People & Places

"In the Heart of the Heart of the Country" actually reminded me of "Debriefing," only it portrayed the people and atmosphere of the country rather than the city--though it did so in a way that was equally jaded and unflattering. Like "Debriefing," the style of this piece reflected its subject; even though we still jumped from scene to scene, the pace seemed slower and more methodical, with lingering descriptions that give us a sense of where we are. The narrator also seems to ramble a lot. He offers plenty of information, but little direction. The headings work in a similar manner. They act as good markers of where we are, but aren't very useful in determining its relation to the rest of the work, and there is certainly no indication of where we are going. Still, all the scenes come together to give a strong portrait of the community, though the narrator's attitude towards it remains ambiguous to me. As for "Paraguay," it seems to be even more obscure in its depiction of place and people. Again, the headings provide a hint to what each section centers around, but they oftentimes weren't particularly helpful. Nevertheless, these two texts succeed in piecing together scenes to create, not a cohesive plot, but a picture, in a sense, of a place, the people who inhabit it, and the person who is telling us about it. And it is this quality that I think would be most interesting to experiment with in my own work.