De muur van meer dan beton. De narratives van Cees Nooteboom in Berlijnse notities

Cees Nooteboom reports in Berlijnse notities (Berlin notes) about the events that took place in the period from the beginning of 1989 to June 1990 in West and East Berlin. Nooteboom went to West Germany and did not foresee that the Wall would fall (1989) and that East Berlin would become freely accessible to him. I examine whether it is possible to analyse Berlijnse notities based on the model of Edward M. Bruner. Bruner presented his model in the article “The role of narrative in tourism” (2005) in which he distinguishes pre-tour, on-tour and post-tour narratives. The starting point for him are the narratives that tourists develop before, during and after their trip. The question in this article is whether this model can also be used for a literary journey like Berlijnse notities. Although it produces useful results, Berlijnse notities are too different from the narratives for which Bruner developed his model. A term which Bruner applies, dialogic narration, needs to be studied further.