Personal Response 1

I have read less than half of A Short History of a Small Place, and have found it to be very interesting so far. Things are starting to develop throughout the novel and I decided that this would be a good time to give my personal response on what I have read so far.

Louis Benfield is a young boy in the town of Neely in North Carolina. In his little town, there are a lot of weird things happening. There does not seem to be a plot in the story so far, but there seems to be a reoccuring theme of people commiting suicide, deaths, and insanity, which is srtange since the book is meant to be funny. So far three sisters who were totally insane get shipped off to a mental asylum, the mayor chokes on a turnip and dies, the elegant Miss Pettigrew commits suicide by falling off a water tower, and an old lady is slaughtered. Even with all the deaths and crazy people the book is enjoyable and easy to read. The deaths and insanity contribute to the books enjoyablity because of the way that it happens.

T.R. Pearsons way of writing is still confusing at this point. He writes extremely long sentences that are very hard to understand because he does not clearly state who "she" or "he" is. One example of his long confusing sentence is, "He said Everet Little, the jailer's boy, was riding the iron gate in and out of the yard and half the town was standing up snug against the fence watching her jig on the lawn and cut capers on the oak stump where the geraniums should have been. Aunt Willa Bristow was up on the porch, he said, but she never came down to retrieve her, never even came out from the shadows hard up against the house, and he said she danced as tireless and light as a child all across the yard and up onto the stump and off again, and she brought the hem of the bedsheet up under her nose and played out what Daddy called the siege of Thebes, taking all of the voices herself and making the likes of a swordfight by beating together a hickory branch and a piece of a staub." (Pg 10 - 11) Those two sentences are basically what the whole books reads like. It is very hard to distinguish which character Pearson is talking about, and it makes the things more confusing. These sentences are run ons and it makes it drag on. Other than the extremely long confusing sentences, the book is entertaining and never boring.

As I continue to read the story, weirder things happen, which I happen enjoy. I hope that things will continue to go into weird matters because those events encourage me to keep reading. As I continue to see Pearson's way of writing, I hope that I will get used to it and be less confused on matters. I am very excited to keep reading so that I can figure out the plot of the story. I look foward to finding out the short history of a small place.