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Biography
American

Janet Malcolm

1934 — 2021

Janet Malcolm was a Czech-born American journalist and non-fiction writer whose The Journalist and the Murderer (1990), In the Freud Archives (1984), and The Silent Woman (1994) are among the most important works of American literary non-fiction. Her famous opening sentence — 'Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible' — defines the ethical problem at the heart of all non-fiction writing.

Past sales0
PeriodModern
NationalityAmerican
1. Biography

A short life of the author

Janet Malcolm (1934–2021) was born Jana Wienerová on 8 July 1934 in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Her family emigrated to the United States in 1939. She joined The New Yorker in 1966 and was a staff writer there for the rest of her career.

Life and Career

The Journalist and the Murderer (1990) — about the relationship between the journalist Joe McGinniss and the convicted murderer Jeffrey MacDonald — is the essential text on the ethics of non-fiction writing. Its opening sentence — claiming that the relationship between journalist and subject is inherently exploitative — launched a debate that has never been resolved.

In the Freud Archives (1984) — about a scandal in the psychoanalytic establishment — The Silent Woman (1994) — about the competing biographies of Sylvia Plath — and Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice (2007) — about Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas — are masterworks of non-fiction that are also meditations on the impossibility of knowing the truth about other people.

Major Works and Themes

Malcolm wrote about the ethics of representation — about what happens when writers make other people’s lives into narratives. Every book is simultaneously a work of reportage and a philosophical investigation into the nature of truth-telling.

Key Works

  • The Journalist and the Murderer (1990)
  • The Silent Woman (1994)

Collecting Malcolm

The Journalist and the Murderer first edition (Knopf, 1990) brings $30–$60. The New Yorker contributors’ copies and inscribed copies are particularly sought. Malcolm died in 2021.