He was nevertheless largely compatible with the regime's national-communist turn; as a pioneer of the reportage genre, he expanded on influences from Geo Bogza and Tudor Arghezi to create a new, distinctly poetic, language of propaganda.

Their contribution, she adds, were rarely commented on by the regime's literary press, and was mainly regarded as a subset of agitprop, with a "mobilizing, educational effect", only differing in that they required actual travels out in the field.

[2] In late 1958, a special issue of Viața Romînească, showcasing the society and culture of Northern Dobruja, featured his piece on the agronomist Năstăsoiu, who had chosen to live permanently on a collective farm.

Purcaru later reported that they had consciously challenged "traditionalist" taboos, merging the atmosphere of communist rallies with poetic techniques borrowed from Vladimir Mayakovsky, Demyan Bedny, Ion Barbu, and the unu group of avant-garde poets.

Micu also notes that Purcaru's early years were marked by a predominance of romantic, exalted tones, producing several works: Zile fierbinți (1955, with V. Negru), Calitatea producției — onoarea fabricii (1956), Ev nou în Țara Banilor (1961), Harpe și ape.

As noted by Micu, Ev nou în Țara Banilor transcends the "conventionality and opportunism" of regular communist writings by embracing subtlety and expanding the means of expression—from historical and sociological essay to prose poem; he detects in it echoes from Tudor Arghezi's modern hymns and from Geo Bogza's classic reportage pieces, but also foreshadows of the 1980s propaganda festival, Cîntarea României.

Micu defends such metaphors as still charming, but acknowledges that Purcaru doused them in a "heavily politicized discourse, reflecting the communist spirit", thus leaving his readers with a "feeling of disgust" (sentiment de lehamite).

[39] These writings are "filled with dramatic detail, and with tragedies hardly imaginable just two decades after humanity had known the horrors of World War II";[36] according to reviewer Laurențiu Ulici, they also showcase Purcaru as a man of "altruism and delicacy of sentiment.

[42] While prevented by the Romanian Embassy from even setting foot in South Vietnam (he would only visit Ho Chi Minh City in the 1980s), he traveled from Hanoi to Vientiane to chronicle the Laotian Civil War.

[47] Purcaru made a return trip to Craiova in mid-December 1966, when, as a member of the National Committee of Solidarity with the Vietnamese People's Struggle, he organized a workers' rally "against the acts of aggression performed by American imperialism in Vietnam.

He declared himself in favor of raising the "ideological content of educational work", by having teachers trained in Marxism-Leninism; he also praised the Party for encouraging "authentic creativity", and also for its rehabilitation of Gheorghiu-Dej's victims, including "first and foremost" Lucrețiu Pătrășcanu.

[50] Around the same time, Ramuri was being kept under watch by Securitate agents, with one of their anonymous sources reporting that the editorial staff's "lack of vigilance and discernment" had led to the publication therein of a note praising Nae Ionescu, hitherto reviled as a pillar of the fascist Iron Guard.

[51] In the Romanian diaspora, philosopher Mircea Eliade, who had been an Ionescu disciple, declared his surprise, adding a note of skepticism: he feared that "such 'excesses' might be used by the Stalinists (or whatever they're called) to turn the screws back on them.

[60] In a 1972 interview, Purcaru expressed his admiration of the constructors' class, arguing that their justified pride gave communized Romania an ongoing source of "social contradictions"—one which reporters needed to investigate.

[62] American anthropologist Katherine Verdery, who visited Romania in the 1980s, studied Purcaru as an exponent of "Protochronism", which constituted the most radical form of national-communism, by presuming Romanian world-primacy in various fields of culture.

[64] Poenaru, who witnessed Purcaru's return trips to Râmnicu Vâlcea, notes that he continued to feed his alcohol problem by "engag[ing] in lengthy libations", to the point of neglecting his work.

Covering the work for Scînteia Tineretului, Ștefănescu recognized Bogza's influence, and declared himself put off by Purcaru's occasional "grandiloquence", but asserted that, overall, the book showed its author's "fantasy and sensibility", as well as an "authenticity of the lyrical élan".

[1][9] Only the first of these three volumes is noted by Micu, who remarks that it relied on "tenderness, expressed with an intellectual humor reflecting a bookish source";[1] it earned the author another prize, granted by the Bucharest Writers' Association.

[2] Purcaru suffused this work with intertexual allusions to diverse authors of the 20th century—from Ștefan Octavian Iosif to Ion Barbu, Mateiu Caragiale, Radu Stanca, and especially Călinescu.

In his encounter with literary historian Pompiliu Marcea, he included a positive reference to Ceaușescu's own critique of "cosmopolitanism" in art; with Eugen Barbu, he discussed supposed acts of betrayal by his former Ramuri colleague, Ion Caraion.

"[81] The same discourse was employed by his interviewee Artur Silvestri, who argued that those seeking to "depoliticize" literature were subject to ideological commands received from Radio Free Europe, and as such no less political then the national-communists.

"[68] Siding with the national-communist intellectuals, a Securitate source alleged, already in 1980, that Purcaru and other Protochronists had found themselves marginalized as the "New Right" by intriguers, namely "a nonconformist group created around România Literară magazine, especially [including] those writers who are of Jewish nationality".

[83] Purcaru's interviews are analyzed by Verdery as an important piece of evidence regarding the magnitude of cultural debates under late-stage communism; in that context, he "provoked his interlocutors with leading questions about how 'certain critics' had attacked their work".

"[85] Florin Mugur, the Romanian Jewish poet and diarist, claimed that in January 1983 a drunken Purcaru phoned him at home from Flacăra's offices, angry that he was being made to remove portions of a text.

While Mircea Iorgulescu had specifically asked not to be interviewed by Purcaru, since the latter had once called him a sumbru condeier ("gloomy scribbler"),[89] the liberal reply was carried by România Literară's Nicolae Manolescu.

"[92] Interviewing Purcaru shortly before the Romanian Revolution toppled communism, Verdery noted that he still produced some of "the most extreme protochronist statements"—on par with those by Anghel, Eugen Barbu, Lăncrănjan, Silvestri and Tudor, and much more radical than those aired by Păunescu or Constantin Noica.

Written primarily as a memoir in the style of Jean Cocteau, it mixed in fragments of dialogue, monograph, and biography (with portraits of cultural figures from Constantin Brâncuși to Magdalena Rădulescu).

[97] The following month, journalist Anemone Popescu spoke out against this publication as a "diversionary" enterprise, with Purcaru executing, "with only a slight delay caused by his alcoholism", orders received from the national-communist Eugen Florescu.

[105] Fellow journalist Șerban Cionoff argues that Purcaru sincerely welcomed the change of regime, though the emerging cultural figures had proceeded to marginalize him: "the spot that should have been reserved for betterment and for solidarity toward a durable creativity was taken by hatred, by murkiness, by a vigilantism of the Taliban rite".

"[107] He also provided Rusu with scoops regarding the corruption in the ruling Social Democratic Party, alleging that its leader, Adrian Năstase, was buying off entire mountains for his own private use.