Editor’s Corner
November 20, 2009
Bare(ly) narrative
By
Andrea Pitzer
Literary language is a hallmark of narrative journalism, but powerful stories can also emerge when reporters take a bare-bones approach that verges on a straight news style.
These stories often make minimal use of the detailed scenes common to storytelling, but sneak a corner seat at the narrative family table because they unfold chronologically or have a clear beginning, middle, and end.
In the current Notable Narrative, Newsday’s “Fallout,” which recounts the exposure of Marshall Islanders to radiation from a hydrogen bomb, the use of archival material is key to the narrative structure. The simple chronology works on two levels. We follow the official government narrative from years before; but we watch it with modern eyes. Current testimony from the islanders further discounts America’s Cold War view of them.
T.A. Frank takes a slightly more personal approach in “Confessions of a Sweatshop Inspector,” which appeared in Washington Monthly in 2008. Frank describes his experience as a hired gun investigating overseas factories for American companies like Wal-Mart, which fret over public links to sweatshops.
Frank opens with a lone attempt at elegance, describing how at one factory “where metals were being chemically treated, workers squatted at the edge of steaming pools as if contemplating a sudden, final swim.” The rest of the essay is a simply written look at how inspectors can and can’t help ensure ideal labor practices, as well as why we ought to consider what requirements we demand of various companies. His willingness to tell tales on himself and recount how companies were able to snooker him draws us further in. His tone creates a narrative version of “just the facts, ma’am.”
A 2007 Notable Narrative from The New York Times, “When Pennies Fail to Pay the Bill, a Bronx Man Pushes for Change,” takes a similar tack. Manny Fernandez tells a complete story, in less than 800 words, of a dispute over using pennies at a restaurant. There are some clever turns of phrase, but the energy of the narrative rises out of many things left unsaid in Fernandez’s simple record of the incident and its aftermath. When former Digest editor Nell Lake first included the story on this site, she noted that on a very tight schedule, Fernandez managed to tell a “crazy tale of class, race and community—without ever using those words.”
Any of these story concepts could have worked as traditional extended narratives, told in scenes embedded more deeply in the subjective experiences of a central figure. But facing constraints of time, venue or access, these reporters used a spare approach to story. Outlining the facts in intriguing ways offers a peek into other worlds on issues of tremendous relevance to us all, even when it is barely narrative.