"I'm not rational enough to be a good journalist"
About this Quote
The line lands like a confession and a flex at the same time: Harrison isn t apologizing for being messy; he s staking out a territory where mess is the point. "Not rational enough" reads as a refusal of journalism s ideal self-image, the cool-headed translator of reality into verified, balanced sentences. Harrison, a writer who made his name on appetite, contradiction, and the bodily facts of living, frames rationality as a temperament you either have or you don t. And if you don t, maybe you shouldn t pretend.
The subtext is a sly indictment of the job. Good journalism, in the civic-myth version, demands detachment, patience, and a faith that the world can be rendered legible through reporting. Harrison implies that the deeper truth he s after is not legibility but intensity: the way desire, anger, grief, lust, hunger, and awe actually drive people. That s not "irrational" as in sloppy; it s irrational as in unwilling to sand down experience into a neat storyline with sourced quotes and a neutral tone.
Context matters: Harrison came of age alongside New Journalism, when the wall between reporting and literary voice was already cracking. His remark recognizes that the cost of being "good" at journalism can be a kind of self-erasure, and he s choosing the opposite. It also carries a wary honesty about ego and ethics. If you know your instrument is temperament rather than objectivity, you might be less dangerous than the writer who mistakes his narrative hunger for the truth.
The subtext is a sly indictment of the job. Good journalism, in the civic-myth version, demands detachment, patience, and a faith that the world can be rendered legible through reporting. Harrison implies that the deeper truth he s after is not legibility but intensity: the way desire, anger, grief, lust, hunger, and awe actually drive people. That s not "irrational" as in sloppy; it s irrational as in unwilling to sand down experience into a neat storyline with sourced quotes and a neutral tone.
Context matters: Harrison came of age alongside New Journalism, when the wall between reporting and literary voice was already cracking. His remark recognizes that the cost of being "good" at journalism can be a kind of self-erasure, and he s choosing the opposite. It also carries a wary honesty about ego and ethics. If you know your instrument is temperament rather than objectivity, you might be less dangerous than the writer who mistakes his narrative hunger for the truth.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
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