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SPRING1979
Volume31,Number2
CLAS ZILLIACUS
Radical Naturalism:
First-Person
Literature
Documentary
IN THE MID-1960s fiction as an art form was under attack from
prose writers such as Truman Capote and Norman Mailer, from
dramatists such as Rolf Hochhuth and Peter Weiss, and from oral his-
torians such as Jan Myrdal and Studs Terkel. A number of catchwords
were attached to the new realism propagated by these writers: faction,
literature of fact, factography, documentary literature, documentarism.
The preoccupation with authentic source material, common to all docu-
mentarists, has tended to obscure the ways in which they differ from
one another, sometimes decisively. In the absence of a usable typology,
and in order to forestall undue generalization, I shall concentrate in
this essay on a documentary category which can be demarcated with
some confidence. Variously known as the "report," "reportorial litera-
ture," or "oral history," it attained prominence in the late 1960s and
early 1970s. Unlike so much documentary drama, it does not consist of
ready-mades; it is made. But the person on the cover is not so much the
author as those who talked to him or into his tape recorder. More often
than not it is partisan toward these people and has a professed eman-
cipatory intent. Its loyalties are extraliterary, but viewed from within
the field of literature it conflicts with fiction.
The report is accompanied by a distinct performative signal. That is,
what it offers is not a presentation of its author's imaginings but a rep-
resentation of reality, of unadulterated slices of life. Two antithetical
characteristics follow: an overriding realistic intent and the risk of a
vacuously authentic apparatus grinding out perspectiveless minutiae.
This conflict is much less recent than the resurgence of documentary
writing might lead us to expect: it is the crucial problem of naturalism.
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FIRST-PERSON DOCUMENTARY
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tended to make his fellow clubmen uneasy. His interests in social strata
were vertical to the point of subversiveness. As Raban observes, "People
didn't quite believe in Mayhew. They sensed in him a basic lack of con-
tinuity, as if he had carried bad faith to the point of moral principle"
(p. 69).
Viewed in its historical context Mayhew's undertaking was undoubt-
edly radical. Much of it is oddly consonant with the more recent report
activity to be considered here, but to it are prefixed a number of prem-
ises which distinguish him from recent reporters. For instance, his in-
vestigation is subheaded "A Cyclopaediaof the Condition and Earnings
of those that will work, those that cannot work, and those that will not
work." He regarded the human subjects of his cyclopaediaas a caste
rather than a class, as nomadic tribes rather than a stratum created by
a given socioeconomicsystem. Recent reportliteraturecannot repeat
Mayhew's feat because it does not share his views. One of his basic as-
sumptions, implicit or explicit, is that people will work but sometimes
cannot; tertium non datur. It is a literature of solidarity.
It is necessary at this point to sketch an outline, however sweeping
(and however local its validity), of the causes of the reemergence not
only of reports but of documentarismas an ism. One way of viewing the
new wave is as the more or less organic continuance of earlier work
which was forcibly interrupted.Thus, for instance, Germans and Soviets
in the 1920s and French and Scandinavians in the 1930s made signifi-
cant attempts to create a documentary literature.7 These were shelved
either through politico-administrativemeasures or by redirecting prior-
ities in the face of a clearly prewar situation. The war imposed a caesura;
it also shocked writers well into the 1960s into asking ultimate questions
such as those posed by existentialism and absurdism. After that, work
was started again, its aims somewhat modified by insights gained in the
meantime. One of these insights was that modernism, regardless of cur-
rent trends, tends to treat ontologically phenomena which are historic-
ally specific; more historicity rather than less, it was thought, might be
one way of depriving these phenomena of their apparent absoluteness.
Another postwar factor was the aggravated credibility gap of art-"no
poetry after Auschwitz," in Theodor W. Adorno's phrase-which
seemed bridgeable either by renouncing art or, less suicidally, by direct-
ing efforts from connotative toward denotative art.8 Political and social
processes, global and national, appeared in art, questioning the legiti-
7 For French efforts,not treatedhere, see esp. Jean-Pierre A. Bernard,Le Parti
communistefranCaiset la questionlittiraire (Grenoble, 1972).
8 Adorno's argument, which actually is a vote against commitment, is best
studied today in the context of the early 1960s: see his Noten zur Literatur, III
(Frankfurt, 1965), 109-35; the quotationis from p. 125.
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FIRST-PERSON DOCUMENTARY
macy both of the established canon of topics and of the attacks hitherto
made on it. These attacks, according to many, were formulated within
categories set up by the ideology to be countered and were thus, in the
last analysis, dubiously "affirmative."The dialectic of world and art
was underlined by a marked sociologization of the humanities, that is,
of the immediateacademicenvironment of an increasingly well-educated
writing profession. The new mass media posed challenges not merely by
bringing unseen vistas into the drawing room but by their very nature:
the inherent realism of the television image became a subject of emula-
tion. Interaction between "the Gutenberg boys" and the media found
various modes of expression.
Influences of a more strictly literary nature should also be mentioned.
Documentarism, it was argued, might have functional virtues; it might
be a way of bypassing an ossified literary system by bringing new subject
matter to a habitually nonreading public. Doing away with the narrator
offered a radical solution to the key problem of narrating. By breaking
with the completed structure and substituting for it an atectonic method,
the documentaristtakes sides with impermanence.This stand obviously
has extraliterary foundations. It seems too restrictive, however, to as-
sert that documentarism arose from political belief; rather, it arose
from a skepticism which might or might not be channeled politically. Its
chief claim to our interest, perhaps, was phrased by the editor of a special
issue on documentary literature of the Danish journal Vindrosen in
1974: "It is one of the soundest and least compromised tools available
today."'
Propelled by, among others, the interrelated causes outlined above, a
hectic production and consumption of documentary literature began in
which additional aspects of the position of writing and writers in society
were pointed out. The traditional role of the writer was unmasked as
that of the jester; his freedom parallels the freedom to harm enjoyed by
the harmless entertainer. But there are two sides to this freedom, as il-
lustrated by two quotations from the Stockholmer Katalog of the Dort-
mrunderGruppe 61; this "Arbeitskreis fiir kiinstlerische Auseinander-
setzung mit der industriellen Arbeitswelt" visited Sweden in 1970. First
Sara Lidman's enthusiastic opening statement (as translated into Ger-
man for the bilingual catalogue) : "Die Idee ist glinzend ! Es ist wirk-
lich an der Zeit, daB wir Schriftsteller mit unserem Land-und dessen
Rolle in der Welt-bekannt werden, da13wir uns dem Risiko aussetzen,
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FIRST-PERSON DOCUMENTARY
der Arbeitswelt' erreichten fiber eine halbe Million Auflage. Ein der
Arbeiterbewegung verpflichtetes Presse- und Verlagswesen entwickelt
sich. Die Lust, sich auszudrficken, nimmt zu. Die Auffassung, daB
Literatur unmittelbar dazu dienen k6nne, politische Prozesse in Gang
zu setzen, hat sich fiberlebt." Runge's new stand is unambiguous. She
is determined to remain a committed writer, but this, for her, today,
means becoming more of a writer. The desire was there from the start.
This brings us to another aspect of her article, which was greeted sar-
donically by critics skeptical of report literature.17 There were, she
states, extrapolitical reasons for her choice of genre: "Was motiviert
einen Autor, Stoffe zu wifhlen (etwa die Probleme von Lohnabhingig-
en), in die er seine Erfahrungen nicht einbringen kann; eine Sprache
zu benutzen (im Fall der Verwendung von Tonbandaufzeichnungen),
die nicht seine eigene ist; kurz; alles in allem als 'Nicht-Autor' eine
Bestatigung zu finden? Die politisch begriindete tibernahme einer die-
nenden Funktion-um die 'Kraft der Arbeiterklasse' bewuft zu ma-
chen-reicht zur Klirung nicht aus." She was unsure: interested in
sociology but untrained, politically committed but afraid of the conse-
quences of commitment, eager to express herself but unwilling to expose
herself. Unable to become a writer, she became a listener plagued with
the itch to write: "Eher wollte ich unfair sein, als aus diesem Buch
nicht doch noch in gewisser Weise mein Buch zu machen." These may
sound like the very private problems of a porte manqud.They need not
be, nor does Runge regard them as such. To her they are problems more
or less endemic to a whole social stratum, albeit a thin one: that of in-
tellectuals branded by a good upbringing but determinedly reaching out
for new loyalties.s8
Jan Myrdal's China report, Rapport fran kinesisk by, was first pub-
lished in Swedish in 1963. This book gave rise to something which might
be called a multinational report industry, underwritten by about a dozen
prestigious publishing houses in many countries. The story of Liu Ling
village in China was followed by reports from towns and cities in the
United States, Sweden, Cuba, Tunisia, England, East and West Ger-
many, and elsewhere.
Myrdal sees his book as built on a durable Swedish tradition which
includes Strindberg's description of life among French peasants and
Ivar Lo-Johansson's works about the Swedish rural proletariat. Gener-
ically he regards it as a novel of social realism in the tradition of Gorky
and Dos Passos. But it could not have been written as a conventional
17Thus, e.g., Ranicki (see above, n. 13; cf. also Ranicki's "Rote Bl~tter,"
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Feuilleton), September 11, 1976.
18A similar analysis appliedto Swedish writing is found in Birgitta Holm and
Ola Holmgren, "En kris pa vaigin i realismen,"OB, 6 (1972), 355-60.
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COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
novel. "I was unable to write it as a novel because I am not Chinese and
thus lack that entire frame of reference within which the cards could be
shuffled and dealt. All I can do is listen."19 Myrdal's book is distin-
guished by its very genesis from most other reports: its material has
passed two language borders, from Chinese via English into Swedish.
Microlanguage authenticity is precluded. The double filter lends the
book a clinical character aimed at by Myrdal.20
The filters also make it easier to introduce a shaping element ex post
facto: the interviews in the book, says Myrdal, "can be read as indepen-
dent stories; contes; human documents from a crucial period" (p. 13).
Li Hsiu-tang, a counterrevolutionary, and Mau Ke-yeh, a cavebuilder
and peasant revolutionary, "become types. I have worked on the style.
That goes without saying."21
Myrdal's leeway for creative imposition, for this reason, was excep-
tionally wide. But what of those who make and write out their reports
within the framework of their native language ? Sara Lidman's Gruva
is a case in point, rendered interesting by the fact that it was written by
a novelist of stature, and by the political influence it exerted during a
strike in the iron mines in which it originated. Lidman says that her book
is a selection based on much more extensive material, and that her main
criterion in sifting it was typicality; she also observes that the utterances
of her interviewees are genuine, retaining their vigor precisely by not
being taken out of context for comment.22 In a broadcast interview,
Myrdal objected to this pronouncementon a crucial point:
Sara Lidman's Gruva is an excellent book. But unless my memory fails me she
made certain statementswhich I find extremely dubiousif not dangerous.She said
that she wasn't the writer of the book: the miners were. I find this extremely du-
bious because reading Gruva one sees that it is quite evidently a Sara Lidman
novel with Sara Lidman characters. Thus the book wasn't written by those who
spoke into a little box. Sara Lidman, however, being a good and genuine writer,
has written in such a manner that those whom she describes, those whom she
speaks for, whose voice she is, the miners, recognized themselves and said when
reading the book that these are our words.23
This is undoubtedly a fair description of an ambition frequent among
report writers: the ambition to make articulate while making heard.
This desire, we have seen, has a potential for social, even subversive,
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FIRST-PERSON DOCUMENTARY
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its total liquidationwas not long in coming. It has, however, been helped
to posthumous fame through the mediation of others. It was wielded
as a weapon in the debate on realism that raged in Weimar Germany
during the last years of the Republic. In this debate one side referred to
Tretyakov as an exemplary productionist, while the other accused him
of leftist deviationism attributable to his bourgeois background. Georg
Lukics and Ernst Ottwalt were the chief opponents in this altercation.
To their names should be added those of Walter Benjamin and Bertolt
Brecht. The latter's contributionsto the discussion were, presumably for
tactical reasons, not published at the time. In his 1934 essay, "Der Autor
als Produzent," Benjamin refers to Tretyakov as "der operierende
Schriftsteller" incarnate: one who does not merely observe and inform
but also takes part.25 This essay and the entire 1930s controversy were
brought up for reconsideration in the late 1960s. In Germany and Scan-
dinavia arguments taken from this debate have figured as required en-
tries in most deliberations not only on realism but on the very role of
the would-be realistic writer.
Among endeavors to update and implement productionist theory,
those of Hans Magnus Enzensberger merit particularattention. Enzens-
berger has experimented extensively with documentary techniques in
prose, drama, poetry, and the new media. In addition he has written a
number of theoretical pieces, many of them for his own aperiodical mag-
azine Kursbuch. At least in an interview, however, he has synthesized
his views on literature in a deceptively simple manner: "I write less and
less of my own books myself. I have a feeling that the things I can relate
on the basis of my own experience are not enough to keep up production.
I do not want to end up in that subjectivism which is the fate of so many
novelists."26Obviously this is a feeling that would seize certain writers
and leave others alone: one must be rationally disposed toward it. One
must be persuaded that it is imperative to fight the literary monopoly
of the writing profession, and to do so from within this profession. In a
letter to me dated March 10, 1974, Enzensberger emphasizes this con-
viction, pointing out at the same time a corollary which it need not
imply:
EineZeitlanghabeich die dokumentarische Methodesehrstrengbeniitzt(z.B. in
dem Verhhr von Habana, das ein literarischesobjet trouve ist). Es war fiir mich
niitzlich, die Methode in ihrer ganzen Stringenz auszuprobieren.Seither bin ich
vom "Fetischismus"des Dokumentsund vom Kult der Authentizitditabgekommen.
(Vgl. z.B. mein Buch fiber den spanischen Anarchisten Durruti . .. ) Heute
25 The chief contributionsto this debate are conveniently available in Fritz
Raddatz (ed.), Marxismus und Literatur, Vol. II (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1969).
26 Quoted in Ib Bondebjerg, "Den kollektive fiktion," Hug! (Denmark), 1
(1974), 39.
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halte ich fiir das wichtigste an diesem Konzept, da8 es erlaubt, andere zum
Sprechen zu bringen,d.h. das literarischeMonopol der Schriftsteller zu relativie-
ren. Aber ich m6chte das nicht mehr wie ein Buchhaltermachen.Sowenig wie die
andern Erzdhler . . . soll der Verfasser seine Phantasie unterdriicken.Unsere
Triume sind nicht weniger authentischals das was wir fiir Tatsachenhalten.
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nificantly, the objects of both critiques were taken from camera art.
Barthes observes how the photographic exhibition, "The Family of
Man," renders the human "condition" mythical, atemporal, and ahis-
torical; the means of effecting this resided in the very concreteness pe-
culiar to photography."3Benjamin cites a volume of handsome photo-
graphs, Die Welt ist schan, which he accuses of having made misery,
by means of sophisticated camera work, an article of consumption, even
of enjoyment. This, he says, is what die neue Sachlichkeit comes to in
the field of photography; in literature even less is achieved: "Ich sprach
von dem Verfahren einer gewissen modischen Photographie, das Elend
zum Gegenstand des Konsums zu machen. Indem ich mir der neuen
Sachlichkeit zuwende, muf3 ich einen Schritt weitergehen und sagen,
daB sie den Kampf gegen das Elend zum Gegenstand des Konsums ge-
macht hat . . . Die Verwandlung des politischen Kampfs aus einem
Zwang zur Entscheidung in einen Gegenstand kontemplativen Beha-
gens, aus einem Produktionsmittel in einen Konsumartikel ist ffir diese
Literatur das Kennzeichnende."33The culinary way out is a very tempt-
ing one; it is, perhaps, a particularly seductive approach to historical
documents. This is illustrated in John D. Rosenberg's preface to the
1967 edition of Mayhew's London study: "Despite the monstrous suf-
fering it depicts, London Labour and the London Poor also possesses
the minute and circumstantial gaiety of a Dutch painting . . . The
massive intricacy of [this book] mirrors unerringly the labyrinthine
vitality of London itself" (p. viii).
The work of Studs Terkel, the foremost compiler of oral documents
in the United States, supports my assertion that reports, through their
inability to transcend the empirical reality from which their material is
derived, must remain within the conceptual confines of the system they
set out to scrutinize. This seems to apply even if the reports focus on the
very base of that system, as Terkel's reportorial activity increasingly
does. After writing books on Chicago and on the Great Depression,
Terkel gathered more than 130 interviews about what people do all
day and how they feel about it. Working deals with the sphere of pro-
duction. It is a passionate book in which the ills of dehumanization are
kept constantly in view. In the last analysis the book is a paean of
praise, a quality ably summed up by Anthony Sampson: "The picture
is disturbing, confusing and often depressing: but it derives a basic
grandeur, like any good epic, from the spectacle of individuals assert-
ing themselves and achieving their self-respect against great odds .
even the most deadly and repetitious jobs are made tolerable by those
32Mythologies (London, 1973), pp. 100-02.
33 "Der Autor als Produzent,"in Raddatz, II, 270 ff.
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with a sense of both service and humour: it is the word 'laughs' in paren-
thesis, which appears in the midst of the bleakest descriptions, which
furnishes the most hopeful sign of the resilience of the individual."34
Dehumanization, then, acquires one of many possible hues. Rather than
being a function of certain alterable and historically determined rela-
tions of production, it is a symptom which is valiantly, sometimes hero-
ically, fought by a number of individuals, each in his own way. The book
deals not with making things better but with making the best of things
as they are. Both are doubtless commendable themes for a writer, and
nothing in Terkel's book indicates that he had set his mind on treating
the former. Given the restrictions of his method he had no choice.
Many report writers try the former alternative and fail. Report litera-
ture might be approachedby referring to some basic donnies of the soci-
ology of reporting. Most reports are marketed by prestigious publishers.
An imprint is a selective instrument which attracts some readers and
keeps others away. Brecht defined realism as a method of discovery:
"Kein Realist begnfigt sich damit, immerfort zu wiederholen, was man
schon weiBl; das zeigt keine lebendige Beziehung zur Wirklichkeit."35
The problem resides in "was man schon wei8." What one man knows
may come as a revelation to others. For the audience most easily reached
by the reports discussed here, these may well serve as instruments of
cognition. The reader's mind may turn the milieus, the work processes,
the daily life described in them into something rich and strange. Exoti-
cism begins at home. For its presumptive readers the report may be a
kind of travel book: it opens up vistas which, for reasons of social strati-
fication, are more accessible through literature than through personal
observation.
In addition to the gap between subject matter and reader, there is a
gap between subject matter and writer. I suggest that report writing has
served many of its practitioners as a means of probing the validity of
their previous convictions and information. Work on a report has been
taken up in order to cover unfamiliar ground. In this sense a report
project is an ad hoc Gorkian university, a declaration of solidarity as
well as a farewell to fiction. Taking sides with reality against fiction, re-
port writers have often insisted on a rigid dichotomy. Reality, however,
is fraught with fictions of its own, which must be heeded by realistic
writing. "Die Wirklichkeit," as we know, "ist eine Konstruktion."'6
AAboAkademi
84"What about the Workers?" Observer (London), August 31, 1975,p. 21.
35 GesammelteWerke, XIX, 295.
36This paper was read at the XIVth Congress of the InternationalFederation
for ModernLanguagesand Literatures,Aug. 28-Sept. 2, 1978 (Aix-en-Provence).
An abstracthas been printed in its Proceedings.
112
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