Thick Description #2 Imitating The Voice Imitator

Still from Thomas Bernhard - Three Days by Ferry Radax (1970)

I’ve been a big fan of Thomas Bernhard's work for years. My brother was probably first put me onto him, but Becky Beasley’s use of his writing in her photographic/sculptural work drew me closer to the Austrian Nestbeschmutzer (one who fouls their own nest). He’s sharp, acerbic, seemingly critical of everything, funny and hypnotic. Most of his books have little to no paragraph or chapter breaks; they oscillate through repetitive, monologic tirades, but somehow, even with dyslexia, I find them easier to read than a lot of books. Yes might be the only book I’ve read in one sitting. When I had to start writing regularly for my PhD - observational, theoretical, reflective and exploratory texts - I thought of employing a Bernhard-style melding between observed actions and news stories that he uses in The Voice Imitator to thickly describe events during my time in Plymouth.

The Voice Imitator is comprised of 104 single (often single-paragraph) parable-like stories that Bernhard drew from newspaper reports, overheard conversations, or simply hearsay. Peter Filkins says the book is “a mini-anthology of [Bernhard’s] obsessions with political corruption, madness, murder and the inability of language to capture, or relieve, the absurdity of life". Dale Peck writes that 99% of Western literary history could be described in terms of democratic works that present a commentary or affirmation of some kind of moral. The remaining 1%, in which he places Bernhard, “far from seeing literature as a tool for cultural or even individual salvation, write only to give voice to a sense of alienation from oneself, one’s peers and one’s place in history" (Peck, 2010). Rather than offer literature that can help the reader escape through culture, Bernhard wants to show how ridiculous and pretentious most Western (specifically Austrian) culture can be. While I do not hold the same disdain for Plymouth as Bernhard seems to have for Austria, his project of critique through deep involvement bears analogies to my attempt to describe events in Union Street through thick description. A lot of Benrhard’s writing presents him as an insider/outsider. Woodcutters (1984) in particular viscerally describes his proximity to (he’s in the room), but distance/dislike from, Austrian literary elites. I had far less proximity or animosity to the people I encountered working in Union Street; my feelings of insider/outsider were more to the space itself. The buildings I used to know as nightclubs and pubs were now becoming community spaces. I thought if I recorded interactions, recounted memories, used archival news clippings, and documented overheard conversations (maybe the great Tim Etchells was also an influence here), I could form a kind of amalgam to thickly describe what it was like to be on Union Street with the past events also present. 

In September 2018, I volunteered with Nudge during their preparations to open The Clipper (an old pub they took over as a community space), at the same time, The Atlantic Project and Plymouth Art Weekender were happening. This kind of confluence of events was exactly what my research was about, but I was still finding my feet in terms of a satisfactory research practice. Being in Union Street offered material from which to construct thick descriptions, but, as with Bernhard’s approach to Voice Imitator, I intended to trawl newspapers from Plymouth at those times, and include snippets of conversations I was having, to bring a constellation of narratives that could construct a thick description of my experience. When talking to some Nudge staff, a general theme would be the ongoing social issues in the area. Just before I arrived, there had been a horrifically violent incident in a back street. This case was used to show that there were still significant problems in the area. This was all very Bernhard, all very negative - was that the picture I wanted to offer? It was intruiging, but would it help answer any research questions? I’m drawn to the sardonic, cynical style of Berhnard’s prose, but I didn’t want to perpetuate a negative image that people are working hard to change. The negative impression was partially informed by my own knowledge of the past street, to dwell on which would have been fetishistic. 

Bernhard

Throughout Voice Imitator and in much of his work, Bernhard employs grammatical formulations such as “the so-called” or “in the nature of things”. This at once gives continuity to the work, while also pointing to other sources for the information. The so-called, by whom? What nature of things? The people named within the text could also be the readers; the nature in question is also their own. His melding of sources and his literary tropes offer a bleak and confused view of Austrian culture, a microcosm of what a thick description might look like if thought of in reverse. If it is a writer’s job to provide meaning through their work, Bernhard only leaves confusion and frustration, but that can be a kind of clarity. An appealing aspect of thick description is its ability to present perspectives that contradict one another. I’ll talk about this in later posts, but the storytelling methodology can present multiple narratives from each project it's used on; Fieldnote Diarists can give subjective views from a range of people on a single action. I suppose part of The Voice Imitator’s draw was that it seemed to speak in various voices, despite coming from a single author. 

Bernhard’s style forces the reader, often in obliquely funny ways, to reevaluate a common vernacular, “thus enter into a valuation of language, even while the writer is viciously attacking mindless bureaucracy, the sworn enemy of thought and metaphor" (Filkins, 1997). Newspapers sometimes deliver horrifying events through matter-of-fact language. Just as some events are hidden through media silence, some are blown out of proportion through excited discourse. Gossip is often as harsh as it is inaccurate. Bernhard draws all these voices in, any voice he sees as part of Austrian culture. Michael Hofmann comments on the convergence of voices within Bernhard’s style, saying:

[E]veryone speaks the same way and says the same sort of thing. It’s one reason we take all the opinions so seriously, and attribute them so readily to the author: they are not relativised, there is no argument and no opposition. In a sense, the opinions are all we have.

Bernhard’s position on a given subject is obscured by his consumption of varied voices. In the title story, we hear about a voice imitator entertaining a bourgeois party with his impressions. But when he is asked to impersonate himself, he cannot…. It is impossible to offer a performance of our authentic self; the request is an oxymoron; performances are the only thing we have. The idea of a writer dropping their performance concerning a subject they are analysing or describing becomes absurd. This is perhaps where I hit a wall; I needed to come to terms with my attitudes and memories of Union Street to be able to bring a fresh, critical eye to what I was researching. Bernhard’s draw is his critical tone, which holds great aesthetic appeal for me, but not as a critical method. After a few experiments, I decided to leave the approach to one side.

An attempt

To say their accent is put on is a step too far. It’s just part of an everyday performance, but that doesn’t say very much; it would be equivalent to saying it’s just part of their everyday breathing pattern, but if it is affected, it must have something to do with wanting to fit into a certain social group, a group they understand as more authentic; all the more unusual as they don’t mind standing out in other ways.

While at the exhibition, I felt like a hunter on safari, looking at wild animals. The crowd is very “bougie”; expected at a gallery opening, but there is something particularly grating, possibly the homogeneous nature of the group, the sense that everyone knows each other, but I cannot know for sure. Someone asks me if I know about social proscribing, if I know the term; another person didn't remember me at first then seems nervous about my research, or at least taking part in it, his manner is odd; A tipsy woman asks me for a cigarette, she is flirting; people are coming from or going to the Lord High Admiral, a short migration from one social drinking space to another.

Amid chaotic scenes, a man was seriously injured and had to be taken to Derriford Hospital, where he underwent a head scan. Police said he had received a bite to his ear, but witnesses described him as being covered in blood with his ear “bitten off”. 

The estate has few visual escape points, partly because the flats are enclosed to the north by the luxury accommodations found in The Millfields - a former naval hospital - built in the 1760s and active until the 1990s, when most of the city's medical activity moved to Derriford on the outskirts of the city. 

Military men would look for fights, people would say, “Marines actively go out in groups and look for trouble,” and “Navy men never back down.” Would a mural of these times be worth celebrating: a tight-knit community of people who won’t back down from a fight? But then, 1948 was a different time; military personnel returning from war as heroes must have produced an atmosphere of gratitude, relief, and, to that end, celebration. 

Why not

From age 2 to 19, I lived in Plymouth and am therefore inextricably linked to elements of Plymouth culture that are not included in policy discourse (one of the main focuses of my research). As I’ve said elsewhere, my previous impression of the street was based on “DJs, cheap drinks, dancing, flirtatious/sexual interactions, excitement, drugs – all the things often associated with UK nightlife”. I have vivid memories of Union Street and could provide anecdotal stories that would narrate a violent and intimidating picture of the area, but these are all teenage memories. I question if these are analytically useful. They unavoidably colour my impressions, but did they have to dictate my analysis? How could I adopt a Geertz/Bernhard method to distance myself rather than to draw myself in? I was already within the text I was trying to read, but could I write in a way that pushed my already-held narratives out with a description of the present? The text of a thick description describes from outside the text of a culture; perhaps this means any description I produced would have been confused; it would describe a sense of confusion rather than aim for clarification. It was not my intention to present a clear picture of a place and its culture, or to deny my rootedness within such a picture, but I kept being drawn towards the negative, which would sideline the actions I found most compelling and analytically significant (the work of Imperfect Cinema, for example).

When I tried to combine my notes of conversations I had (or overheard) with newspaper clippings, I found the stylistic voice of Bernhard take over. It's like he pulled me down into being cynical and remote. His influence encouraged me to focus on the annoying bourgeois Plymouth artworld in-crowd, on violence, on the negative. In retrospect, part of the problem with my approach to writing and being remote (either feeling it myself or clearly being seen as such by others) was that the writing encouraged an internal monologue. Between my experiences and Bernhard, I ended in an inward and negative space of reflection, rather than the generally positive and often excited space I often felt while actually in Union Street, doing the research. 

Returning to Practice

When I left Plymouth originally, I left my interest and involvement with art behind me. Black and white photography (during a foundation degree in London, my second attempt at higher education) was the first thing that got me excited about art again. When struggling to find a way to research through practice, I turned back towards my Pentax K-1000 (my first analogue camera) in an attempt to collect stories in different ways. This finally manifested in a collection of short films about the Union Street Part. They are less colourful than I’d like because colour film is expensive (A more vibrant representation of the street party from 2024 is below), but they do describe the party from multiple perspectives through the voices of people who have been involved in organising the event from early in its life. This was also not part of my PhD submission, but it points towards a key move I’ve made in my conception of the value of methods like thick description - they can be open, made through public means, through conversation and collaboration. I produced many things about Union Street through conversations and practice, moving between exterior and interior, individual and collaborative, abstract and concrete. Being on the outside can be of value, as long as you’re willing to talk and listen to the people on the inside. Style can’t come first, which is why Bernhard was ultimately not the right influence for my research, not on Union Street at least.

Union Street Part 2024

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If done well, thick description can be a way to gather and present data. There should be efforts to represent data engagingly; the work of Isotype in the 20’s and 30’s is an interesting historical example of such efforts. Ways to problematise data collection also need to be considered. I'm keen to explore ways that people can create their own data, about themselves, about things they value, through forms and media that speak to them. This is difficult when value systems are imposed from above or outside. It's difficult to get data consisting of collected stories, in the voice of the people it is about, to be considered 'valid' in the way statistically grounded metrics are. Thinking in terms of thick description is a step in the right direction.