0. Too much for journalism?

After 18 months living among Afghan refugees and warriors in one of Asia’s oldest towns, I arrived home in 1988. The Soviets were leaving Afghanistan, and the media gradually lost interest in the war. I, who had worked there part-time as a journalist, left Peshawar, Pakistan, with many unanswered questions. Here are just three of them: First: What about the unholiness of the holy warriors? I knew that at least one of their leaders kept prisoners in his refugee camps, and that they were not only enemy soldiers. But no one would tell this openly, it was far too dangerous. The few who knew, who had escaped, would not even meet me face to face. I did not blame them, but I wondered. Second: I was astonished to learn how easy it seemed for some Western reporters and aid workers to ‘go half native’, by accepting the rules and culture of a very different society from our own. Third: I was also concerned about Atiq – a friend who had confided to me the story about how he and his wife were separated by the war, when he was jailed for six years. His wife was forced by her own, pro-Soviet brothers to marry one of their associates. In the years that followed I lost track of Atiq, but I often thought of him and wondered about his fate.

These unanswered questions might have been transformed into a journalism of sorts. But it did not happen. Instead my wondering led to some imaginative answers – in a novel – with a happy end for a fictional Hamid and his long-lost wife Feriba. Another character is a French reporter – purely fictional – who converts to Islam and joins the ranks of a fundamentalist group. Why? What forces a European to change his life in such a seemingly extreme way? At least I tried to explore this eventuality – and the impact of war on human beings at crossroads…

May be this is an example of the novelist highlighting topics outside of what would conventionally be of interest for journalists.

(… a stepping stone, nevertheless!) I do not suggest that journalism is the ideal stepping-stone to fictional literature, but it is certainly a development of textual production that I share with many other writers. The connection between journalism and literary achievement is seldom explored, though. Norwegian media researchers Høyer and Ihlen found that 86 per cent of Norwegian authors in the 19^th century had journalistic experience (Høyer & Ihlen 1995). The relation between fictional literature and journalism seems to have been partly blurred in this century. The corresponding story of the 20^th century has not been written yet, but the overlap may be smaller due to a steady professionalisation of journalism and better working conditions for writers.

Journalism Lecturer David Conley has identified more than 200 Australian novelists with journalistic experience. As Conley puts it, if, for example fifty taxi drivers had been listed also as novelists, one suspects The Academy would be asking whether driving taxis inspires fiction. Yet, claims Conley, there is very little scholarly work on journalism-fiction connections by academics in Australia and overseas. (Conley 1998: 48)

Genres with variety: The discussion of the relationship is complicated. For what is a novel? A classical epic like don Quixote? Or the realistic novels of modernity? Or the modernist novel, like James Joyce’s Ulysses, in which the hero is an anti-hero, a split and many-faceted individual? Or indeed a hybrid form – inspired both by fiction and by journalism? The novel covers all these varieties, although the last one belongs to a space in between reportage and novel, between fiction and journalism.

Likewise, with reportage – and I concentrate on written reportage – we may associate to Polish-born and world-renowned reporter Ryzard Kapuscinski’s well-researched books. Kapuscinski’s genre is certainly reportage, but so is an extended on-the-spot reported news story in a daily newspaper. One important criterion for reportage is precisely being on the spot, securing first-hand observation and thereby adding authenticity to the story. As with the novel, there is great variety within the genre, from the short-lived text to a thoroughly researched reportage book.

At the extremes, there are striking differences – between pure fantasy – and pure documentation – except, as journalism researchers have time and again shown of journalism, that nothing is very pure. The novelist, as I shall try to show, has some obvious advantages compared to the journalist. But as I shall also suggest, there is a zone in-between, where similarities may seem more important than differences.

It is easier to contrast novel and reportage than reportage and fiction. Not all fiction is literature, and not all literature is necessarily fiction. In addition: not all journalism is totally non-fictious. Writer and reporter Sven Lindqvist says that even in the most authentic documentary there is at least one fictious person: the narrator. I shall try to highlight the relationship emphasising both contrast and relative likeness, and – hopefully – by shuttling between the opposites proposed by the committee – end up in the twilight zone – although I realise by then it will be dark outside…

When I think of the novel and the reportage, in both cases I imagine a creative person whose encounters with reality are filtered through an individual state of mind, (a temper), i.e. a person’s subjectivity. These encounters are then structured in a variety of narrative ways. The reportage has some constraints not associated with literature: what is told should be true. The reportage has to be anchored in reality, in time and place.

Among journalists we find many aspiring authors, some with completed manuscripts of novels in their drawers. On the other hand: have we heard of aspiring journalists among novelists? One famous novelist put it this way, though: "Journalism is the only trade that I like, and I have always regarded myself as a journalist."

This is what the famous writer (and journalist) Gabriel Garcia Marquez told The New York Times three years ago. Of course he does not see his novels as journalism. But he has worked for newspapers and magazines, and what he said shows a respect for journalism, which is not so often expressed among writers.

On the other hand, Ernest Hemingway, also a jack of more than two trades, suggests that journalism "can be a daily self destruction for a serious creative writer." He may be right. But can this daily destruction overshadow other sides of journalism, which may actually inspire writing, parallel to unlearning the destructive elements? Some scholars suggest this

The rivalry I: New Journalism: The rivalry between the novel and journalism – or reportage, to be more specific – was highlighted when Tom Wolfe, one of the leading men of New Journalism, declared the near-death of the novel in the U.S. In a more moderate statement, he claimed the crisis of the novel had created an open space for a new genre of reporting. This genre was to be called New Journalism, developed by Wolfe and a group of contemporaries in the 1960s. It should be added that he, since then, has published two novels. Some critics were negative and called the New Journalism ‘parajournalism’: similar to the novel in form but not in function. As one critic put it: "it is a bastard form, having it both ways, exploiting the factual authority of journalism and the atmospheric license of fiction" (Mills 1974:xv). A death to journalism, perhaps, if the bastard genes were spread?

The rivalry II: The Realism debate. The debate at this junction in the 1960s was not new. More than thirty years earlier, Hungarian philosopher and literature critic Georg Lukács discussed the ‘reportage novel’. As he saw it, this literary form came into being partly in opposition to the psychological novel. Lukács was a strong advocate for literary realism. He observed some writers being influenced more by reportage than realism, and felt this was a threat to the subjectivity of the artist’s creative process.

Lukács associates journalism with science. Journalism produces stories that others should be able to verify. But, as he writes of the ‘reportage novel’, an ‘artistic’ representation with scientific pretentions

Lukács writes this in a critique of a specific ‘reportage novel’ by Ernst Ottwalt from 1931. He is not hostile to reportage as such. On the contrary, he praises it as an absolutely justifiable form of journalism, which, at its best "creates a proper relation between the general and the specific, the necessary and the arbitrary", revealing not just facts, but also causes, connections and reasoning. This echoes today’s textbooks on reportage. But in Lukács’ opinion, the reportage – and the novel made from reportage – have some disadvantages. They simply present live examples of individual fates, while in artistic work, the individual fate must appear as typical, for example of a social class. To use reportage in connection with the production of fiction entails decay from a realist to a naturalist way of representation. The accurate details often required of reportage – and the individuals reported upon – will, he claims, place the typical and the totality in the background.

Lukács was criticised by his contemporaries for his strict adherence to realism as literary form. However, a comparison between literature based in realism, and reportage, seems to be the most interesting for this endeavour.

Strong expectations, small difference: Jo Bech-Karlsen writes that the reportage has never taken the full step into modernism, it is more or less fixed in the documentary program of realism. He suggests this is the reason why fiction writers in modernity have problems with the genre. But he adds that the ambitions of the reportage should not be less than the ones of fictional writers: "it [that is: the reportage] also seeks to comprehend the new before it manifests itself. It, too, wants to describe the transient and inexplicable, preferably the way in which this occurs in daily life." There may be as much human existence, he adds, in reportage as in the novella (Bech-Karlsen 2000: 115ff).

Here he speaks against scholars of ‘difference’ who claim that the novel is about existence, while the reportage – and journalism in general – is about reality. Bech-Karlsens ambitions on behalf of the reportage may seem utopian when one takes into consideration the constraints under which today’s journalists – at least in small countries like Norway – have to live and work. But is it a utopia worth struggling for, or are both genres – the novel and the reportage – better served by distinction?

Media ruining the novel? Czeck-born novelist Milan Kundera, in one of his essays about the art of the novel, claims that the whole culture, and also the novel, seems to find itself more and more at the mercy of the media, a development he obviously dislikes:

The spirit of the novel is the spirit of the complicated, he adds. Every novel tells the reader that things are more complicated than you believe. For Kundera journalism (represented by the mass media) is the trade of simplification, while the novel is complicated. He suggests that the novel as genre possesses a wisdom superior to the creative person. The novelists who are more intelligent than their works, should shift to another profession, he recommends. He does not recommend any one profession in particular, but may we here suspect that he is thinking of journalism?

Inspired by Kundera we may view the relationship between the novel and the reportage as vulnerable and unstable. Journalism and media researchers preoccupy themselves with literature as inspiration for journalism, while the literature scholars seem much less interested. At times, journalism researchers may also argue for a less hierarchical relationship by pointing to what journalism can do and the novel – or fiction – can not, for example giving the reader a feeling that what she reads is a precise account of what really happened. That is, journalism is able to create a closer experience of authenticity. On the other hand – surely we may also experience a feeling of ‘truth’ or reality while reading a novel, in addition to having a more comprehensive and emotional experience?

Norwegian writer Geir Gulliksen attempts to sum up the characteristics of modern poetry by saying that a person who writes does so to "get away from herself, from his/her own life, from the world she or he recognises as real." In other words: to write fiction (in his case; poetry) is to move in the sphere of the unreal. The getting away from one’s own life may be seen as one of the most important advantages of fiction compared to non-fiction. Both for writers – and for the reader. Journalism is not dreaming, fiction is. Personally I feel this privilege has led me and other writers to the creation of lives one will not be able to live, other than in creative day-dreaming. (Creativity could also result in nightmares like George Orwell’s 1984. It is written by the author Orwell, not the journalist. But it is said to be inspired (among others) by his time as reporter with the BBC, an institution he called "something between a girl’s school and a lunatic asylum.")

To get away from the real, or from oneself, does not mean having to disengage from reality. But the impressions and marks we get from reality are filtered differently in writing fiction – creating imaginary situations that might – or might not – have occurred in real life. George Orwell’s Animal Farm pigs – the new despotic rulers (inspired by the development in the Soviet Union) – are creations of fantasy. Readers, in their various realities, still understand this novel as fiercely anti-hegemonic.

The novel may be full of daydreaming and fantasy, and for a journalist-turned writer, these abilities need to be cultivated parallel with a process of unlearning some aspects of journalism: like the simplification, the routine language. It must be added that these are not the most cherished aspects of journalism, although simplification is a necessity in news production.

Universal truth: The adjective ‘kafkaesque’ is often used in everyday conversation to describe a situation in which we feel unable to master a situation due to the restraints of an oppressive society and/or an impenetrable bureaucracy. It must have been developed by readers who have experienced Kafka’s novels as stories with elements of universal truth. A truth that moves beyond the moment. The stories of Joseph K. and of K. have been interpreted and reinterpreted in shifting historical realities, not least during the communist regime of Czeckoslovakia.

It may have been the same belief in the universal impact of a novel that inspired an Afghan professor, Bahauddin Majrooh, living in exile in Peshawar, into translating George Orwell’s Animal Farm to Pashtun language. The Pashtun version was after translation smuggled into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. This risky and subversive act illustrates a will to think of the novel as a pedagogical and liberating instrument in times of crisis.

But may the same universal impact at times be found in works closer to journalism? In 1956, Rodolfo Walsh, a young Argentinian writer, ignited by the lack of media coverage of an execution of a group of pro-Peron civilians, decided to write a novel to expose the crime. His novel based on the event: Operacion Masacre was published in December 1957. He was not conscious of writing in a new literary genre as he wrote his book:

According to writer Jose Luis Benavides, Walsh stayed a journalist. His work has had a growing influence on contemporary journalism in Latin America since it exemplifies a key challenge faced by independent journalists: the need to overcome the silence of the mainstream press. The crime to which his story refers, never made it to the newspapers. Another novel was published in 1969; "Quien mato a Rosendo", about the murder of a union leader at the hands of corrupt labour union bosses. Walsh was assassinated in 1977, under the military regime, the day after he had written an "Open letter to the Argentinian Junta", characterised by Garcia Marquez as a "masterpiece of universal journalism". Here, Marquez suggests that also journalism at its best may contain texts that travel beyond their own time and influence people in other historical situations. Like novels do.

Another ‘counter-hegemonic account’ came from Garcia Marquez himself, who in 1955 wrote "The Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor". In this novel, based on real events, he denounces the Columbian navy for the deaths of a group of sailors who were washed overboard with ill-secured contraband from a navy destroyer (Benavides 2000).

In these cases, in a sense, journalism inspired novels.

(Inferiority complex?) May the novel, then, serve as an inspiration for journalism, for non-fiction? According to John Carey, editor of the Faber Book on Reportage, the question of whether reportage is ‘literature’

In his preface, Carey, eager to show the advantages of reportage, quotes only two examples of good writing and they are both from novels. That is, from Stendhal’s "La Chartreuse de Parme" and Leo Tolstoj’s "War and Peace". The piece by Stendhal is an account of the character Fabrizio’s experience at the battle of Waterloo. Although there are six pieces of reportage from Waterloo in the anthology, none of these are mentioned in the preface. May this illustrate an inferiority complex of sorts? The extracts from the novels may be meant as an inspiration to future reporters. Carey writes that while working on the anthology he had to go through hundreds of pages of battle accounts that excluded all mentioning of killing. These, he suggests:

This might be read as a challenge to present-day high-tech inspired war reportage. The piece of fiction by Stendhal takes part in that combat by gradually showing what war is about.

The three books by Marquez and Rodolfo Walsh seem to belong to an in-between space, a space bordering both on novel and reportage, between fiction and journalism.

I have mentioned these as an introduction to what journalism researcher Douglas Underwood calls the Twilight sphere, in an attempt to answer the complicated questions: Where does one – by reportership – reproduce lived experience? And where does one – by authorship – let lived experience inspire imagination?

While the bulk of journalism caters to the day, to the week or to the everyday, novelists may indulge in daydreaming and worlds of fantasy. Daydreaming, however, must be disturbed to a degree by the intrusion into the literary field of the non-fiction novel.

(In Cold Blood:) In our part of the world, this concept is often associated with Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood from 1965, by the publisher called a writer’s ambition "to make a contribution toward the establishment of a serious new literary form: the Nonfiction Novel" (Hallberg 1977:258). Truman Capote had published fictional novels earlier.

The non-fiction novel is a form related to journalism by its adherence to real events as basis for writing, and to the novel for its aspirations of literary quality. In Cold Blood may be read as a result of frustration with the novel as genre. George Garrett, in an article about this book and its predecessors, writes that ‘non-fiction novels’ came about as a result of the traditional novel not always having the ways and means to deal honestly and artistically with

This may be read as a suggestion of the ‘reality beats fiction’syndrome – but one cannot claim that this is a universal truth. I would rather see the non-fiction novel as a critical reaction to tendencies in fictional literature. Let us shortly recapitulate what In Cold Blood is about. In November 1959, two young men who were released on parole, murdered a farmer’s family of four. The two assassins were falsely convinced that the farmer had thousands of dollars in a safe at home. They may be seen as representative of the ‘desperate, savage America’, while the victims, the Clutter family, represented the ‘sane and safe’.

Capote, for five years after the murders, spent considerable time reconstructing the story, mapping the lives of the assassins, the family, the police, and other persons involved. The novel was published after the two men were hanged, in 1965. Behind the novel there is a large amount of research, which shares many of the qualities of in-depth journalism. This method is barely visible in the novel, except in a few passages where Capote writes in third person of a journalist – who is certainly T.C – being present at many important occasions after the murders took place.

But may we say that In Cold Blood is journalism – or reportage? The term ‘non-fiction novel’ sounds like a hybrid. Far from all non-fiction is journalism. Is it still possible to look at the term ‘non-fiction novel’ as a compromise, allowing the writer to commit some sins both against journalism and fictional literature as such? Problems may arise since one, in explicit non-fiction, writes about real persons. Garrett suggests that quite a proportion of Capote’s descriptions and judgements were subjective and literary.

The above passage may be interpreted like this: If you are a good writer, your sins will be more easily forgiven: in spite of some misrepresentation of reality. Maybe it should have been the other way around. I think subjectivity is a key word here. In the writing of literary fiction, subjectivity is recognised as a virtue, in journalism it is at best controversial. While realising that there is always a degree of subjectivity, journalists learn to restrain themselves from obvious subjective choices and ways of writing, to preserve their own reliability and that of journalism. There may be exceptions with regard to genre, though. Openly revealing one’s own being in reportage may make it easier for the reader to understand the limitations of ‘objectivity’. It may also render the reader more able to evaluate what is written by agreeing or disagreeing with the reporter. As Torsten Thurén writes, some (journalists) find that there is more tolerance for a certain amount of faking in reportage than in news journalism.

If Capote’s book contains many half-truths and falsehoods – which I am in no position to control – would it be more justified to apply the term part-fiction instead of non-fiction?

(Contrasting the police novel:) Compared to literary fiction, there are limitations to Capote’s approach. We find no inner monologue to speak of in In Cold Blood, although that is a feature, which is found in New Journalism. The book has a narrative closely linked to that of a mystery novel, slowly revealing more and more truths and background about the murders. But in the narrated reality, the two assassins did not have a classical motive for murdering four people. Maybe that is one of Capote’s motives for wanting to write a story like this one? At the generic level we may see In cold blood as a non-fiction novel with an implicit critique of the mystery novels with their elaborate, intriguing – and so-called plausible – explanations of all crimes.

Furthermore there is no reflection in this nonfictional novel about the character of the crimes and the culprits themselves. This may be read as an implicit intention in Capote’s work to stimulate the readers reflections – from the ‘bare facts of brutal reality’ he has presented over 340 pages.

I must admit, when reading In Cold Blood, due to its novelistic features, I was brought to expect more revelation of a conflict between the assassins and the victims. I expected that as the story went along, I would be informed about hidden connections, or about non-virtues in the presumably virtuous family Clutter. It did not happen. As mentioned the two men did not reveal any ‘rational’ motive for murdering the four individuals. The gradual reconstruction of their childhood and youth still contributes to an understanding of their ‘irrational deed’. My programmed expectations were not met. The book was still an exciting read, for other than the usual reasons associated with popular novels about crime.

Fictional consciousness: What we have here is an example of a reader’s fictional consciousness. Danish literature critic Niels Soelberg writes that if the novelist presents his material in such a way that no disharmony occurs between the references of the novel and reality, the fictional consciousness will diminish. He adds that one of the main functions of the realist novels of the 19^th century – what is now called the traditional novel – was to keep this consciousness at bay.

At one level he is right. It may be easy to confuse Balzac’s or Hugo’s novels with the historical realities in which they were created. But one sould also argue that a fictional consciousness of sorts may stimulated by some non-fiction – for example reportage – borrowing features traditionally associated with fiction, like suspense, scenes, full dialogue and symbolic details – which I felt when reading Capote.

Like other trades, journalism defines itself in relation to exterior phenomena. First, evidently, to reality, exemplified by the much criticised ‘mirror metaphor’ that nobody really believes in when asked, but which is still referred to. Second, to fiction: In journalism studies we also at times remind the students that "You’re not authors", placing fiction firmly ‘outside’ the tasks of the journalistic profession. Furthermore: You are to find the exciting story first and foremost in the colourful reality, not in your creative imagination. Rise from your computers and try some good, old-fashioned legwork!

Tom Wolfe exemplifies this by telling that at the emergence of New Journalism, even columnists usually glued to their desks, took to the streets to search for inspiration. On the other hand, a creative imagination is required of a journalist to find out which part of reality which is to be covered – in news and feature – and how. Wolfe and his colleagues emphasise creativity and fictional form, but also the legwork, and ‘the art of hanging out’ and thereby underline that there is no shortcut to good journalism.

Is there a shortcut to the good novel? We have recently heard complaints from some critics that young novelists seem to write in a ‘just-graduated-from-writing-school’ manner, resulting in experimental texts, but with too little to write about? I do not have enough evidence to support or reject this assumption, but if it contains some truth, it may serve as a reminder that life experience and research in the real world represent important and crucial inspiration for creative literary work.

There are – and should be – some open doors between the rooms of novel and reportage. Many writers have ventured into fictional literature from journalism, some leaving the door they came through half open. Other writers have moved in the opposite direction, as Capote and Norman Mailer did, towards non-fiction – and even journalism, but they do not often use that word. This happened also in Norway – in the 1960s and 1970s, when several novelists wrote books stimulated by political events based on real-life stories. They were almost always called novels, though.

The Mercedes Rider: One of these writers is Rolf Sagen. He has never worked as a regular journalist, and he has published many fictional works. In 1988 he published Mercedesryttaren, The Mercedes Rider, which is presented as a novel – but also as "a literary document’ about the cases of police brutality and persecution in Bergen". He says he felt tired and frustrated with semi-good fiction and asked himself the question: Does the story of a novel have to be invented? His non-fiction novel builds on his own search for truths beneath the surface reproduced in the mass media. The publisher states: "Precisely the fictional-literary form clearer reveals the patterns, motives and connections that often disappear in a purely ‘factual’ representation."

At least in this historical situation they may have been right, since the regional newspaper seemed to adhere to the police version of the story to a large extent. The novel as genre appeared to have a larger potential of social critique. The institutional framework of the mass media did not interfere with the writer. And he – like other writers of the same hybrid genre – was favoured by another institutional framework. Novels of quality, due to a specific regulation in Norway, will automatically be purchased and distributed to a number of libraries. This is not the case with non-fiction books, (and this may serve as an explanation to the fact that many non-fiction novels have been called novels only.)

Sagen applies journalistic method in his research. He interviews people. He says that he can not guarantee that everything said in the novel is true, but it is true that it was said. As happens often in regular journalism. But The Mercedes Rider has the inherent qualities of a novel, as seen from language and dramaturgy.

I think some of the background for the asymmetrical relation between reportage and fictional literature is to be found in journalism seen not as intellectual work, but as a trade, as a craft. Being part of an institution representing such a craft stands in contrast to the individual creativity process of writing a novel. Media researchers Dimmick and Coit, propose to think of media production as a hierarchic system that may be studied at nine interdependent levels (van Zoonen 1994:47):

Models like these are well-known in media research. The question is rather to which extent some of these levels operate in the production of fictional literature.

The above model does not totally deny individual creativity or the fact that some reportage may possess literary qualities. David Conley writes that due to the neglect of literature historians to see the continuities between journalism and fiction of many great writers, they miss an important part of literary history and biography, and they lose an opportunity to gain insight into the limits and potential of different narrative forms. During my research I found only three honours degrees (hovedfag) discussing Norwegian authors as journalists: The first one in 1915, the last one in 1977.

According to Underwood, John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath grew out of a series of reportage he did for a San Fransisco newspaper. His knowledge about the farmers who migrated to California only to face exploitation and misery came through repeated visits and interviews in their camps, and friendship with social workers who introduced him to many of the families upon which he created the story of the Joad family. This experience must have been important. I see here a fruitful option for a relationship of mutuality between journalism and literature research in the years to come.

(Moving away from realism.) In Cold Blood was written in a period when New Journalism was on the rise in the United States. Tom Wolfe says he heard the concept used for the first time in 1965, the very same year that Capote’s novel was published. Wolfe seems to identify a process, in which the reporters "were learning the techniques of realism" – from scratch.

He continues his praise for realism, methaphorically described as the introduction of electricity into machine technology, and he blames the contemporary novelists for not understanding this. There are critics, though, who feel that Wolfe should not easily get away with such statements. One of them, Robert Towers, (in The New York Times Book Review (1990)), produces a list of ‘flourishing realists’, and claims that Tom Wolfe is "settling for some very misleading generalisations". For one, he is too focused on New York to discover what writers are producing in other corners of the U.S. He also emphasises that a revitalised realism is not the only path to the future. This he does by highlighting the ‘novel of radical disjunction, which makes use of the disjointed, non-linear structures of modernism, combining them with the hallucinatory effects of surrealism and employing a language that is almost aggressively accessible." Among the examples he mentions are Günter Grass and Salman Rushdie.

And precisely these novelists, and hundreds of others who have transcended the borders of the ‘traditional realist novel’, may serve as the best illustrations of the difference between the novel and the reportage. But, on the other hand, some non-fiction novelists may also break the rules of the realist novel, as Norman Mailer does in The Armies of the Night, awarded with a Pulitzer in 1968. This book is an eyewitness account of a large march against the Pentagon and the Vietnam war, in Washington in October 1967. Peter Hallberg suggests that the problem of fiction vs documentary to a certain extent can be said to be the main topic of the book (Hallberg 1977:261). The subtitle reads: History as a Novel, the Novel as History.

Norman Mailer uses a lot of source material: eyewitness reports and newspaper articles, but he also says that an explanation of the events at the Pentagon can not be given by historical method, "only by the instincts of the novelist". Mailer takes part in the march, and for him the event is thus not something observed at a distance, but a lived-through experience with emotional ingredients. He therefore feels that he, in writing, has to transgress the "clearly demarcated limits of historical inquiry".

Mailer may thus be seen as a navigator in a stream of factual information and emotional experience that makes it impossible for him to feel comfortable in a role as reporter or historian. The hybrid solution remains: a novel, but non-fiction. History as novel.

In this lecture, writers, journalists and academics have been visited, quoted and discussed. The silenced ones have been the characters written about in the genres of novel and reportage.

Remember the character I mentioned at the start of this lecture? Atiq, the Afghan searching for his long-lost wife, inspiring my first novel, does not know that he inspired the fictional Hamid. Maybe he will never know. Or maybe we shall meet one day and work out an interview – or a long, exciting reportage – of his turbulent life?