I started with the John McPhee reading and, probably for that reason, I then read the other pieces with an eye towards their narrative. I was happy to see the structure McPhee laid out in The Picnic, where linearity is less important than good writing. Especially in the first chapters of Longo’s book, time jumps around constantly; it’s not the form that I expect historical nonfiction books to take, but in this case I found the thematic organization to be much more fun to read.

I was also interested in the craft and information-gathering behind Longo’s book. I’m wondering how he decided where to “start” his story – while the prologue brings us to the present, the book begins pretty shortly before the August 19th picnic. I’m wondering how he decided to begin it there, and not with more historical context of the iron curtain? And since the information gathered can’t be “seen,” how did he gather it and feel out which details were most important? Thinking particularly of the meeting between Gorbachev and Németh where the aides were told to stop writing what was happening, and Longo’s reference to the “shadow archive of secret decisions,” how was this archive of material accessed? I imagine that many of the events we write about in this class might have happened before we could start reporting, so we might come across similar experiences with hidden information. And in the seventeenth chapter, there’s such a wealth of detail and emotional information – since the book was written ~30 years after the event, how was that information gathered and selected?

One quote from the prologue particularly stuck with me: “There’s a saying popular in Hungary, he says. The future is certain. It’s the past that keeps changing.” In all these readings, there are continual references to the power of reporting. Goudeau references articles, speeches, government reports on the state of camps – these are affecting change in government and political opinion. Poszgay’s public radio address does the same. The readings collected this week present writing as a political act, in these cases with antifascist potential. Reading both Goudeau and Longo (where criticism of militarized borders should cause reflection on our end) we’re confronted with the present by understanding the past. Their pieces of writing have potential to cause change; returning to the quote I initially called to, they have the potential to present the past in a different way. The American border requires scrutiny, and the return of fascist parties in Hungary (and everywhere in the world) equally calls for action. I don’t know how to make my writing effective, what it is that takes words to action, but these readings personally make me feel responsible to learn how to. I’m very excited for this class.