Establishing Shot
The opening lines of a book are like the establishing shot that opens a movie. Very often it is a long shot focusing on setting, often with no characters or even people involved. It lets you know where the story is taking place and the weather might even further indicate when the story takes place. Mayor Pete does something similar with his book, creating the literary counterpart of the visual imagery provided by an establishing shot:
“Dawn comes late here along the western limit of the Eastern Time Zone, so far from the coast that our first sunrise of the year arrives after eight in the morning. Most January days are cloudy, making sunup a hidden and gradual process, less a moment of daybreak than a cold shift away from the illuminated night, in which the cloud ceiling and the snow cover reflect the sodium streetlights between them into an orange glow so bright you can read the paper outside at four in the morning.”
Foreshadowing Unseen
Unbeknownst to him at the time, the Mayor witnessed foreshadowing of the shockingly unexpected result of the 2016 Presidential election. The imagery extracted out of this context is nothing special. Placed within the context of retrospective awareness, however, it becomes a powerful statement that should be taught in political science classes:
“After Clinton spoke, everyone clapped in their seats. Then she shook hands along a rope line, and was off to the next event. This might sound normal, but I had been at enough campaign events over the years to know that a presidential campaign appearance this late in the game should never end with anything but people on their feet. At the time it just struck me as a little peculiar that a union-heavy and typically Democratic crowd was not standing to cheer.”
The Farmer’s Market
The former Mayor of South Bend clearly loves his hometown. When he writes of its people and places, it is almost the stuff regional fiction. It is the kind of imagery that, actually, that does come across better in fiction because under the conditions serving the author—a man with Presidential ambitions—it runs the danger of sound insincere. Whether it skirts that danger or not probably depends upon your politics, but tell a political opponent it was written by someone they support and watch their reaction:
“…the Farmer’s Market, whose red walls have stood on this ground for nearly a hundred years…Under its roof on a Saturday morning, it is as if American society never fractured after World War II. Korea vets in flannel shirts down from Michigan, accompanied by ruddy grandsons in Under Armour camo jackets, coexist peacefully with Montessori moms navigating strollers between clumps of grandparents eyeing big baskets of apples and small ones of plums. Trucker hats are worn without irony here; the hipsters are welcome but not in charge.”
Mayor’s Night Out: Wednesdays on NBC
Every month or so Buttigieg would hold a Mayor’s Night Out, essentially a town hall meeting with people who wanted to air a grievance or request the intervention of the Mayor to deal with a personal problem. This is the not exactly the opposite of a day at the Farmer’s Market, but it is a revelation of the darker side of South Bend, although perhaps not quite the darkest side:
“A taxi driver wants to know whether I am going to allow Uber to continue growing here…A wide-eyed fellow has miraculously invented a perpetual motion machine and just wants me to review his schematics…Curbs and sidewalks. Aquaponic fish farming. Deteriorating greens on the city golf course. A Boy Scout troop, eager to earn a new badge, waits to get their picture taken. It’s like changing channels every five minutes between The Wire, Parks and Recreation, and, occasionally, Veep.”
