Reviewed by Rita Radostitz

It would be easy to start a review of Robert Boynton’s The New New Journalism: Conversations with America’s Best Nonfiction Writers on Their Craft by complaining about the great journalist storytellers that he leaves out (Melissa Fay Greene, Erik Larson and Tracy Kidder immediately come to mind.)  But I have always hated book reviews that focus on what the book is not rather than what the book is. 

So here’s what the book is:  A great compilation of astute interviews with a group of reporters who are both masterful story tellers and brilliant writers.  The list includes Gay Talese, Alex Kotlowitz, Susan Orlean, Ted Conover, Eric Schlosser, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Richard Ben Cramer, Jane Kramer and others.

Boynton’s technique is to ask essentially the same questions to nineteen writers, all practitioners of what Tom Wolfe dubbed “new journalism.”  This leads to remarkably different responses to questions ranging from the significant to the prosaic, from “Can this type of journalism lead to truth?” to “What places do you find most conducive to interviews?” The questions may be the same, but the responses, as might be expected, are delightfully different. 

Boynton’s book is especially valuable for its detailed descriptions of the writers’ process.  Talese discloses that he keeps his interview notes on cut-up cardboard.  Conover tells of a drawer filled with files of story ideas that never went anywhere.  And LeBlanc reveals that during the decade she spent reporting what became Random Family, she sometimes left her tape recorder with the characters and let them record whatever they wanted.

The writers then unveil what comes next, and what comes after that -- how they take their material and craft it into a story.  Because no two writers describe the exact same routine – in fact, many describe diametrically disparate techniques-- it is the sum of the whole that is so fascinating.