What do journalism and literature have in common? The answer to this question is clear. Both deal with the human condition, about human life and human activities. Nothing more interesting or more attractive than writing or speaking about human affairs! Almost everyone is interested in human interest stories. Journalism is defined as, “The act of gathering and presenting news and information, though the term is also used to refer to the news and information itself. It is a type of storytelling that comes in many different forms and is a key component to a democratic society.” What is the purpose of journalism? It is to inform the public about events, issues and people that impact society.
In both definitions, the human element is most prominent because in the first definition, journalism is portrayed as being about storytelling and there is no story without the people who are behind the stories. In the second definition, journalism is about issues and people. These are key words that define the objective or purpose of journalism.
There are many definitions of literature and one of them says that, “Literature explores human experiences through language. Another definition says that, “Literature is the depiction of humanity and enables us to see the true colors of society.” According to the above arguments both journalism and literature have something in common and that is the centrality of human experience or human life.
There were various attempts to marry journalism to literature and create some hybrid form of literary journalism or journalistic literature if you like. Anyway, what is literary journalism? “Narrative journalism, also referred to as literary journalism is defined as creative nonfiction that contains accurate, well researched information. It is related to immersion journalism, where a writer follows a subject or theme for a long period of time and details an individual’s experience from a deeply personal perspective.”
The difference between literary journalism and literature proper is rather easy to identify. Literary journalism is the use of literary devices in order to report about real events or human activities. Literary journalism is based on true events while literature is basically fictional, inventive or creative. Literary journalism is therefore the use of the techniques of creative writing narrative art such as characters, plot development, setting or description in order to report about events that have taken place in reality.
The characters in fiction are invented by the author while those in literary journalism are real life personalities. The plot in literary journalism consists of the way the story is told or how the story begins reaches mid-point and concludes through denouement or conclusion. This is also the way fictional narratives begin and end. There is a story opening, conflict, midpoint and then conclusion. The difference between the two genres is as we said above, is that the first deals with imagined events and imagined characters while the second deals with real life events. American journalist Tom Wolfe, who was both a journalist and a fiction writer, used this kind of literary journalism as the cornerstone of what he called “The New Journalism”.
“In 1973, Wolfe published an essay he entitled “The New Journalism”, in which he explained the features of the genre. He went on to write several successful books in the style of the New Journalism. Many literary critics agree that the father of New Journalism was rather a fiction writer called Stephen Crane, author of a famous book called “The Red Badge of Courage” which a war novel written in the style of literary journalism.
The author wrote the book without being present or without visiting a war front and invented the characters and events in such a way that they all looked plausible or a true portrait war by someone who was at many war fronts. According to these same critics, Tom Wolfe simply popularized the notion or idea of literary journalism and made it into a kind theory that was famous among literary scholars around the same period. As we said above, this writing style was popular for a limited period of time and then its popularity waned and disappeared without gaining widespread acclaim or following although it was given as a subject in literary departments of many universities in the United States.
The close relationship between journalism and literature might also be the factor behind the emergence of literary journalism as a style. The distance between writers and journalists is not very wide. Many famous writers in America for instance started their careers as journalists and then switched to fiction as soon as they discovered their talents by exercising traditional journalism. the best example is Ernest Hemingway, who was first a reporter for the “the Toronto Star” newspaper in Canada and then became a war reporter in Europe and at last a famous author who used his experiences of war and life in Europe to produce such literary classics as “The Sun Also Rises”, a book based on bullfighting in Spain, “For Whom the Bell Tolls” based on his experience of the civil war in Spain and others. He was later on awarded the Novel prize for his literary productions.
When we look at the situation in Ethiopia, we unfortunately realize that literary journalism or journalistic literature was virtually unknown and has never been practiced by anyone of our famous journalists or authors. The golden age of Ethiopian literature came in the 1970s that is to say after the 1974 Revolution. Famous writers in Amharic, such as Be’alu Girma, Berhanu Zerihun, Dagnachew Worku and others who produced meaningful fiction during that period were not stylists. They were rather realistic narrators who were interested more in telling their stories and not how the story should be told.
If there was any style among them, it was Dagnachew Worku, author of “The Thirteenth Sun” which is narrated in the style of what was then known as the stream of consciousness style that was famous in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s and practiced in America by author like William Faulkner and others. This style might have picked up fashionable at that moment and Dagnachew who studied literature in Canada might have been acquainted with the style by reading Virginia Woolf and Faulkner during his literary sojourn in Canada.
Speaking of the natural close relation between literature and journalism, we might perhaps speak of Berhanu Zerihun and Be’alu Girma who were both journalists before they became writers in their won rights. Yet, it is impossible to detect any sign of literary journalism in their newspaper articles while they wrote novels in the style of literary realism. Although Be’alu studied journalism in America, he did not show any sign of literary journalism simply because the genre was not even invented when he was studying at the school of journalism.
Why do many journalists become fiction writers? The answer to this question is not difficult. In order to become a writer one has to read a lot of books fiction as well as non-fiction. Ethiopian journalists who started as reporters or feature writers later on turned to fiction simply because they had ample time to read books. They were writing and reading and this created a fertile ground for them to discover that they could write the books they have written. This comes naturally of course. It is in the process of reading and writing that people discover their talent. In a way, it would be true to say that books create writers or that there is no writing without reading.
Ethiopian literature in Amharic had produced notable writers in the period’s right before the revolution and after the revolution. Almost all the prominent writers of fiction have emerged in this period, with the exception of Haddis Alemayehu who produced his classic novel entitled “Love Unto Death” earlier in his career when he was the Ethiopian Ambassador in a number of European countries. It was at that time that he started writing his classic novel simply because he had ample time for such activity. Although he was exposed to European literature at that time, he did not show any kind of attraction to the literary styles of the time although some critics argued at that time that his novel was inspired by Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables”. There is however no strong evidence to support this argument.
Judging it even by African standards, I believe Ethiopian literature in Amharic or any other language, sems still underdeveloped. Many African countries have produced a number of original styles such as Chinua Achebe from Nigeria and Ngugi wa Tiongo from Kenya. This may be due to the colonial cultural influence they were exposed earlier in their careers. Although they have no colonial cultural experience, Ethiopian writers could however study the literary styles of European and American writers in order to tell their stories. As critic say, in art or literature “the style is the person”.
Maybe most Ethiopian writers had no natural inclination for displaying their styles or they had no appetite for learning from foreign experiences. That is a pity because in any country, art and literature develop by borrowing from foreign experiences and styles. Magic Realism as a style was born in Columbia but it has now become a universally accepted and imitated literary device. Maybe the coming generation of Ethiopian authors would prove more open minded, inquisitive or curious to learn from other writers to develop their own styles.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD WEDNESDAY 6 NOVEMBER 2024
