The Art of Fact by Kevin Kerrane
Published 1997 · 95,000 words · about 8 hours at an average pace · Journalism & Reportage
How hard is The Art of Fact to read?
The Art of Fact scores 34 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 55 out of 100
- Clear practitioner prose; each included writer uses their own accessible voice.
- Sentence structure: 48 out of 100
- Abstraction: 63 out of 100
- Craft reflection is concrete and experience-based rather than theoretically abstract.
- Information density: 70 out of 100
- Each selection delivers concentrated insight on a specific aspect of journalistic craft.
- Narrative indirection: 14 out of 100
- Writers describe their methods directly; editorial framing is explicit.
- Symbolic density: 100 out of 100
- Practitioners discuss symbolic meaning as a quality of their subjects, not their criticism.
- Ironic distance: 14 out of 100
- Some writers adopt wry tones, but the anthology's framing is earnest.
- Resolution withholding: 12 out of 100
- Each reflection reaches clear conclusions about the craft question it addresses.
- Structural complexity: 30 out of 100
- Thematically organized sections with brief editorial introductions.
How The Art of Fact is regarded
The Art of Fact holds a literary regard score of 60 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.