Veşti despre narativul românesc
La sfârșitul anului trecut, am fost invitat să scriu un text despre jurnalismul narativ în România pentru newsletter-ul de primăvară al International Association for Literary Journalism Studies (IALJS), o asociație de profesori și cercetători din lumea întreagă.
Textul îl puteți găsi atât în newsletterul asociației (aici), cât și în continuare acestui post.
Notă: Articolul Gabrielei la care textul meu face referință – Șaișpe – îl puteți citi aici. Mai multe despre cum a fost făcut (plus jurnal de poveste), aici.
News of the Romanian Narrative
When Gabriela Pițurlea began writing about a teenager who dreams of becoming a soccer star, she couldn’t take her mind off Susan Orlean’s opening of “The American Man at Age Ten”, which made Colin Duffy into a prototypical 10-year-old. Pițurlea’s subject was a prototypical 16-year-old, who dreams big, but loves his kid-life enough to not sacrifice it. She wrote:
“If memory books were still around, Florin Petre would fill in his girlfriend’s. He’d write that he was born May 29, 1992, in Bucharest. That he’s 1.78 m tall, weighs 64 kilos and looks thin. (…) That he loves Lord of the Rings, Honey and Save the Last Dance. That between chocolate ice cream and chocolate pastries, ice cream wins, hands-down. That he only wears sneakers and that his favorites are a pair of white Nikes with leek-green stripes. (…) That he doesn’t want tattoos or earrings and that he has never smoked a cigarette, because he knows they’re bad for you. That on a perfect day, he’d wake up at 10 AM, and linger under the blankets for a while longer, eyes shut.”
Pițurlea, who attended a course I teach, would think it heresy to mention her name next to Orlean’s, but I do it to underscore where Romanian literary journalism is today. Orlean was 47 when she wrote her piece. Pițurlea is 20. What she lacks in depth and skill, she struggles to compensate for in enthusiasm and honesty. This parallel is useful to understanding the bigger picture. Narrative journalism has just taken off in Romania. It flies low and occasionally its wings scrape the ground. But it dreams big.
When I returned to Romania after studying and working in the US for four years, I saw narrative as an open field to experiment in. Romania does have a history of reportage, as well as literary figures practicing the art of nonfiction. But their attempts – although beautifully written – lack the emotional depth and commitment to thorough reporting of their American counterparts. Most are travel sketches or descriptions of nature; they shy away from character, motivation and that illusive nugget of truth that could reveal something meaningful about the way we live.
When I began teaching at the Center for Independent Journalism in Bucharest, I did it because I wanted to expose young journalists to an alternative. To stories, not reports. To a way of conveying experience over information. To a journalism that emphasizes the “what is” over the “what is new”. My intention was never to teach narrative. How could I? I’m a novice writer/reporter at best.
But I wanted to find other people who’d respond to stories from the likes of Gay Talese, Tom Junod, Mike Sager and countless others. And respond they did. And then they wrote – first a personal essay, then a reported piece. Some of the latter were published in the Romanian edition of Esquire, where I was a senior editor at the time. Esquire is among the few publications pushing the form, and it published these young writers because they were willing to report their hearts out and go through as many drafts as the story required. I edited pieces about a violin player and his Stradivarius, an anti-communism agigator betrayed by his wife, and a poet who found his ideal home on the banks of the Danube.
Pițurlea’s piece was among them. She followed Florin to soccer practice, hung out with the team, dined with him and his family, interviewed his girlfriend, showed up at his door at 6 AM to watch him eat breakfast and pack his bag. As the story winds down, Florin ponders his future, which could include going pro, and says, wistfully: “I think it’ll be ok”.
I look at the narrative journalism landscape in Romania and see a dozen more committed writers than there were a year ago. I think we’ll be okay.
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