Volume 5, Number 2 · August 26, 1965
Parajournalism, or Tom Wolfe & His Magic Writing Machine
By Dwight MacDonald
The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby
by Tom Wolfe
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 339 pp., $5.50
A new kind of journalism is being born, or spawned. It might be called 'parajournalism,' from the Greek para, 'beside' or 'against': something similar in form but different in function. As in parody, from the parodia, or counter-ode, the satyr play of Athenian drama that was performed after the tragedy by the same actors in grotesque costumes. Or paranoia ('against beside thought') in which rational forms are used to express delusions. Parajournalism seems to be journalism—'the collection and dissemination of current news'—but the appearance is deceptive. It is a bastard form, having it both ways, exploiting the factual authority of journalism and the atmospheric license of fiction. Entertainment rather than information is the aim of its producers, and the hope of its consumers.
Review, 4422 words
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