Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2000. [Vol. 6.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)

Studies - Hans-Wolfgang Schaller: The Survival of the Novel: E. L. Doctorow's Escape out of the Postmodern Deadend

discovered factual world can be challenged as the questionable world we ourselves have painted - the museum of our values, dogmas, assumptions, that prescribes for us not only what we may like and dislike, believe and disbelieve, but also what we may be permitted to see and not to see. (217) Established facts, then, are nothing but scientific and philosophical assumptions guiding and at the same time limiting our perception of the world. Doctorow concludes therefore: "Facts are the images of history, just as images are the data of fiction". (229) Of course the old Aristotelian distinction between historiography, relating events that happened, and literature, telling about events that could happen, here looms in the background. Literary and nonliterary texts operate similarly in that they have to rely an the persuasive character of the linguistic form they are construed in. The reality beyond in both cases has no meaning, it simply exists. Meaning is generated solely by the structure of the text itself. Referring to weather reports an television, Doctorow shows how "facts' are presented to acquire the intended meaning: Weather reports are constructed...with exact attention to conflict (high pressure areas clashing with lows), suspense (the climax of tomorrow's weather prediction coming after the commercial), and other basic elements of narrative . [...] I am thus led to the proposition that there is no more fiction or nonflction as we commonly understand the distinction: there is only narrative. (230/231) Even if all texts are nothing but narrative generating meaning out of their structure alone, there still is a valid difference in their political functions. Nonfiction, in Western culture, pretends to explain reality according to natural laws, scientific experiments persuasively prove the validity of "facts', thus giving assurance to the assumption that there is a meaningful universe out there. "The power of the regime", as Doctorow calls fact-oriented text structures, may use its persuasive potential to secure political influence, to blunt people's intellectual and emotional faculties, and eventually even to establish totalitarian regimes. Literature, "the power of freedom" an the other hand, can use its subversive capabilities to point out such dangers and to prevent society from falling prey to dexterous linguistic manipulators. 94