Ways of Witnessing: Journalism vs. Fiction in The Quiet American and El pintor de batallas
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Beatriz Valverde
und
Juan F. Plaza
Abstract
Since the profession of war correspondent came into existence in the middle of the nineteenth century, war reporters have attracted the attention of novelists. The literary representation of journalism in war times is a fundamental tool when analyzing the evolution of this profession, since, as Barbara Korte has argued (2007: 432), it provides an opportunity to illustrate the problems when reporting conflicts and the consequences such reporting has on journalists. Graham Greene in The Quiet American and Arturo Pérez-Reverte in El pintor de batallas (The Painter of Battles) dramatize the practice of journalism when reporting wars in different eras of the profession in the last century, namely the Indochina war (in the early fifties) and the Balkans conflict (in the early nineties) respectively. Both authors, after being war correspondents, resort to fiction to reflect on the implications of experiencing and narrating wars. Through the experience of the protagonists of their novels, Fowler in The Quiet American and Faulques in El pintor de batallas, Greene and Reverte question the principles of objectivity in journalism. In their literary work, they critique the practice of this profession based on neutrality and non-involvement, revealing the contradictions inherent in the claims of objectivism in reportage.
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© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Trans*textuality in William Shakespeare’s Othello: Italian, West African, and English Encounters
- Ways of Witnessing: Journalism vs. Fiction in The Quiet American and El pintor de batallas
- Art, Nature and the Negotiation of Memory in J. L. Carr’s A Month in the Country
- Sonic Borderscapes: Popular Music, Pirate Radio, and Belonging in Black British Writing in the 1990s
- The Rise of the Fragmentary Essay-Novel: Towards a Poetics and Contextualization of an Emerging Hybrid Genre in the Digital Age
- Transmodern Motion or the Rhizomatic Updated in In a Strange Room, “Take me to Church” and Babel
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- Books Received
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Trans*textuality in William Shakespeare’s Othello: Italian, West African, and English Encounters
- Ways of Witnessing: Journalism vs. Fiction in The Quiet American and El pintor de batallas
- Art, Nature and the Negotiation of Memory in J. L. Carr’s A Month in the Country
- Sonic Borderscapes: Popular Music, Pirate Radio, and Belonging in Black British Writing in the 1990s
- The Rise of the Fragmentary Essay-Novel: Towards a Poetics and Contextualization of an Emerging Hybrid Genre in the Digital Age
- Transmodern Motion or the Rhizomatic Updated in In a Strange Room, “Take me to Church” and Babel
- Reviews
- Monika Wegmann. Language in Space: The Cartographic Representation of Dialects. Travaux de Linguistique et de Philologie. Strasbourg: Éditions de Linguistique et de Philologie, 2017, xvi + 318 pp., 1 table, 3 figures, 50 maps, € 45.00.
- Tom Birkett and Kirsty March-Lyons (eds.). Translating Early Medieval Poetry: Transformation, Reception, Interpretation. Medievalism 11. Cambridge: Brewer, 2017, ix + 240 pp., £ 60.00/$ 99.00.
- Richard Sowerby. Angels in Early Medieval England. Oxford Theology & Religion Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, xv + 261 pp., 12 illustr., £ 60.00.
- Juanita Feros Ruys. Demons in the Middle Ages. Past Imperfect. Kalamazoo, MI/Bradford: ARC Humanities Press, 2017, ix + 121 p., 5 figures, $ 14.95.
- Hans Ulrich Seeber. Globalisierung, Utopie und Literatur: Von Thomas Morus (1516) bis Darcy Ribeiro (1982). Politica et Ars: Interdisziplinäre Studien zur politischen Ideen- und Kulturgeschichte 27. Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2017, 266 pp., € 34.90.
- Martin Middeke and Christoph Reinfandt (eds.).Theory Matters: The Place of Theory in Literary and Cultural Studies Today. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, xii + 374 pp., £ 89.99.
- Philipp Löffler (ed.). Reading the Canon: Literary History in the 21stCentury. American Studies – A Monograph Series 281. Heidelberg: Winter, 2017, 458 pp., € 58.00.
- Julia Straub (ed.). Handbook of Transatlantic North American Studies. Handbooks of English and American Studies 3. Berlin/Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2016, x + 622 pp., 25 illustr., € 199.95/£ 182.00/$ 280.00.
- Ursula K. Heise, Jon Christensen and Michelle Niemann (eds.). The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities. Routledge Literature Companions. London/New York: Routledge, 2017, xvi + 489 pp., 30 illustr., 2 tables, £ 185.00.
- Alexa Weik von Mossner. Affective Ecologies: Empathy, Emotion, and Environmental Narrative. Cognitive Approaches to Culture. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2017, 271 pp., $34.95.
- Aurélie Choné, Isabelle Hajek and Philippe Hamman (eds.). Guide des Humanités environnementales:Environnement et société. Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2016, 630 pp., € 38.00. Serpil Oppermann and Serenella Iovino (eds.).Environmental Humanities: Voices from the Anthropocene. London/New York: Rowman and Littlefield International, 2017, xvii + 373 pp., 7 illustr., £ 90.00/$ 135.00.
- Books Received
