Qualitative Inquiry

Volume 13 Number 2
March 2007 204-217
2007 Sage Publications
They Have Tied Me 10.1177/1077800406295628
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Reflections on the Art of

Case Study Research
Michael Watts
Von Hgel Institute, St. Edmunds College, Cambridge, United Kingdom

You had to see it to believe it. I mean, were sitting there, thirty-odd
people in this new class, and I really cant think Im the only one here won-
dering what exactly qualitative research is all about and why has he just
walked in carrying a box of coat hangers? Why? And what has any of this
got to do with this book he wanted us to read? He stands there for a while
without a single word of explanation and then he quotes some guy called
Stenhouse and says I have a fear of lecturing lest you believe me. And
suddenly my interest is piqued because Id Im wondering what the
read that book hed recommended and, to be hell is the point of this cha-
honest, I hadnt liked it. I had no real idea rade thats dressed up as a
what it was saying or why it wasnt saying it. lesson? I mean, weve been
It was likeOh, I dont know. Like it had just told to read this wretched
been scribbled down because the publishers book thats supposed to tell
deadline was up. Thats it: it was unfinished us all about case study
and I figured that there had to be more to it research and its utter non-
than that. Its funny, but one of the reasons I sense. But now hes telling
read English as an undergrad was that I us that hes not going to
wanted to find out more about literature tell us anything about it,
than just how the book ended. And here I was you know, so it looks like
with this thing and here was the chance its going to be down to me
to figure it out for myself and I suppose thats what this story is all about:
what do I think of qualitative research after reading Stakes Art of Case
Study Research? In its own way, its about change: change of attitudes and
a look at whether its possible for these different attitudes to exist side by

204
 Watts / Case Study Research 205

side, like theyre following the same lines of thought and sometimes just
veering off on their own and sometimes merging back again

This article is written as a response to my reactions to Robert E. Stakes

(1995) The Art of Case Study Researchfirst introduced to me through a
postgraduate course on qualitative researchand, in particular, to the
report on Chicagos Frances Harper Elementary School contained within it
(Stake, 1995). As such, it draws together some of my reflections on case
study research and attempts to trace the development of my own attitudes
toward the qualitative research that has, for me, been symbolized by Stake
and his report. At the same time, it is a response to my own self, an
auto/biographical reflection on my understanding of where I was and where
I had been coming from and of those values I had brought with me and was
developing (Stake, 1995, 2006). Within this second enquiry, drawn from a
(self) research diary and class notes kept throughout the course, this article
also represents an exploration of myselfincluding myself as a qualitative
researcher with a fascination for the auto/biographical. This attempt to pre-
sent and re-present these entwined reflectionson qualitative research and
on myselfhas a third purpose here: to explore the re-presentation of this
developing understanding (see also, e.g., Ely, Vinz, Downing, & Anzul,
1997; Stronach & MacLure, 1997) and tell others something of what I might
not otherwise have included (Stake, 2004). I apologize if the results seem
merely pretentious.
The sources for this story are primarily my own, mostly taken from a
diary that noted some of my extempore reactions to and reflections on var-
ious aspects of qualitative research. These are referred to within this article
as Stake x and are included, complete with numbers, to mark the passage
of the time within which my understanding, such as it was, developed and
progressed. In effect, they are a series of interviews with myself. These
interviews were recorded and purposely left unamendedeven down to the
odd typographic error. They were subjected to annotation without amenda-
tion (tempting as that sometimes was), and this article is, in effect, yet
another series of annotations. The temptation, even now, is to annotate it
furtherbut that would be to spoil the story.
Although I had raised other issues with myself and with others during the
course of study, I have limited myself here to an exploration of the uses of
literary devices and fiction in the writing of case studies. For me, particularly
as I had read English as an undergraduate, these were sources of discontent
and satisfaction: I had simultaneously wondered what the hell is the point
of this? and had my interest piqued. In an early consideration of the report
206 Qualitative Inquiry

I had suggested that it was a case study of Robert E. Stake at Harper

School (Stake 1) and objected to the intrusion of literary devices: It was too
much of a story, not enough of a report. I recognize the irony of writing my
own report now in the form of a story as this article becomes a case study of
myself considering the case study of Robert E. Stake at Harper School.
However, I believe that there is a validity in this as such a case study
addresses the question of whether there is, as had been suggested in the very
first class, some intelligent reason to change the way of doing things in
ones own professional life (class notes). The first objective of a case study
is to understand the case (Stake, 2006, p. 2) and in trying to present and to
re-present the explorations of my own self I have had the opportunity to sub-
mit my reflections to what I had heard called the alternative interpretation
test (class notes) and thereby locate the sources of my discontent. As I sub-
sequently came to appreciate, this was not only a part of my own self-cor-
recting system (Stake, 2004, p. 22) and my commitment to skepticism
(Stake, 2004) but an acknowledgment of the ethical responsibility to iden-
tify influences on my interpretation of the case (Stake, 2006).
I have deliberately eschewed the literature of case study and qualitative
research in this story, other than that written by Stake, shared with me in the
classes or included in the notes I have written in response to Stakes work
because this is intended as a personal approach to case study. It is not
intended as an abstract examination of the uses of fiction in qualitative
research, for that would not involve the reflection that Stake has pushed me
towards (Stake 16). Instead, this is an attempt to forego the ease of relying
upon the authority of otherswhether for confirmation or to argue . . . Do
I want to know (explore) what I know or what I dont? (Stake 16). However,
just as Stake had taken his experience in program evaluation into the unfa-
miliar milieu of urban schools (Stake, 1995, p. 140), so I carried my experi-
ence of literary criticism (shaped by my responses to the authority of
others) with me as I explored the unfamiliar milieu of case study research.
Such literature as informed my experience informs this story.
Given the extent of self-reflection, does this article have any worth?
Although acknowledging the potential for solipsism, I believe that it does.
During the course of study I found myself tied to my own stake, for Stake
and his report on Harper School informed the course of these notes
throughout. The pun in the title, however, has a more serious point. Aware
of the pitfalls of assuming my own knowledge in othersbe it in terms of
a single word such as catharsis (Stake 2) or to the canon of medieval
literature (Stake 13)it may be worth putting this quotation into some sort
of context. Its significance may become clearer by seeing it in relation to
 Watts / Case Study Research 207

this article where it Shakespeares Scottish play where Macbeth

lies in my growing app- cries these words as the unrelenting course
reciation of qualitative of action that had been initiated after his
research: If Im to use meeting with the three witches draws to its
such research then there is inevitable end. Having seized the Scottish
a value in having come to throne by force, the consequences of his
appreciate (at least some actions are now laid before him. He does not
of) its methods heuristi- recognize his own culpabilityafter all, it is
cally (Stake 5). And so, They who have tied him to the stake leav-
if I had tied myself to a ing him no more room for maneuver and
stake, then this repre- defiantly, heroically, gloriously unrepentant
sents my attempts to fly to the very end of the play that bears his
from it. To understand. name, he is killed in the next and final scene.
Claims have been staked, and it behooves me to explore them.
My immediate reactions to case study research, particularly as the art form
suggested by the very title of Stakes book and through his report on Harper
School, were unfavorable. Two annotations, made at the time of my first read-
ing the report, suggest this. Alongside the passage, A 20-page case study is
likely to run 50 if the researcher doesnt ruthlessly winnow and sift (Stake,
1995, p. 121) there are pencil marks, thickened with frustration, and the single
comment precisely!!! On the first page of the report itself (Stake, 1995) I have
written Is this a paradigm for qual. research? Although I believe that some
words carry their own emotive meanings around with them (Stake 6) those
quoted here do not appear to do that. Looking at them isolated in print they
remain obstinately neutral even now. Without the preamble of frustration they
could, particularly amid the data gathered since then, suggest fervent agreement
and genuine inquiry. My own claim to Stake, then, is as genesis of and media-
tor between these two positions of frustration and agreement through inquiry.
To be honest, I was getting more and more confused with the whole case
study as art thing. And that business of describing coat hangers just didnt
help. I mean, what do you say? They look like coat hangers. Theyre
designed as coat hangers. You know, things you hang your coat on. Theyre
hangers for coats, arent they? Well, they didnt help me at all with the
book. So I went up to him afterwards and said to him, Look, I dont get it.
Theres got to be It doesnt tell me anything. Its a piece of crap.
more to this and I I mean, obviously I said a bit more but, between
just dont get it. It you and me, I was rather expecting that the per-
reads like a story suasive force of my logic would soon swing him
and its not even round to my point of view. Well, alright. No.
a very good story Looking back to it I was probably hoping that hed
208 Qualitative Inquiry

because it doesnt get all defensive and then Id kick in with a dev-
tell you anything. astating argument that would prove my point. But
Theres not even do you know what he said? He thought about
a conclusion. And it taking his time like he was interested, then
he said, Thats interesting. Why dont you write something down? And I
thought, Right. Ill do that. Ill show you what I mean. And thats where
it all started, I suppose.
I rejected the report for being too literary (Stake 2): I objected to the
style of the report and, through its stylistic presentation, its content. Indeed,
I wondered whether a whole piece of work [could] be dismissed because
of just one of its componentsin this case, that the entire report, including
its content, may be dismissed because of a negative reaction to its stylistic
presentation (Stake 1). The central narrator offered inconclusive descrip-
tion rather than definite prescription. It was not what I considered to be a
report (Stake 3). It was, in short, a story: instead of being told whether or
not the Chicago School Reform and the schools own School Improvement
Plan were working or not, I was told about Professor Stakes outing to a
Chicago school. And I did not like that.
It was not the language that I had reacted to. I have revisited enough of
my own work to appreciate a report being readable. With Stake it was what
the readability represented that concerned me. Comparing it to a bad novel by
Don DeLillo (Stake 1), I dismissed it out of hand because, with its descrip-
tive narrative rather than prescriptive conclusions, it was a story that fails
to adequately address any of its own stated goals (Stake 1). The problem
was that I wanted answers to, not insight into, the problems addressed by
these stated goals. I put style above content. It is small consolation if I am
not the only one guilty of that (Stake 12). Interestingly (or not) reflecting
on this paper helped my understanding of my appreciation of DeLillos
(1994) work in general and the bad novelWhite Noisein particular.
I had picked out and focused on one sentence: I reach to the ground and
pick up a spent casing (Stake, 1995, p. 142). I chose to read it, with its
blandness and (seemingly) sudden incongruous juxtapositioning, as a
mimesis of the very situation that I interpreted as my picture of the scene
(Stake 1). Safely wrapped up in the language of literary criticism, I criti-
cized him for not drawing proper attention to evidence of gun use on these
school grounds. The suggestion that one purpose of this research is to
make the familiar seem strange so that attention can be drawn to it (Stake 1)
 Watts / Case Study Research 209

indicates the potential for literary devices is ridiculous because it is

in the writing of such reports. It allows the important when dealing
reader to determine the import of the matter with schools to make clear
according to his or her own understanding of the pervasion of violent
the situationas does much literature. It threat (Stake 1). With such
says: Here is the situation. Make of it what weighty things, the reader
you will (Stake 6). And it frees the reader should not be free
from the hectoring of the author. This use of a literary dissonance con-
tributed to my original dismissal of the report as nothing but a story. My
problem with the use of a literary style is not necessarily that it does render
the findings of [such an] enquiry . . . woolly (Stake 6) but that the asso-
ciation with literature can render them such. Although I can explore the
nightmare scenario of White Noise and suggest that Life cannot be reduced
to a series of questions with definite answers (Stake 8) I clearly had great
problems applying that same consideration to Stake; and, through Stake, to
qualitative research. I believe that this problem lies in what I see/saw as
the purpose of literature (Stake 9). Yet, looking ahead to my engagement
here with another work of literaturePat Barkers Ghost Road (1995)
I can appreciate the suggestion of a reasonable, and reasoned, approach
to life by seeing in the fictional character of Billy Prior a ludicrous type
who must split his personality in two to maintain the inflexible code he tries
to live by.
Acknowledging the dangers of making sweeping statements, I will risk
the suggestion that whereas qualitative research is concerned with partic-
ularities, literature is concerned with generalities that are illustrated
through the particular. Blake (c.1804/1989) summed it up rather well when
writing of seeing a world in a grain of sand and holding infinity in the palm
of your hand and so on. Common humanityor Sartres (1981) notion of
the universal singular by which every person is like every other person
because of the universality of social experiences and processes and yet like
no other person because they are single instances of those same social
experiences and processesallows the audience to meaningfully relate
to the generality of the literature. It may be worth pausing here to look at
an example. So, a novel, a particular favorite of mine that you might also
know, a story such as Joseph Conrads Heart of Darkness (1902/1973)
210 Qualitative Inquiry

can illustrate the human has been saved from the obscure tedium of a
condition. Francis Ford modern anti-imperialist dogma (which so
Coppola then took it up, obviously fails to recognize the reality of turn
and did so brilliantly, of the century Empire) by the film Apocalypse
to show the madness Now. I mean, who can forget those heli-
of the Vietnam War in copters going into battle with the surfboards
Apocalypse Now which and with Wagners Ride of the Valkyries blar-
became a commentary ing out? And its used to show the inevitable
on the sheer madness of consequences of human vanity and thirst for
War, of all war (Stake power in a glorious and heroic depiction of nec-
9) even more so after essary justice. Its brilliantly done even though
there was all that aggravation with the helicopters which had been sold by
the US to the Philippine government then borrowed by Coppola before
being requisitioned back to put down the insurgents (Stake 7). What is
strangest here: truth or fiction in film?
With too much of the story in it, the truths that I first saw in the report
on Harper School were generally applicable rather than particularly so: I
saw the story of Harper School from the premises looking out rather than
in. They were liable to dismissal in terms of the school because they were
not objectively reported. I wanted confirmation and got this instead
(Stake 3). Yet I can smile at Shakespeares (c.1601/1975) Olivia giving out
the divers schedules of her beauty and, if I can put aside the canon of great
literature for the moment, I have laughed out loud when the meaning of
life, the universe and everything has been given as 42 (Adams, 1986). I can
quite gleefully agree with Wildes (1891/1970) suggestion that people did
not notice sunsets until Turner started painting them and that the artist is,
indeed, a critic. However, in reading Stake I had a great deal of difficulty in
accepting that I could notice the consequences of the Chicago School
Reform at Harper School. I had (with apologies to Wilde and Stake) diffi-
culty in recognizing the researcher as critic, never mind as artist.
In fact, I am not sure that I even recognized the researcherin the
sense that I recognized his authority to comment upon urban schools.
My impression was of a white upper middle-class male being unduly sur-
prised at finding a spent cartridge on the grounds of an inner-city school in
Chicago (Stake 1). I wondered whether it was simply this picture that I had
drawn of him that had led to my resenting his authorial intrusion. What
could he know of urban schools? What could he as an outsider tell me with
my inner-city experiences about urban schools? Had this perception further
prejudiced my reading of the report? Stake (1995) himself answers the first
 Watts / Case Study Research 211

question: most of his experience is not in urban schools (p. 140). Yet
my experiences are also limited: I have worked in inner cities, but I have not
lived in them. If I saw him as a middle-class inner-city colonizer (as opposed
to me with my 9-5 anticolonialism) it was because he knew enough
(unlike myself at the time of these early musings) to define his limits so
that I can make my own mind up from his experi- why is he there,
ences. Not only has he given a voice to the voice- speaking for others
less, he has given me a picture of the particular and not letting
school and the CSR that allows me, if need be, to them speak out
determine an alternative in the light of [my] own and up for them-
experience (Stake 8). Moreover, in declaring his selves? (Stake 4).
own limitations of experience he had given me the Instead of such
advantage of knowing where he is coming presumption,
from so that I could take that into account when surely he could just
applying my own experience to his observations. get to the point and
He knows enough to not comment, to not give get on with giving
me the firm conclusions I sought. Of course, such conclusions and
commentary would ultimately be the judgment of one who has little expe-
rience of urban schools and would have to be accepted or rejected
accordingly.
Yet, for all Stakes attempts to preclude such judgments, I made my own
and found it difficult to recognize the validity of the reports content. I did
not recognize his story as an account of Harper School under the CSR and
its own School Improvement Plan. I may be able to recognize that life can-
not be reduced to a series of questions with definite answers (Stake 8) but
only if, it would seem, life is neatly bound up within the safety of a literary
story. I could not approach life through case study research in the same way.
My problem with Stake (and, through Stake, with qualitative research) was
that I failed to recognize the potential of fictive and literary devices in his
report. My problem with myself was that I had failed to bridge the divide I
had made between fact and the fictive style. This was where the source of
my discontent was located. Case study research, I was beginning to realize,
like literature, is concerned with illustrations rather than definitive answers;
but whereas literature may be concerned with the ideal, such research
is concerned with the real and the particular. But that was then. Now,
bridging the divide I had once seen, I had found that I was able to
212 Qualitative Inquiry

recognize the potential of fictive and liter- propose (through the abstrac-
ary devices as they are used in Stakes tion of these common human
report. It has required me to locate myself experiences as they are real-
within the source of that discontent as I ized, with more or less skill, in
have brought what I know to bear on what literature) a working hypothe-
I have been presented with in his study. sis capable of defining the
There are answers in the stories told by lack of definition held out
Stake and by myself. And this is the thing: here by Stake. And it is this:
there are answers in the pluralnot just the one. The story allows the writer
or researcher to hold out a choice so that the reader can pick and choose
what is appropriate to the circumstances. The reader can determine the truth
as he or she sees it.
And so I put the book to one side. Anyway, the course was getting a lot
more interesting. He got this speaker in to talk about the uses of personal
stories for professional learning I think it was. You know, what really got
me with that was that she brought in an excerpt from Pat Barkers Ghost
Road, the last of her Great War trilogy. I felt on more secure ground with
that because I know this stuff. I think I even wrote that down somewhere.
Yes, here it is: There is a fascinating amalgam of fact and fiction here.
Billy Prior is a creature of Barkers own making, but he could have been
there. Rivers, Sassoon, Owen, they were all there. Real characters, people
who existed and who recorded their own thoughts, have been brought into
a work of fiction and their backdrop is the mess of events and propaganda
that was the Great War. Four years of fighting between fact and fiction. Yes,
thats it. Its from Stake 4. And how many of these facts find their way into
truths told by Prior? Truths that the others may not have told? You know,
where does the truth lie in all of this?
But as Pontius Pilate asked 2000 years ago at the beginning of another
story: Quid est veritas? What is truth? And where does the fiction become
a fact? Can facts and fiction interwoven together tell a truth? Can a story
avoid the limitations of what may be contain the definitive truth
seen as something definitive and and then tell it in a fictive
still contain a truth? (Stake 8). This style? (Stake 8). And this,
suddenly came to me appearing as a I thought, must surely be the
question I need to put to the answers Ive given myself (Stake 8). A story
can contain a general truth, even if it is not an actual and factual report of
events. Gullivers Travels did not happen, but the story does not lose its
 Watts / Case Study Research 213

significance for this oversight of Swifts (1726/1967). Indeed, it can be

argued that the message would have been missed if satire had given way to
mere reportage (Stake 4). But Gullivers Travels is clearly a fictional story.
What of Stakes story of Harper School? What I find interesting now,
I later wrote, is the recognition that I can carry all my critical analyses,
carefully nurtured, to a piece of fictive literature or writing, but have diffi-
culty in applying the same to non-fiction. And the Harpers School Report
in particular. Yet when I read fiction, I dont particularly want to be told that
This is the answer! I want to reach my own conclusions based upon
the evidence I read (Stake 11). Stakes story did happen, but it had not
happened for me.
In a poem, perhaps? My friend, you would not tell with such high zest /
To children ardent for some desperate glory, / The old Lie: Dulce et deco-
rum est / Pro patria mori (Owen, 1920/1990). Quid est veritas? What? To
illustrate the point being made? But pausing to consider this carefully
surely the answer or the to have given an illustration would possi-
hypothesis or report or what- bly suggest the assertion needed this illus-
ever you want to call it tration, that the authority in and of itself
should be enough without an was insufficient, that something was miss-
illustration? ing. Or am I missing it?
I began to see that the prescription that I had looked for in the Harper
School report could tell me nothing if I have no knowledge of the school: If
a novel can reveal this human element as it is affected by outside elements,
can a report that is written in the style of a novel do the same? The answer,
surely, is Yes . . . The narrative form, the storytelling does not obscure this
(Stake 5). And why should I have such particular knowledge? I have a gen-
eral knowledge of inner cities and of their schools, but not in the U.S. and
particularly not of this one in Chicago: Stakes report is a facet of the
School [and] certainly the only part of it that I am likely to access (Stake
11). I know DeLillos White Noise and Barkers Ghost Road trilogy. But I
wasnt there. In carrying my own limited knowledge into the report, had I
been creating my own ludicrous type, unable to relate reality to an inflexi-
ble code? And why should the audience for whom the report was first
intended, and whom I had originally written off as probably unfamiliar with
the reality of inner city schools (Stake 1) have such a knowledge?
But what is the reality? Is it the casual visit of an academic, or is it the
daily grind of the Chicago School Reform in action? Or is it both? After all,
the academic visited the school and reported on that: Stakes report,
Stakes truth, contributes to the whole that is the perception of the
214 Qualitative Inquiry

school . . . If I want to consider how CSR is working, then I must have my

Stake in it (Stake 11). I returned to my own experiences, to my own
knowledge of literary criticism to reach the answers that I believe I now
have. They may not be the answers that others have, but they are answers
nonetheless. And to frame them within some matrix of truth it was neces-
sary to indicate the relevance of and to my own self, to posit myself as
narratoras Stake had done.
Quid est veritas? What is truth? Truth, suggested Vclav Havel (1990),
is not simply what you think it is; it is also the circumstances in which it
is said, and to whom, why, and how it is said (p. 67). Here, the truth, my
truth that had been recorded in a series of observations made over a course
of study, is presented as a composite story: a truth in action. That story tells
of my objections to the style of a particular case study, of how I reacted to
a story told by someone I considered unqualified to tell it. Through the
story, those observations are condensed in to an identification of the prob-
lems I had in approaching the report as story. What had changed? What
began that process of change?
I suspect that it was a disturbed peace: the peace of unquestioned assump-
tions disturbed by the sudden incongruous juxtapositioning of a story
(about which I had some knowledge) presented as truth and a truth (about
which I knew nothing) presented as a story. But what were those assump-
tions? And where were they located? What is the status of the story? What
is its relation to reality? (assorted class notes). Here were questions
underlying my assumptions; and here was an opportunity to explore the
divide I had created between fact and the fictive style rather than simply fall
over into it. Two questions in quick succession following rereadings of and
returns to White Noise, The Ghost Road, and Havels Disturbing the Peace
suggest the beginnings of this exploration: did it really happen like this?
and does it really matter? (Stake 4). Do the small accuracies and their
depiction really matter if they illustrate the greater truth?
What was crucial, I believe, was the realization that truths can beand,
indeed, aretold through fiction. Words that are put in the mouths of fic-
tional characters who speak their truths can bring the reader up against
unpleasant or unexpected truths told through a story. It was dawning on me
that they can make the familiar seem strange so that attention can be drawn
to it (Stake 1) and that these words may not have been spoken [but] what
is the story without them? (Stake 4). What indeed? For these words are the
storyeven though they may not have been spoken. These words make
the story [and] give it its significance (Stake 4).
 Watts / Case Study Research 215

As for Stake (1995), in placing himself as narrator within the report, he

made clear that he had done little research in urban schools (p. 140). And,
by way of compensating for this recognized lack of experience, he explains
that it is always important for me to make myself visible to the reader so
as to establish the interactivity between researcher and phenomena. I try to
provide lots of incontestible description but still remind that these views are
my views (Stake, 1995, p. 140). Yet I had dismissed his report because of
the inclusion of literary devicesas if it were a story. There was nothing in
it, though, that I dismissed as untrue. I do not doubt, for example, that he
did pick up a spent cartridge. I merely objected to the way that he presented
that particular truth. Here, though, in stories that were far cries from
Chicagos inner-city school, were indications that I was able to appreciate
the inclusion of literary devices to enhance the truthor a truth, at least
to make if affective: prescription without description of the unknown does
little to convey the sense of the subject (Stake 3). Havel (1990) presented
stories, plays with truth in them, DeLillo (1984) told truths in White Noise
and Barker (1995) used a fictional character to tell truths about the Great
War. More than this, though, and even allowing for Havels absurdist
drama, they tell these stories as if they were true, and they tell stories within
true events as if they, too, were true. You have, as it were, to see it to believe
it. Take DeLillo. He tells stories that I have no particular affiliation with so
perhaps my defensive association disappears and leaves me free to realize
that, one way or another, you have to be there to appreciate the import of
the fictive moment.
In my original consideration of The Art of Case Study Research I had
suggested that it may be that as perceptions of the content change, then so
too will the perceptions of the style (Stake 1). At the time this was a com-
ment on the nature of qualitative research; and there was a sense in which
I felt that the more I learned of qualitative methods of conducting research,
the more I may come to appreciate the style in which it was presented.
However, in focusing on the style in which it was presented, I had come to
appreciate the content more. My problem with Stake was that I had allowed
the could have element of fiction to impinge too much and lost sight of
the what is: in seizing on one or two elements of the fictive style, I had
dismissed the report as being close to fictitious. What would I tell in my
own story? And what would I leave out? I dont know (Stake 2). What
would I want to tell? How would I begin the telling?
You had to see it to believe it?
Perhaps. But as this story began with the words of Lawrence Stenhouse,
and as I have attempted to put them to use here in this exploration of my
216 Qualitative Inquiry

reactions to the writing of case studies it becomes, perhaps, appropriate that

I should close with further words of his: Public funding should not be used
to finance the writing of bad novels (class notes).
So were talking about this and, out of the blue, hes telling me about
some lecture notes of Stakes that hes got. Dont know where he got them
from. Certainly dont know how he got hold of them. To tell the truth (but
what is truth?) it doesnt seem important now. But whats important is that
theyre annotated notes. Its important because, you see, apparently Stake
had been adding these annotations on the plane as he was heading off to
the lecture he was giving. And thats the whole point, I suppose, as it
made the jolly old Art of Case Study Research just about goes and sums
a lot clearer. Apparently it took him about 14 up everything Ive been
years to write it and I suddenly had this picture trying to say about this
of him sitting on the plane adding yet more wretched Art of Case Study
notes to an already prepared lecture. I dont Research. I mean, take a
know if they were annotated or not, but I dont good look at it. There he
think it matters because it was the picture I cre- is and hes supposed to be
ated that made me think this. Anyway, I see him on his way to this lecture
in this picture tinkering away, and suddenly the and he hasnt even both-
publisher is saying to him Submit that manu- ered to prepare his notes
script! Of course, it wasnt complete then properly. You know, its
because if you think of him on the plane with just so obvious hes left
those lecture notes, itll never be complete. I it all to the last minute
mean, it cant be as there will always be more and here he is trying to
stories to tell and different ways of telling palm this book of his off
them to different audiences and so on because on gullible students like
there really is more to this case study research than meets the eye (Stake 8).
And if you dont keep your eyes open, youre going to miss this whole point.
Or not, as the Case may be.

References
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DeLillo, D. (1984). White noise. New York: Penguin.

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Michael Watts is a senior research associate at the Von Hgel Institute, St. Edmunds College,
Cambridge. He was introduced to the art of case study research by the late Mr. Bev Labbett of
the University of East Anglia whom he remembers with fondness and this article.