Poison Penmanship

Description

Jessica Mitford was a member of one of England's most legendary families (among her sisters were the novelist Nancy Mitford and the current Duchess of Devonshire) and one of the great muckraking journalists of modern times. Leaving England for America, she pursued a career as an investigative reporter and unrepentant gadfly, publicizing not only the misdeeds of, most famously, the funeral business (The American Way of Death, a bestseller) and the prison business (Kind and Usual Punishment), but also of writing schools and weight-loss programs. Mitford's diligence, unfailing skepticism, and acid pen made her one of the great chroniclers of the mischief people get up to in the pursuit of profit and the name of good. Poison Penmanship collects seventeen of Mitford's finest pieces-about everything from crummy spas to network-TV censorship-and fills them out with the story of how she got the scoop and, no less fascinating, how the story developed after publication. The book is a delight to read: few journalists have ever been as funny as Mitford, or as gifted at getting around in those dark, cobwebbed corners where modern America fashions its shiny promises. It's also an unequaled and necessary manual of the fine art of investigative reporting.

Jessica Mitford (1917-1996) was the daughter of Lord and Lady Redesdale, and she and her famous five sisters and one brother grew up in isolation on their parents' Cotswold estate. Rebelling against her family, she became an outspoken Socialist and brilliant muckraking journalist, authoring many celebrated books. She died while working on a follow-up to The American Way of Death, for which, with characteristic humor, she proposed the title "Death Warmed Over." Jane Smiley is the author of many novels, including Good Faith, Horse Heaven, and A Thousand Acres, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992. Her most recent work is Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel.

For my part, I can't remember when I enjoyed a collection of journalism so much, or laughed out loud so often... It is also useful as, and intended to be useful as, a manual for doing the kind of journalism she did. Guardian Contains some of her finest work and is also a guide to becoming a top muckraker, complete with Mitford's list of essential qualities, such as 'an appetite for tracking and destroying the ennemy'. New Statesman "I wish I could point to some overriding social purpose in these articles." Mitford laments in her introduction. However the lack of an explicit agenda is part of the collection's appeal: these are articles written with a keen eye for injustice, but also with a great sense of personal passion, and a generous, exuberant wit. Observer Most collections of journalistic pieces barely warrant being bound in book form: this one (from 1979) with its wit and irrepressible ebullience, genuinely makes a convincing "classic" of a sort. Scotsman