[In the following essay, Arico examines the meeting of journalistic and novelistic techniques in Fallaci's Niente e così sia.]

Although Oriana Fallaci is best known as a political interviewer, she is also recognized as an ardent practitioner of New Journalism. According to the critic James C. Murphy, this innovative approach allows the journalist's opinions, ideas, and commitments to permeate the story. Correspondents become so intensely involved that they attack their assignments with missionary zeal. Murphy refers to this subjectivity as activism in news reporting. Fallaci's effort to write Niente e così sia (Nothing and Amen), her report of the war in Vietnam, is a classic example of such activism. The personal nature of her account runs counter to more conventional journalistic objectivity, and her bias colors the narration. Her anti-American and pro-Vietcong feelings are a matter of public record, but during her stay in wartorn Vietnam, Fallaci's perceptions undergo a noticeable transition and this change develops into one of the most interesting aspects of her book. The zeal with which she embraces her assignment is obvious. She spends nearly a year on location, compulsively covering dangerous situations, interviewing fighting men at the bloody conflict in Dak To, flying on a bombing mission in order to experience a pilot's emotions during combat, and almost losing her life during the battle of Hue. Indeed, Fallaci's absorption in her professional pursuits consumes her so completely that any comparison with traditional reporting appears misleading.

Departing from customary methods of gathering data, Oriana Fallaci practices a distinct type of writing. Murphy points out that some scholars consider New Journalism to be a literary genre. Such an interpretation sees the writer's exposé as more than just a forum for viewing and experiencing incidents through the medium of her own individuality; it is also nonfictional prose that uses the resources of fiction. Her work stands as a classic example of what Seymour Krim labels "journalit" and classifies as the de facto literature of our times. In his article "The New Confusion," William L. Rivers proposes that writings in this modernistic style add "a flavor and a humanity to journalistic writing that push it into the realm of art." Fallaci's virtue as a writer lies precisely in showing the possibility of something strikingly different in journalism and in furthering efforts to replace earlier types of fiction with a new brand of literature. Her total immersion in the Vietnamese conflict explains a large part of the popularity that her book attracted. Her writing exerts, however, an even greater impact when she elevates factual statements to artistic invention, demonstrating that it is possible to write accurate nonfiction while using literary devices such as traditional dialogues and stream-of-consciousness.

In 1972, Tom Wolfe hailed New Journalism's replacement of the novel as literature's main event and detailed the historical development of this movement. According to Wolfe, authors like Truman Capote (In Cold Blood), Gay Talese (Honor Thy Father), Norman Mailer (Armies of the Night), and John Sack (M) write journalistic novels, using the same techniques that gave the literature of social realism its impact. Discovering the joys and power of faithful portrayal, these writers applied their new knowledge to the richest terrain of the novel—the manners and customs of society. Wolfe points out that in the 1960s journalists began employing the techniques of realism—particularly those of Fielding, Smollett, Gogol, Balzac, and Dickens. "By trial and error, by 'instinct' rather than theory, journalists began to discover the devices that gave the realistic novel its unique power, variously known as its 'immediacy,' its 'concrete reality,' its 'emotional involvement,' its 'gripping' or 'absorbing quality.'" Wolfe proposes that this extraordinary dynamism derives its force from just four devices: scene-by-scene construction, full record of dialogue, third-person point of view, and the portrayal of everyday details in the lives of people to round out character development.

Although Fallaci makes use of the literary conventions of mood development, interviews, character portrayal, satire, and humor, she mainly relies on the four techniques of realism that Wolfe summarizes. By doing so, she changes what would have been an objective record of an armed conflict into a fresh form of art. According to Wolfe, the first characteristic that sets dramatic fiction apart from documentaries is scene-by-scene construction. The writer relates a series of events by moving from one situation to another, resorting as little as possible to sheer historical narrative. Although novelists have relied heavily on this method, its role in classical journalism has been minor. In the new style, however, background building is paramount to storytelling; it eliminates any similarity to detailed documents; it explains, too, why journalists undertake extraordinary feats in order to obtain the information needed to construct a scenario.

The first scene that Fallaci describes is one that takes place after her arrival in Saigon on 18 November 1967. She uses the classical approach of juxtaposing sights that catch her attention en route from the airport to her hotel. At the Than Son Nhut terminal, she indicates the setting's main features: "Jet fighters, helicopters with heavy machine guns, trailers loaded with napalm bombs, stood in line with unhappy-looking American soldiers." She notes salient aspects of the countryside on the way to Saigon: "Guarding the road leading into town were sandbag fortifications surrounded by barbed-wire fences and ending in turrets with rifles sticking out." The author next concentrates on the vital signs of life in the city itself and highlights jeeps full of American soldiers, trucks with cannons leveled, convoys carrying ammunition boxes, rickshaws plunging into traffic and swiftly pedaling on, water sellers scurrying about, their merchandise swinging from bamboo sticks across their shoulders, minute women in long dresses, their loose hair waving beyond their shoulders like black veils, bicycles, motorcycles, shoe-shine boys, and filthy, reckless taxicabs.

Fallaci reveals surprise at not immediately seeing the full impact of the war, and her commentary reinforces her technique of accumulation. "There was a chaos almost gay in this Saigon in November of 1967…. It seemed more like a postwar period: the markets filled with food, the jewelry shops stocked with gold, the restaurants open and all that sunshine." The tranquil atmosphere at the hotel creates the impression of a relaxed city that is oblivious to its country's agony: "Even the elevator, the telephone, the fan on the ceiling were working, and the Vietnamese waiter was ready to respond to any gesture you might make, and on the table there was always a bowl of fresh pineapple and mangoes." One final observation summarizes her overall impression: "Dying didn't occur to you."

Fallaci uses the same procedure as she constructs the scene at Battery 25 when she visits an army chaplain, Father Bill. The besieged outpost occupies a barren plateau surrounded by North Vietnamese positions and receives a steady barrage from enemy artillery. "On the bare earth, all you could see were artillery posts, five or six trenches and a hundred dirty soldiers who needed a shave." Father Bill, who regularly enters the encircled area by helicopter in order to minister to the men's spiritual needs, explains that the North Vietnamese, who occupy all the surrounding hills, bombard the American position with mortars twice a day and attack it once a week. The priest quickly prepares an altar by placing a cardboard box on two empty howitzer shells. The recruits assemble in the open space and Mass begins, lasting for about twenty minutes. During that time, two Phantoms drop napalm ten kilometers to the southeast, causing black clouds to darken the blue sky. Farther away to the northeast, cannons thunder. There is, however, absolute quiet at Battery 25, where Father Bill raises his cardboard beaker, calling on the Lord and leading the men in prayer. "All this took place in the most complete serenity, the most absolute silence. In the same silence the boys got up, stood in line, and Father Bill gave them communion: laying little hosts like peppermints on their tongues."

In her personal reflections, Fallaci wonders incredulously why the North Vietnamese did not fire during the service. Since they are able to see clearly the American position with or without field glasses, the writer concludes that enemy gunners chose not to initiate action until the men had finished their prayers. "It seems absurd, I know, but I think they really did want that, because as soon as Mass was over, when Father Bill had hardly put away his crucifix and his jars, the first mortar fire fell. Right into the camp."

The re-creation of scenery and atmosphere is central to Fallaci's technique. Her mimetic ability and talent for acute description enable her readers to receive as full an experience of the war as possible, short of actual, physical presence. The portrayals of Than Son Nhut Airport, Saigon, Dak To, Battery 25, and many other locations bring people and situations alive in a way that makes conventional journalism seem bloodless. Fallaci differs from traditional reporters, who have also been writing anecdotes for years, by her literary technique of building scenes, which she does throughout the book.

The second technique of realism that Wolfe identifies as part of journalistic literature is fully recounting a dialogue. The skilled novelist allows characters to develop action, plot, and personalities in free colloquial exchanges rather than in descriptions or explanations. This device also defines each protagonist quickly, efficiently catches the reader's attention, and creates a sense of proximity to what occurs in the story. Fallaci capitalizes on this tactic by having her subjects' words carry great portions of the story and by developing their uniqueness through these conversations or simple monologues.

Immediately after her arrival in Vietnam, Fallaci made arrangements to go to Dak To. During her first night there, a mortar attack forced her to seek safety in one of the bunkers on Hill 1383. Although it was a light bombardment that lasted an hour, she had time to listen to a group of soldiers conversing about draft dodging. The journalist's restatement of this conversation casts a new light on the character of many soldiers, as well as their real attitude toward the conflict:

"You see, he told me he had to take care of his mother and so he managed to stay in Los Angeles and built himself a swimming pool."

"Well, Jack was even smarter."

"What did he do?"

"He started drinking and drank himself into an ulcer, so they turned him down because of the ulcer."

"Roll on the ulcers!"

According to one of the men, his friend Howard was the most skillful at obtaining a deferment:

"When they asked him if he liked girls he said: 'Goodness no, everyone knows I go for boys.'"

"Is he a queer?"

"Of course not. You crazy? But if you say you're queer, they turn you down flat, didn't you know?"

"No, dammit. Suppose I said it now?"

"Too late, buster. You should have thought of it sooner. I should've, too."

During the battle of Dak To, the North Vietnamese controlled most areas around the American positions and shelled them day and night. Most of the firing came from Hill 875, which seemed impregnable. Any attempts to overrun the enemy emplacement resulted in failure and major casualties. American soldiers whom the North Vietnamese had pinned down there were accidentally bombed by their own aircraft trying to dislodge the opposition. When help finally arrived, the full impact of losses became evident. Fallaci's recordings catch the anguish and depression of the wounded as they are prepared for evacuation. One of them grabs her, laughing hysterically: "The order was to take the hill. Take the damned hill! But we couldn't, you see, we couldn't!" Another, half naked, shakes and stomps around, slapping his forehead, sobbing: "I hate them! I hate you! You bastards! You pigs!" Others try to calm him and lead him off to sick bay, but they cannot. A black man sits quietly eating a bowl of soup and weeping as he recalls the heaps of dead after that bomb: "You didn't know where to go, you didn't know where to hide. You slept with the corpses. I slept under Joe. He was dead, but he kept me warm. Give me a cigarette. Have you ever slept under a corpse that kept you warm?."

The soldiers in camp 1383 had received the brunt of the attack and, in many cases, fell victim to depression in these trying circumstances. Fallaci captures the men's intense agony and frustration by simply restating their words. A young Puerto Rican from New York vents his despair. He neither knows what communism is nor understands why he should fight for the benefit of a distant nation in southeast Asia. "I don't know what the hell this communism is and I don't give a damn and I don't give a damn about these fucking Vietnamese. Let them fight communism themselves. There's not a single South Vietnamese here." When a corporal tries to silence him, the soldier not only angrily refuses to be still but also heatedly recalls his father's anger after he had volunteered. "And he was right! He said: 'You're a fool; let the rich boys go.' They never do, you know. My father's a workman and let me tell you something: it's always the sons of the working people that die in wars. Never the rich boys, never!"

Rather than describe each fighting man in concrete terms, Fallaci gives glimpses of their inner selves by relating their free and spontaneous statements. The writer is able to communicate a frame of mind by reporting revelations of their fullest and most intimate sort. This gives the narration its atmosphere of accessibility and nearness; it, together with scene construction, separates the writer's work from traditional journalism and makes it technically more like a novel.

According to Wolfe, seeing the world through someone else's eyes is the third characteristic of journalistic literature. Eye-witness accounts permit both Fallaci and the reader to experience sights from the vantage point of an observer. This slant avoids the limits of exclusivity invoked with a first-person perspective, and also generates a climate of intimacy through its full exposure of a character's mind and emotional life. Wolfe's term was "chameleon," i.e., taking on the coloration of whomever or whatever was being written about.

Most instances of this technique occur when François Pelou, director of France Presse, describes for Fallaci major events that she had not witnessed herself. During a conversation with him about Buddhist self-immolation, Fallaci expresses a desire to witness one. Her colleague reacts negatively to the request but then proceeds to describe a burning that took place in Saigon in July 1966, which he witnessed while he was on his way to a press conference. After hearing the noise of an explosion and seeing flames rising up, Pelou approached the fire and recognized a young monk in the flames, sitting with his legs crossed in the lotus position. "Around him there are kids playing, women crying, and two nuns who state emotionless. Though everybody seems to respect his decision, the traffic is hardly disturbed by the show."

Pelou attempts to save the burning victim who begins to move and twist with pain; fellow monks, however, block his efforts to aid the victim. Except for the covering of his shoulder, the victim's skin slips away from his arm and hand. After a nun places burning material back on the suffering person, Pelou quickly removes it once more, only to have it thrown back by the religious. "The whole thing is grotesque, this coming and going of burning clothes, while it's obvious that the poor monk has lost any will to die. Now he waves his hands, all his body clearly asking for help." Pelou and other newsmen eventually succeed in extinguishing the flames and getting the monk to a hospital, where he finally dies. This third-person point of view exposes the horrible suffering endured by the victim and also suggests the influence of chemical drugs and brainwashing to keep the individual resolved during burning. Pelou believes that no willpower on earth can keep a person standing still during such agony. "Not to mention another kind of drug—the one we call brainwashing. Get it into the head of a monk of seventy or a nun of seventeen that the destiny of Vietnam depends on his sacrifice and he'll agree to be roasted straight away."

In another conversation, Pelou expresses his thoughts on the insanity of dying in combat and his belief that incidentals frequently distract from an actual slaughter. He illustrates this with two anecdotes that deal with his experience as a Korean War correspondent. The first story deals with a heated engagement between a French battalion and North Korean units. Action began early in the morning and lasted until six in the evening. During the subsequent period of calm, Pelou interviewed a group of men. At a certain point, however, an artillery shell landed amidst these very soldiers. "It fell on them and the bodies shot out in pieces. A head in one place, a foot in another." Rather than experiencing grief at the sight of severed members, the journalist explains that his attention was caught by a helmet flying much higher than the heads or feet and completely absorbed him: "Up, up, up till it was nearly still and turned a somersault and came down in a spiral, down, down, till it hit the ground with a resounding thud."

The second incident occurred during the same period. After one particular battle, many of the dead remained exposed to the elements in subzero weather. Only after a few days could military personnel begin the grizzly task of retrieving frozen bodies. It was unbearably cold and the corpses were statues of ice, crystallized into absurd positions. Their awkward postures made it impossible to align them horizontally in containers. "You couldn't lay them out in a normal position, before putting them into the plastic bags. And so you were forced to bend the arms and legs till they broke like a glass—crack—and then you had to jump on the body and crush it well." Pelou explains how workers begin to perspire and how the sweat froze into snow on their faces. An unexpected detail again detracts from the morbid scene. One particular soldier appears relaxed and unruffled by his labor. "He wasn't working hard. In fact he didn't even try to stretch out their arms and legs; he just gave them a whack with a stick and that laid them out. And as he hit them, he sang: 'Mona Lisa … when you smile, Mona Lisa … I love you!'"

Third-person point of view considers reality through someone else's perceptions and exposes a person's intimate feelings. In the description of a Buddhist self-immolation, the reader is presented with Pelou's frantic attempts to save a human life and his frustration as all rescue attempts fail. Pelou's earlier experience permits him to formulate a personal philosophy of death. Nonetheless, the incidental details in his two Korean stories—a spiraling helmet, a soldier's failure to perspire like everyone else, and his irreverent song as he performs his horrible duty—distract from the actual fact of death, while simultaneously creating a surrealistic atmosphere of the macabre and absurd.

Wolfe refers to social autopsy as the fourth technique that distinguishes journalistic literature. The writer pays close attention to the minute manners and other trappings of a subject's life and, consequently, presents a comprehensive picture that communicates insight into personalities and situations. Symbolic details represent entire patterns of behavior and positions in the world. Recording of such incidentals is not embroidery; it contributes as much to the power of realism as any other literary device. It resembles third-person point of view because it also casts unexpected clarity on a character.

Fallaci's use of social autopsy takes various forms—brief informative details, humor, mood, portraits. She best utilizes this approach, however, when she paints a word picture of particular people whom she encounters. In each case, her sketch places emphasis on what she perceives as the character's principal trait. Physical features reinforce her observations, correspond directly to each person's inner spirit, and satirize obvious weaknesses.

The press officer at Dak To with limited intellectual vision: "He has a small ridiculous mustache on his dumb mouselike face and looks as if he'd been born in his helmet. Probably he sleeps in it." In his pants pocket, he keeps a box of color slides that he shows everyone: his girl in a nightgown and without it, naked, photographed while he was on leave in Honolulu. "Showing us the slides he scratches himself. How depressing to think that we shall have him around for most of the time."

The mysterious silence of François Pelou's accountant, Than Van Lang: "When you happen to look his way and see him, he comes as a surprise; he seems to have materialized that very moment." He never gets up, never speaks; he only writes with long, slim fingers and an old-fashioned pen that he dips in an inkwell. "The movement carrying the pen to the mouth of the inkwell is so strangely slow that it seems as if it weren't happening at all." Nothing upsets or bothers him; he shows no emotion, even in the face of death. "An invisible wall round his desk isolates him from us, and beyond that wall his eyes move only to look at François. Secretly, though, while the face remains impenetrable. A thin, yellow, ageless face."

General Loan, who has the reputation of being the cruelest individual in Vietnam: "The ugliest little man I had ever seen, with a tiny twisted head screwed on to his meager shoulders. The only thing you noticed about the face was the mouth—so large and so out of proportion." According to Fallaci, one looked directly down to the neck from the mouth because the chin fell away so fast that one wondered if it had existed. His eyes were not really eyes; they were eyelids that were scarcely visible through the slit. "The nose, on the other hand, was a nose but so flat it was lost in the cheeks, which were also flat. I looked at him and felt a kind of uneasiness."

The gross policeman dressed only in underwear who receives Fallaci and another journalist at central headquarters: "Fat, barefoot, sweating. He looked at us as if we were a couple of criminals, pulled up his pants and spat on the floor. Then he stood admiring the spittle, scratched himself down to his genitals and pushed us toward a desk."

Catherine, the French journalist whose false timidity camouflages an aggressive nature: "Catherine, with that little each-man-for-himself face of hers. I shall never understand that girl. You look at her and feel, immediately, that you want to protect her: so blonde, so worn, so tiny." A second glance, however, quickly changes the initial reaction. "You feel that you want to protect yourself—from her. Perhaps it's her eyes—pitiless, cold. Perhaps it's her fingers—large, knotty, always held forward like the claws of an eagle."

The impractical and mistaken patriotism of Barry Zorthian, director of the Joint United States Public Affairs Office of Vietnam and considered one of the most important men in Saigon: "Mr. Zorthian … has a large nose, a large belly, a large faith in this war, and an unshakable conviction that the United States must teach civilization to poor people who have never heard of democracy and technological progress."

The superficial and convenient Catholicism of the adoption agent Tran Ti Au, who takes Fallaci to an orphanage: "She has a pretty face of old ivory and owns a factory that makes chemical products, a house full of china and servants. She deals with adoptions and she looks like the charity ladies who think they'll get to heaven on bazaars and good works." Fallaci had gone to see her about adopting a child. When she informs her that she is neither a good Catholic nor a bad one, the lady seems irritated. When she hears that the writer has a chapel in her country home, however, she appears satisfied "as if someone with a chapel was automatically on the right side of the angels."

The highly intelligent American lieutenant Teaneck from Oklahoma who saved Fallaci's life at the Battle of Hue: "He has a wide, red, Indian face mixed with some other race—high cheekbones, thin nose, Asian cheeks." He does not fit the stereotype of the unthinking, ignorant foot soldier, who simply obeys without thinking. On the contrary, he labels Fallaci a liberal who has unfairly disparaged American soldiers in favor of the Vietcong. "It's one thing to take risks with a return ticket and another to take risks with a one-way ticket. Like me." He questions her fairness and justice, objecting to the journalist's partiality. "The fact of being in the war doesn't authorize you to despise us and respect them. Because when you escape, as you did today, you owe it to us mediocre men. To us Ugly Americans. To us who fire for your sake, to save your life and your conscience."

The coldness and impenetrability of Vietnam's president Cao Ky: "He's a Vietnamese like plenty of others, neither tall nor short, neither strong nor frail, and physically distinguished from the others only by a black mustache that stands out on his dark amber face." Fallaci sees his profile as unattractive and closed in by a sad, arrogant expression; his glance is direct but at the same time somber and melancholic. What he says, however, is greatly interesting to her and makes a profound impression. Ky is the only one on his side of the barricade "who dares admit he belongs to a powerless, inefficient, corrupt regime. I'm the only one who says the Americans are here not to defend us but to defend their own interests and set up a new colonialism."

Before her subjects even speak, Fallaci points out physical features that often indicate their personalities and provide a key to their emotional constitution. Scarcely a detail does not illuminate some point of their temperament. These clues, in combination with the writer's evaluations and comments, constitute the very essence of her literary portraits. The relentless and meticulous accumulation of these character profiles not only reveals Fallaci's private interpretations of each protagonist but also projects a comprehensive panorama of Vietnamese society during the war.

According to Seymour Krim, journalists enjoy a definite advantage in their attempts to re-create reality if they use every conceivable literary avenue open to them. Oriana Fallaci does so and particularly profits from the techniques of realism that Wolfe outlines. By observing the facts of a ruthless conflict and selecting them with an artist's touch, she captures the deeper half of reality, which old-time journalism excluded, and structures a narrative with skills that had always been associated with novels. If for some reason Fallaci had written a fictional sketch, changing names and location, she would have disgraced the reality of what she had seen. She ascertains, however, the veracity of all her data while simultaneously structuring her information in the manner of narrative prose writers. The result is a form that looks like fiction but unquestionably remains reportage. The impact of Niente e così sia lies in its portrayal of reality and the realization that its subject matter has not been imagined.

Oriana Fallaci combines her talent as a reporter and interviewer with a proven ability to write novels. The end result of her efforts, however, is not "fictional" literature. Such a label would suggest that the author has made up her story. It is true that Niente e così sia is indeed "imaginative," but that is not because Fallaci has distorted data but because she has presented them in a full manner instead of in the style of cold, clipped, factual newspaper journalism. She has brought out the sights, sounds, and feelings surrounding the raw material of her report, connecting them in an artistic manner that does not diminish but gives greater depth and dimension to the information.

Krim proposes that writers like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Wolfe, and Faulkner were "in the most radical sense reporters whose subject matter and vision were too hot or subtle or complicated or violent or lyrical or intractable or challenging for the mass media of their period." He proposes that twenty or thirty years ago writers of talent necessarily expressed themselves in fiction because only this form was able to bypass the narrow framework of journalism and provide a channel through which invented characters with made-up names in imagined situations could express their creators' world. Fallaci, however, takes part in a movement that reverses this trend. Her success lies precisely in the ability to communicate directly an investigation of the war in Vietnam as if she were writing a novel.

Fallaci accepts the ideal that art remains at all times the highest condition to which a person can aspire. In fact, she speaks openly of her burning desire to write novels after having dedicated so much of her life to the professional aspects of journalism. She projects the full weight of this desire and belief on the war in Vietnam, creating in the process an imaginative nonfiction that profits from acceptable literary techniques, especially those of social realism. In 1972, Tom Wolfe wrote: "I think there is a tremendous future for a sort of novel that will be called the journalistic novel or perhaps documentary novel, novels of intense social realism based upon the same painstaking reporting that goes into the New Journalism." Fallaci's Niente e così sia stands as a classic example of this imaginative truth writing—a genre as creative as fiction used to be, which uses the staples of the older art, in particular the four techniques outlined by Wolfe, when it needs or wants to, but expands them into deeper and more authentic worlds of contemporary reality.