29: Iowa

 

She is on a mission to homogenize America.

She colors swing states on a map, plots politics on a graph, determines what drives candidates toward the center over time.

She thinks, as her plane descends – the cornfields of Iowa rising to meet her in perfect squares – how this is the land of standardized tests, respected writing centers, influential caucuses and mediocre presidents.

It is the perfect place to foment a quiet insurgency, to construct a newer and more moral majority, here in the heart of the country.


He wrote a story about a woman on a mission to homogenize America.

He assigned it to a student in the workshop, told her to revise it in the style of a reading comprehension question, to have the plot climax at a caucus.

He thought, as he drove east from the city – the white sun perfectly centered in his rearview mirror – how Iowa was where coastal writers came to be reborn, refined, and suburbanized.

It was the perfect place to solve the crisis of national identity, to heal a divided and subdivided society, here in the heart of the heart of the country.


She had written a show about a man who wrote a story about a woman on a mission to homogenize America.

She had set it in West Branch, cast a professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, recruited a new student, and let the plot transform from Iowa Exam narrative to Iowa Caucus conspiracy.

She had thought, as the unmarked car took her west along the Herbert Hoover Highway – the rectangular houses, square grass patches, and uniform rows of corn plodding past – how this was where fiction came to become reality, how it had been the perfect place.