Kapuscinski: ‘I Sometimes Call it Literature by Foot’

Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 02.05.07 | 2:05 PM ET

One other note on journalist and travel writer Ryszard Kapuscinski, who died last month at the age of 74. Granta has posted an interview Bill Buford conducted with the writer, which was originally published in 1987.

One pithy highlight: “The traditional trick of literature,” Kapuscinski told Buford, “is to obscure the writer, to express the story through a fabricated narrator describing a fabricated reality. But for me, what I have to say is validated by the fact that I was there, that I witnessed the event. There is, I admit, a certain egoism in what I write, always complaining about the heat or the hunger or the pain I feel, but it is terribly important to have what I write authenticated by its being lived. You could call it, I suppose, personal reportage, because the author is always present. I sometimes call it literature by foot.”