Over the last few days, GalleyCat attended the The Art of Reportage in the 21st Century, a look at the future of literary journalism. The event focused on the life, work, and influence of Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, author of “The Emperor” and “The Soccer War (pictured).”
Here are a few of the many highlights: “If you asked a Polish mother in the 1950s and 60s what she wanted her son to be when he grew up, she would say a writer,” laughed Wiktor Osiatynski, a writer and close friend of Kapuscinski–talking about the unique literary environment that produced the journalist. “Would an American mother would want this kind of misery for her child?”
Long-form journalist Ted Conover (read his work here) read the audience this quote from an inspiring Granta interview with Kapuscinski: “Twenty years ago, I was in Africa, and this is what I saw: I went from revolution to coup d’e tat, from one war to another; I witnessed, in effect, history in the making, real history, contemporary history, our history. But I was also surprised: I never saw a writer. I never met a poet or a philosopher–even a sociologist. Where were they? Such important events, and not a single writer anywhere?”
Finally, longtime New Yorker staff writer and NYU professor Lawrence Weschler visited the Morning Media Menu to share his thoughts on literary journalism: “The great old editor William Shawn told me, ‘I don’t hire writers, I hire voices. You could always teach a voice to report, but it is much more difficult to teach a reporter to have a voice.’ It’s become more and more a touchstone of what I do, the insistence that a voice is there.”