LITERARY JOURNALISM: A New Collection of the...

LITERARY JOURNALISM: A New Collection of the Best American Non-Fiction edited by Norman Sims and Mark Kramer (Ballantine: $12.50; 467 pp., paperback original). In his introduction, Kramer maintains, “The defining mark of literary journalism is the personality of the writer, the individual and intimate voice of a whole candid person. . . .” Individual voices are clearly evident in this impressive anthology. Adrian LeBlanc tracks the tempestuous life of a crack-addicted teen-age prostitute in the Bronx; Ted Conover traces the spread of AIDS in central Africa along trucking routes; John McPhee discusses efforts to confine the Mississippi River. Many of these pieces originally appeared in the New Yorker, a reminder of just how special the magazine used to be before Tina Brown turned it into Vanity Fair redux.