Extratextual Elements Research Articles

CБОРНИКИ Н. Ф. ПАВЛОВА «ТРИ ПОВЕСТИ» И «НОВЫЕ ПОВЕСТИ» КАК ВАРИАНТ ИНДИВИДУАЛЬНО-АВТОРСКОГО ТЕКСТОВОГО ЕДИНСТВА

The article analyzes the collections of N. F. Pavlov “Three Stories” (1835) and “New Stories” (1839) in the aspect of the functioning of such a type of supertext as an individual author’s textual unity, realized in the form of a collection. Since it is compiled by the author, its components are selected and grouped by him in accordance with a certain intention. The texts within each writer’s collection correspond with each other. In their plot, there is a clear orientation towards “an incident from life”; the plot is based on the clash of the heroes with a rejecting secular environment. The common properties of all structural components of Pavlov’s collections are elements of psychologism, romantic stylistics (sustained motifs, characters endowed with unusual passions, poetics of a fragment) with an emphatically social sound, attention to everyday details, and the use of physiological features. Unifying impulses are also set by extra-textual elements (titles, subtitles, epigraph to the first collection). In the form of a collection, Pavlov’s stories are combined into a kind of megatext, endowed with “super meaning,” which fundamentally changes the scale of the depiction of reality and ensures a higher level of the author’s awareness of the most pressing problems in society. The core of this version of textual unity is the author’s idea, which determines the presence of intertextual connections between the components of the collection and their general modality. However, in the presence of a structure and internal logic set by the author, the collection differs from the adjacent phenomenon — the cycle — in that the compositional arrangement of individual parts is not of decisive importance here, the connections between the stories that make up the collection are significantly weakened.

An Absentological Analysis of the Trace: Pre-Cambrian Arche-Writing, and Jacques Derrida’s Realism

The first trace-fossil in the history of terrestrial life dates to the pre-Cambrian era. Left by an unknown species around 542 million years ago, Treptichnus are fossilized mud burrows, remaining as a geological testament to the early stages of complex life on Earth. Because of the impossibility of any empirical knowledge relating to these unfossilizable creatures, which presumably lacked a skeletal structure, any philosophical treatment of this paleobiological matter of fact must necessarily engage in speculation. Absentology as a speculative epistemontological register allows us to conceptualize these strange burrows as a key event. Following Jacques Derrida’s concept of"arche-writing", our essay presents an absentological reading of the forever unknowable unfossilized animal species. Arche-writing for Derrida is an abstract mode of writing that precedes speech and actual written language, hence this constitutes a concept that can be used for prelinguistic modes of expression. The trace fossils left by these unknown creatures constitute a type of prewriting, as well as the dawn of work, representing a crucial step in the evolution of complex life on this planet. A fossil that is not the animal itself, but rather a trace referring to an unknown organic singularity, this is the absent scene of arche-writing. A more realist Derrida emerges from this encounter, for whom extra-textual elements are even more relevant than explicit language.

On (Not) Reading Inscribed Objects in Latin Comedy

Abstract: This paper examines the performance dynamics of onstage texts in Plautus’ comedies and, in the process, argues that an audience-level viewpoint is essential to understanding Latin stage comedy. Examples of rare epigraphic texts are compared with the more common motif of in-play “perishable texts.” The perishable type were performed by actors as though verbatim and transmit novel information to the audience. In contrast, epigraphic texts are paraphrased and so require specific knowledge. Each kind of text thus does different dramatic work, and the difference originates in the different material “entanglements” of each medium in the lives of ancient Italians. As such, Plautus’ audiences understood comic theater through its extra-textual elements as much as through “the text” as we have it. To understand Roman comedy, scholars must also account for how ancient objects were entangled in Roman culture.

Mari National Text in Russian Translations: Based on the Poems of Gennady Oyar

This research work has been done in the field of the current literary direction related to the study of local texts, the variety of which is the national text. The national literary text is considered by the authors of the article as a text containing information for the reconstruction by the reader / researcher of the nationally specific socio-cultural space of the people. The studies of the national text in literary translations, namely, the philological analysis of the Mari national text in Russian translations is given in the article. The research materials are the poems of Gennady Oyar, translated into Russian mainly by Gennady Smirnov. The methods of contextual, conceptual and structural-semantic analysis of local texts are used in the work. The article considers the literary techniques and means relevant for the formation of the national text (extra-textual elements, toponyms and anthroponyms, elements of the national landscape, portrait, interior, signs of national life, material and spiritual culture, linguistic inclusions, folklore and mythological images and motifs, etc.). The national text in Russian translations gives a fairly complete picture of the Mari as an ancient people, which has a unique culture, carefully preserves its native language, spiritual traditions, feels a blood connection with distant ancestors, paganism, making up the cultural core of the nation as a society, seeks to preserve spiritual purity and aspiration to the ideals of goodness and beauty.

Pendekatan Tektual Kontekstual dan Hemenuetika dalam Penafsiran Al-Qur'an

Various approaches are needed to reflect the universal values of the Quran in diverse societal contexts. This research aims to depict the use of textual, contextual, and hermeneutical approaches in understanding the Quran, as an effort to comprehend the text within the appropriate context of people's lives. The textual approach primarily focuses on grammatical analysis and literal understanding, while the contextual approach involves understanding the extratextual elements and their connection to the situations and conditions during the revelation of the Quran. The hermeneutical approach emphasizes understanding the text and interpreting its meanings, while recognizing the importance of social, political, cultural, and historical contexts in understanding cultural phenomena. Contextual hermeneutics emphasizes the relationship between the text and the surrounding world.

A Review of Neurocognitive Interpretations of Australian Literature: Criticism in the Age of Neuroawareness

A Review of <i>Neurocognitive Interpretations of Australian Literature: Criticism in the Age of Neuroawareness</i>

Dalla parte di Eva: Female Alliances and Genealogies in Maria Rosa Cutrufelli’s Writing Practice

ABSTRACT My contribution examines the creation of female collective memory and legacy in the works of Sicilian-born feminist writer Maria Rosa Cutrufelli. I analyse this aspect as both a literary and a political strategy aimed at retrieving a ‘sisterhood’, well-known to second-wave American feminism. Cutrufelli’s novels are filled with female protagonists, or personagge, who rarely act on their own. In fact, at the basis of each character’s struggle to achieve an individual agency one can identify various forms of relationships (friendship, love, political alliance, family bonds). Moreover, as is the case with her dystopian novel L’isola delle madri, unexpected connections among extremely diverse women become decisive in challenging social and symbolic paradigms, such as biological motherhood and its bond with a capitalist exploitation of reproductive bodies. Cutrufelli’s reinvention of female memories corresponds to the construction of a collective legacy that reads against the grain of the Italian literary canon, in which individual heroism – along with gendered asymmetries and power relationships – has often implied an automatic identification with a strong, self-centred masculinity. On the contrary, Cutrufelli’s stories insist on female relationships that go through different phases of negotiation and forms of losses and appropriation, thus calling for substantially different notions of non-hierarchical femininity. This is also confirmed by Cutrufelli’s own filiations and active collaborations with fellow women writers belonging to different generations. In the light of the above, my chapter explores various forms of female bonds in Cutrufelli’s writings, while also taking into consideration the significance of extra-textual elements in the writer’s biography and current engagement, in order to argue for her originality in pursuing a specific, ‘hybrid’ approach to 21st-century feminism.

Pedagogical Communication in Nigerian Children Literature: A Pragma-Semiotic Study of Akintayo Oluyinka’s The Greatest Mistake

This study is a cross-disciplinary investigation of the pedagogical significance of children literature in Nigeria—a linguistic study of selected samples from Akintayo Oluyinka’s The Greatest Mistake. Visual illustrations are typical of children literature because of the age-range of the readers. Hamilton (2000) notes that “children who encounter excellent picture books learn how to read not just the moods but also the pictures. They pay close attention to what they see often discovering things in illustrations.” Like in the literary text we examine in this study, pictorial illustrations in Nigerian children literature have varied contextual underpinnings which make them have meanings to children-readers. This establishes their pragmatic relevance. Objects and gestures convey messages in discourse. Therefore, semiotics is a crucial concern of this study. Hinging on the Pragma-crafting theory, this study concludes that the effectiveness of children literature in the transmission of knowledge to the target readers (children) depends on the skillful use of textual and extra-textual elements of communication.

Communicative phenomenon of the old Ukrainian miracle play “Oleksiy, the man of God”

The subject of this research focuses on the communicative and pragmatic structure of dramatic texts of the 17–18th centuries. The aim of this article is to analyse the miracle play “Oleksiy, the Man of God” (Alexius, the Man of God) as a communicative act. The method of semantic-stylistic analysis was used to elicit the semantic and stylistic peculiarities of the language means and patterns of their use. Context and situational analysis, as well as interpretative analysis, were used to identify textual elements with additional pragmatic meaning; the analysis of actual material was conducted in line with the principle of historicism, i.e. taking into account the correspondence of the linguistic and lingual stylistic system of the texts to the time of their creation. The Results of the Study. The dramatic text holds a specific place in the system of artistic communication, since it stands as a meaningful reproduction of the communicative process. A key feature of any dramatic text is dramatis personae that are put at the beginning of the play and who, as a rule, can be related to real people in real situations. The old Ukrainian baroque drama mainly takes the forms of drama mystery play and miracle play. The character system in “Oleksiy, the Man of God” reflects the social structure of society at that time, and the characters’ speech correlates with the speech of real people and stands as its textual embodiment. The process of author’s describing the real picture of the world is the main author’s intention, which coincides with the illocution in the dramatic text. The article analyses the communicative past and communicative future of certain characters. The analysis concentrates on the stylistic means used by the author to enhance the impact on the addressee and create the intended communicative effect, in particular wordplay techniques. The role of extratextual elements that help decode the author’s idea and achieve a perlocutionary effect has been determined. The prospects for further research include studying pragmatic and stylistic function of the phenomenon of variability of the speech genres in old Ukrainian texts of the 17–18th centuries.

Culture in translation: a comprehensive study

The process of translation involves rendering a text written in one language with the use of the symbols of another language. This act of translation is governed by a myriad of textual and extra-textual elements. Amongst them, culture has a profound impact on the process of translation. The succulent dishes catering to an individual’s taste palate to clothes donned; culture showcase a unique combination of attributes that construct a formidable deterrent for the translator. Hence, the present study seeks to clarify the position of the culture within the translation process, the magnitude of impact on translators and readership, and the strategies adopted by translators to overcome the obstacles posed by cultural distinctions to reap a productive translation. A highly qualitative approach consisting of in-depth, semi-structured interviews was conducted with six individuals actively involved in translation. The garnered data were evaluated and reviewed under the Thematic Analysis method to reach conclusions. The analyzed data revealed that during translation, the contact between two different cultural systems inevitably leads to a confrontation amid two heterogeneous value systems deeply embedded within the respective communities. As a result, culture portrays a dominant figurine, inadvertently endorsing the translators to act as cultural –mediators during translation. In the course, translators adopt a plethora of techniques manipulating culture-specific dimensions up to a certain extent to achieve a translation where the message received by the receptor is substantially the same as the message received via the Source Text.

The Illocutionary Force of Inuit Ice Vocabularies

Lexicons of Yup’ik sea-ice terminology rely on extra-textual elements, including photographs, diagrams and sketches. Definitions are also supplemented with stories about personal experience and of the behaviour of ice phenomena. Speech act theory argues that these elements communicate an often overlooked illocutionary dimension which shows the importance of semantics in addition to the syntax of scientific definitions. The illocutionary aspects captures the performative, experiential quality of sea ice as a lived environment engaged in processes of hunting, travel and fishing. I argue that the illocutionary force of the descriptions presented in the lexicons is epistemic and ignoring this silences the Indigenous “voice.” This supports Townsends argument that illocutionary silencing occurs when science treats environmental descriptions as not material but cultural and circumstantial.

Uso enfático-discursivo de Lá e Cá no PE. Uma análise com base em dados ficcionais

Abstract – The study of deixis consists in a prolific field for the development of functional and pragmatic studies and, also, for the study of the relation between syntax and pragmatics. The observation of verbal activity allows us to understand that the value of an utterance may vary according to the context in which it is produced. Therefore, we can insert the investigations on the linguistic deixis as a process of reference of the language through which the users share contextual information within the group of studies dedicated on the interaction between interlocutors. The linguistic acts are the result of a set of textual and extratextual elements in which the linguistic choices play the main role for the success of the linguistic acts themselves. From the textual point of view, the pragmatic aspects are based on syntactic constructions delineated by the literature in this field (Martins 2012). Here we propose an analysis of the locatives La and Ca as elements denoting discursive deixis, that is, as pragmatic elements displaying a relation with the denotation of emphasis in European Portuguese (EP). The study of locatives in EP based on the data from I-Fala corpus (under construction) offers the possibility of confirming the analyses proposed in some recent works, namely Martins (2010, 2012). As argued in Martins (2010, 2012), Ca and La behave similarly when it comes to allowing users to achieve their own communicative goals, some of which being the expression of argumentation or metalinguistic negation. Thus, in view of these observations and considering the data collected from I-Fala, we will propose an analysis according to which La and Ca function as discursive markers, i.e. as emphatic-textual, interactional metalinguistic operators.

At the Crossroads of Translation and History-Writing: Büyük İran Tarihi as a Case of Writing History through Translation

This article explores the relationship between translation and history-writing within the framework of translation studies by analyzing Büyük İran Tarihi (Great history of Iran) translated by Ömer Halis from Persian into Ottoman Turkish in 1926. Questioning whether the distinction between the translation and the original and the distinction between the translator and the history writer were blurred in this case of translation and whether the translator used strategies that reflect his ideology during the translation process, a descriptive analysis of the extratextual elements surrounding the translation and of the textual elements has been conducted. Drawing on the analysis of the extratextual sources and the textual sources with a focus on the translation strategies such as omissions, additions and modifications, it is claimed that Ömer Halis intervenes in the translation in line with his ideological stance and becomes both a visible translator and a history writer who enters into a communication, starts a dialogue and a discussion with the author of the source text, who evaluates and construes the information in the source text from his ideological point of view and who writes a history that serves his ideology. It is further claimed that, the boundary between the translator and the historian and the boundary between translation and history-writing become eliminated in this specific case of translation, which might be considered as a constituent of the ‘history translation repertoire’ of the period in question.

Estetika Posmodern Puisi “Aku Ingin” Karya Saut Situmorang

Penelitian ini mengkaji estetika puisi “Aku Ingin” karya Saut Situmorang dengan melibatkan pengamatan unsur tekstual dan ekstratekstual, unsur-unsur di dalam dan di luar teks puisi. Hasil kajian menunjukkan bahwa terdapat lima gejala estetika puisi “Aku Ingin” karya Saut Situmorang mencakupi (1) pastiche, (2) parodi, (3) kitsch, (4) camp, dan (5) skizofrenia. Transformasi puisi yang lebih dahulu ada, yakni “Aku Ingin” karya Sapardi Djoko Damono ke dalam bentuk puisi baru versi Saut menunjukkan gejala pastiche. Gejala pastiche juga terlihat dalam hubungan intertekstualitas dengan teks sebelumnya, yakni drama tragedi Romeo and Juliet. Pemikiran dan ungkapan penyair Sapardi diimitasi sedemikian rupa untuk membuatnya tampak absurd. Ungkapan “mencintai dengan membabi buta” ali-alih “mencintai dengan sederhana” menjadi sebuah penanda imitasi karya yang dibuat mendekati aslinya tetapi disimpangkan arahnya menunjukkan gejala parodi. Gejala kitsch terlihat pada masuknya drama tragedi Romeo and Juliet dalam puisi yang menunjukkan hilangnya batas hasil dan nilai-nilai budaya tinggi dengan budaya massa kontemporer. Gejala camp terlihat pada jawaban Saut terhadap “kebosanan” dan sekaligus merupakan satu reaksi terhadap keangkuhan kebudayaan tinggi yang telah memisahkan seni dari makna-makna sosial dan fungsi komunikasi sosial yang dapat dilihat pada ungkapan “tanpa sangsi yang membuat kematiannya jadi puisi” serta “yang membuatnya jadi abadi”. Gejala skizofrenia terlihat pada kekacauan pertandaan klitika “-Ku” dan “-Mu” pada ungkapan “mencintaiMu” dan “mencintaiKu” sebagai objek penyerta. Skizofrenia juga tampak pada kompleksitas susunan puisi yang terpecah-pecah, bahkan kenirhubungan antara baris pertama dan kedua di tiap bait puisi juga menunjukkan adanya idiom serupa. Kesemua temuan tersebut mentabalkan ciri estetika postmodernisme dalam puisi Saut, yakni ciri yang memanfaatkan citra dan tanda yang tanpa batas dengan cara menghancurkan makna, mengangkat hal-hal yang telah sekian lama dianggap tabu untuk menuju implikatur perenungan mendalam, berfikir intensif, dan perhatian penuh pembaca yang menjadi ciri keindahan postmodern.

Scheherazade, Achilles, and Borges: "El sur" as an Infinite Narrative

Scheherazade, Achilles, and Borges:"El sur" as an Infinite Narrative Mac J. Wilson ¡jue, la pucha, que trae licionesel tiempo con sus mudanzas! —Martín Fierro Los árabes dicen que nadie puede leerLas mil y una noches hasta el fin. No porrazones de tedio: se siente que el libro esinfinito —Jorge Luis Borges, Siete noches Ser Alonso Quijano y no atreverme a serdon Quijote. —Jorge Luis Borges, "La fama" Like some of his other stories, Jorge Luis Borges's "El sur" has a suggestive yet ambiguous conclusion.1 The last paragraph (and last sentence) reads: "Dahlmann empuña con firmeza el cuchillo, que acaso no sabrá manejar, y sale a la llanura" (919). The narration–with conjectural phrases like "acaso no sabrá manejar"–makes this conclusion suggestive by leading the reader to assume that the protagonist, Juan Dahlmann, dies, without explicitly declaring him dead. Yet because it is left open-ended, it remains ambiguous, allowing the reader to speculate on the next step in the story. Its inconclusiveness is a result of both content and form. First, the narration stops short of spelling out a concrete ending–Dahlmann finds himself coerced into a dagger fight with an apparently more dexterous local tough and the story ends with the anticipation of this fight. Second, the narration switches from the past tense to the present tense, and then speculates by using the future tense, effectively giving the end of the story the uncanny sense of a beginning. The narrator's temporal aside also sets itself apart in a new, though brief, paragraph, which [End Page 47] leaves it isolated from the preceding text. This shift in syntax and structure prolongs the narration in the present and suggests a narrative future, thereby keeping the story, as well as its protagonist, alive. Because many interpretations of "El sur" seemingly disregard this detail, the question of how Dahlmann dies eclipses the question of if he dies at all. And if one assumes that the protagonist expires, one downplays the open-endedness of the story. Taking the peculiar open-ended quality of the conclusion seriously is an important step in qualifying "El sur" as what we will call an infinite narrative. In basic terms, and working off of Borges's idea that The Thousand and One Nights is a "libro infinito," an infinite narrative refers to a story that implicitly and explicitly perpetuates itself transtextually–to use Gerard Genette's terminology.2 As an infinite narrative, "El sur" perpetuates itself intratextually, intertextually, and extratextually. A narrative's intratextual perpetuation operates via the components of its structure: i.e. foreshadowing, narrative arc, plot points, and sequence of events. An open-ended conclusion, for example, would be considered an intratextual perpetuation because of its integral part in the narrative framework. On the other hand, examples of intertextual perpetuation, of course, refer to the story's intertextuality, including, but not limited to, allusions and references to other texts. For the sake of argument, in our study of "El sur," imitative connections with other texts via Genette's notion of hypertextuality–e.g. parody, pastiche, and structural imitation (Palimpsests 7–10)–are included under the terminological umbrella of intertextual perpetuation. Finally, extratextual perpetuation connects with the biographic, geographic, and cultural context of the production and publication of the text, along with–again, to borrow from Genette–paratexts and metatexts, such as interviews, prefaces, post-publication commentary and analysis of the story.3 It goes without saying that many, if not most, texts contain intratextual, intertextual, and extratextual elements, but what qualifies a story as an infinite narrative depends on its intentional elements of narrative perpetuity. By qualifying "El sur" as an infinite narrative, one can fully appreciate its quality of questioning the very nature and scope of storytelling and its relationship with reality. The following article contends that essential clues of narrative perpetuity in the story, such as the role of The Thousand and One Nights, the structural imitation of Zeno's Paradox of the Tortoise and Achilles, and Borges's extratextual influence, confirm "El sur" as an infinite narrative, thus placing it as an exemplar story in his oeuvre. Of all the intratextual and...

The truth is stranger than fiction: Rick Geary’s Gothic murder tales

ABSTRACTRick Geary weds Gothic horror tropes with the traditions of true crime comics in A Treasury of Victorian Murder Compendium I and II. Geary retells the familiar lurid tales of some of the most famous murderers in both Victorian England, such as Jack the Ripper, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century America, such as H.H. Holmes and Lizzy Borden. By employing a number of paratextual and extratextual elements, such as bibliographies, maps and timelines, Geary heightens the mystery and uncertainty surrounding these events rather than providing the comfort of certainty. The reader remains active beyond the final panel, searching for peace of mind, perhaps, and a definitive answer. A reflection, perhaps, of the cacophony or information everyone must sort through, and the uncertainty of a society too often plagued by senseless and unexpected violence.

Teaching spoken word poetry as a tool for decolonizing and africanizing the South African curricula and implementing “literocracy”

ABSTRACTThis article offers a definition of spoken word poetry that challenges the view that sees it as something different from “poetry”, and as a minor subgenre produced by marginal writers in sites unworthy of academic investigation. It maintains that spoken word poetry is poetry inscribed with textual and extra-textual elements, and – because of its multimodal “nature”, versatility, and sensitivity towards youth culture – it is particularly fit to be discussed and taught in South African multicultural English classrooms, particularly at a time when the decolonisation of knowledge stands at the core of the discourses on contemporary South African culture. It suggests that, in order to decolonise and africanise poetry curricula, teachers and scholars should adopt “participatory observation” research methodologies, and teach multimodally the works of poets so far excluded from the curricula.

“He Who Is at the Point of Death”: The Fate of the Soul in Byzantine Art and Liturgy

In this paper I examine the content and iconography of the Kanon eis Psychorragounta (Kanon for He Who Is at the Point of Death). This was the most important component of an akolouthia by the same name, a liturgical service meant to be read and sung on one’s behalf shortly before death. The kanon’s extensive use and impact are evident in that it was depicted at least three times, once in manuscript illumination and twice in monumental painting, unusual given the rarity of illustrations of minor services. Because of its inclusion in euchologia, the prayer books used by clergy containing all the services of the Byzantine rite, I argue that the akolouthia and its kanon provided a canonical, Church-sanctioned understanding of death and its immediate aftermath and exerted a normative influence on people’s perception of the separation of the soul from the body and subsequent events. On the most basic level, the iconography of the kanon is meant to illustrate its contents. Many extratextual elements are introduced, however, to elucidate and enhance the message of the hymns. Although the iconography of the kanon is derivative, the earlier motifs, originating from such disparate contexts as Psalters and menologia, are combined into a coherent narrative. This clarity contrasts with the sometimes muddled assertions of the kanon itself. The clarifications provided by the iconography also amplify visually the content of the kanon. Finally, I posit that the kanon and its iconography were likely used as a contemplative and penitential exercise by those still alive.

Due semantiche del "vedere" ne I giorni e gli anni di Uwe Johnson

The present study addresses two questions. First, how do extra-textual elements become, by means of fiction, aesthetic structures? Second, which function can be traced back to the 'window' as a space of enunciation? Through an analysis of a chapter of «Anniversaries» of Uwe Johnson, we aim to reveal how the description of an event gives rise to two different semantics of 'viewing'. Whereas the window figures on the one hand as a mere frame which comes between the outside and inside – i.e., between the subject and the object that is meant to be represented – on the other hand the window is elevated to the function of an authentic mode of knowing. This analysis shows that the two semantics of 'viewing' create a space of enunciation. In the first case, the act of 'viewing' coincides with the principle of imitatio naturae, whereas in the second case, one witnesses images one after the other, which are defined by the act of 'viewing', as a prolongation of past events. The effect of this rhetorical device becomes evident in a shift of interest from the question of reference, to the question of mediation between 'configuration' and 'postfiguration'.

Travels with mietsie: geert mak's troublesome quest for john steinbeck's travels with charley in search of america

As much of literary journalism work is confronted with the boundaries of the sometimes strongly demarcated genres of literature and journalism, writers feel they should be extra alert about presenting an acceptable and persuasive ethos. This negotiation of ethos takes place within the text, but it can also be influenced by extratextual elements such as the position of the journalist or writer in the cultural domain. A significant case in point is a 575-page nonfiction work written by the famous Dutch literary journalist Geert Mak. In his Travels Without John: In Search of America, he describes his 2010 journey through the USA, following the tracks of John Steinbeck who traveled exactly 50 years earlier and published his Travels with Charley: In Search of America in 1962. The arduous confrontation with this source text is striking, and it reveals some risks and pitfalls of literary journalism projects.