Point of View
In the Preface to this collection, the author asserts that every story he composed during the time he himself actually spent in Bloomington featured a first-person narrator. And, indeed, every single one of these stories is related from the first-person perspective of a character calling Bloomington home. This is a much more complex aspect of the collection that it may initially seem because while the author is an Indonesia native who was visiting the city at the time, these characters telling their stories are all native Bloomingtonians.
This conflict between author and storyteller creates a dynamic of alienation which cannot be easily overlooked or avoided. It would have been infinitely easier for the author tell these stories either by adopting a more objective third-person narrative perspective or inserting his own perspective as a foreign observer into choice of point of view. The decision to make these stories not just the events which occur to a native of Bloomington, but to delve into the thinking process of people with a life experience definitely not shared by the author serves to elevate the choice of point of view to a thematic which should ideally force the reader into questioning the relationship between perception and reality.
Alienation
This dynamic quality of alienation between the writer and his narrators stems from one of the most useless pieces of literary advice still be routinely handed out: “write about what you know.” If people listened to this advice, there would be no science fiction, no fantasy, no murder mysteries, and no stories about native Bloomingtonians written by a native of Indonesia. But it goes deeper than that because into this world of middle America so completely at odds with what the writer knows about growing up Indonesia is a dollop of writing about exactly what you know. The life of the foreign observer alienated from the visceral experience of growing up in middle America is also present in circumstances these character narrate. The characters may inhabit Bloomington, but they all live lives in which they, too, are alienated from it in various ways not as extreme as the circumstances of their creator.
Loneliness
In his prefatory overview, the author specifically notes that the narrators of these stories are each in their own “a portrait of torment.” But, of course, almost everybody can be said to be tormented in one way or another. The real question is what makes all these narrators fit comfortably as individuals of torment within a group photo. In other words, what is driving their torment? The answer is one which qualifies as a linking theme to being alienated. Alienation means being alone but being alone does not always mean being lonely. These narrators are alienated and alone and the consequence of their unsatisfactory means of engaging in social interaction is not one which allows one to be alone without experiencing some form of profound loneliness. The particulars details of the loneliness experienced is not monolithic and shared across the breadth of the tales. Some are themselves lonely as a result of their living conditions while others are merely empathetic observes deeply feeling the loneliness of others and incapable of actions which could reconcile this collective sense of alienation.
