From the February 14, 1972 issue of New York Magazine.
I. The Feature Game
I doubt if many of the aces I will be extolling in this
story went into journalism with the faintest notion of creating a
"new" journalism, a "higher" journalism, or even a mildly
improved variety. I know they never dreamed that anything they were going to
write for newspapers or magazines would wreak such evil havoc in the literary
world . . . causing panic, dethroning the novel as the number one literary
genre, starting the first new direction in American literature in half a
century . . . Nevertheless, that is what has happened. Bellow, Barth,
Updike—even the best of the lot, Philip Roth—the novelists are all out there
ransacking the literary histories and sweating it out, wondering where they now
stand. Damn it all, Saul, the Huns have arrived. . .