some distance but I am still reading it and don't know how this will shape up. I actually need to read the intro to the book as well.

Reading Backlands at a time where this is happening...

The #Amazon is being transformed from lush #forest into charcoal. The #rainforest is burning faster than ever before, with a record number of #fires. #Heatwaves and #droughts have turned the region into a barrel of gunpowder, just waiting for natural or unnatural ignition. pic.twitter.com/Y0TOFPw0oT

— Peter Dynes (@PGDynes) August 30, 2024

I was wild for Shot in the Heart by Mikal Gilmore (about brother Gary) when I read the paperback in the 90s, but I suspect it’s a book that only an 18 year old could love