The eyewitnessed reportage has a pronounced character of narrating. The imaginative power of the text helps the reader to empathise with the characters. That makes constructing empathy a necessary skill of reporters. But how can this be done?Despite a tradition of story telling among reporters, narratologists virtually have neglected the reportage genre.

The eyewitnessed reportage has a pronounced character of narrating. The imaginative power of the text helps the reader to empathise with the characters. That makes constructing empathy a necessary skill of reporters. But how can this be done?Despite a tradition of story telling among reporters, narratologists virtually have neglected the reportage genre.

The objective of this paper ? Trusting the reader: On impressionistic narrating in Stig Claesson's writings with the novel Brev till en hembygdsgård as starting point ? is to examine narrative techniques used by the Swedish author Stig Claesson, specifically some which fall within the broad field known as literary impressionism: e.g. omission, repetition, juxtaposition, episodic narration and how access to the narrator?s as well as individual characters' consciousness is handled.The method used for the study will be that of illustrative comparison. The analysis will seek its theoretical grounds in the works by Gerard Genette and Jonathan Culler.