More on the Documentary Impulse

"Why spend so much time recounting these more or less pointless anecdotes? When they do seem at all meaningful to me I instantly blame myself for choosing them (putting them together, fabricating them maybe) precisely in order to give them a meaning . . .
"I'm caught in a bind: either I'm elucidating prefabricated meanings, or, on the other hand, exploiting the gratuitousness of a purely random pointillism (illusory into the bargain) as I grope my way forward at the mercy of obvious or absurd associations."

- Robbe-Grillet, Ghosts in the Mirror