The Washington Post

Christopher Dickey, author of many books and journalist for publications such as Newsweek, The Daily Beast, and The Washington Post, is an expert on many different parts of the world. This man has traveled everywhere, and become an expert on areas such as counterterrorism, the Middle East, but more importantly, Central America. Dickey spent a few years covering Central America (El Salvador more specifically), and wrote more than one hundred articles for Newsweek and The Washington Post about human rights, government reform, and U.S. involvement in some of these areas. This is much different than other journalist and famous author Joan Didion, who wrote a whole book on El Salvador while only spending a fortnight there. Despite receiving criticism from many book reviewers such as Sheppard and Eder, whose reviews we read in class, Dickey is one of Didion's biggest fans. In a recent article posted in The Daily Beast, Dickey talks about how he doesn't just "adore," her, but has come to, "love Joan." Despite the mutual respect both renowned authors share for each other (Didion dedicated the book "Salvador" to Dickey), their different styles and experiences contribute to different types of writing. Obviously in terms of experience they are different, Dickey constantly traveling all over El Salvador and its surrounding countries while Didion only spending two weeks there. In terms of stylistic differences, I believe that Didion capitalizes on the negative aspects of her experience. Her choice of diction and short sentences are also ways Didion captures the reader's attention. Christopher Dickey on the other hand, inputs less of his opinion (is more objective) into what he writes about and is better at getting the overall feel of the situation he's in and the situation the country he's covering is in. However, although both journalists adore each other, these differences arise from somewhere. I believe it has to do with the career path, journalistic styles, and overall life experiences that these two have endured that make them each different and special in their own way.

One aspect of Joan Didion's writing that we discussed in class was heavily covered in the review of her book written by R.Z. Sheppard. Part of Didion's style is that she is extremely good at finding the negative aspects of any situation, and it's part of the reason that this book was so successful. Sheppard notes that Didion, "finds flowers of evil where most people see posies." Her writing tends to have an overall negative tone, granted that this was an area of despair in the middle of a civil war, however not one positive aspect of El Salvador was mentioned throughout this whole report. Almost everything had to do with her being in a terrifying situation, experiencing death, or talking about rebels and civil war. Even when given the opportunity to see a positive side of the country, she declined. When she and Victor Barriere had dinner, he brought along an eighteen-year-old friend. Barriere explains that had this teen still been living and working in his old conditions, the chances of him being taken by the Army and killed were extremely high, however because he didn't speak English, and hardly spoke Spanish, we were never able to get his side of the story. She describes him as sitting though the dinner in, "polite misery," probably because he couldn't contribute at all to the conversation. However, if he could contribute, or if she had asked him to contribute in broken Spanish, who knows if he would have talked about the positive side of his life in El Salvador. Because Didion never asked, we will never know.

Because of Didion's writing, we find El Salvador to be a very miserable place. Didion's word choice and sentence structure encourages the negative tone in which she write's her book and helps capture the readers attention. One example is on page 17, when Didion changes it up and starts off a paragraph with a short sentence.

"Terror is the given of the place," Didion states. By starting off the paragraph with such a short and blunt sentence, especially one with such a negative tone, she really sets a poor mood and atmosphere for the reader as to what El Salvador might actually be like. Sure, it's a country undergoing civil war with constant death and guerilla squads, but any positive aspect of this country to be taken from this situation is completely overlooked.

Didion tries to explain throughout the beginning of the book that she was finally figuring out and understanding the so-called "mechanism of fear" that existed in El Salvador. In my opinion, she does too good of a job of convincing the reader that El Salvador is engulfed in fear and terror through her diction and anecdotes. In this case, she came to "understand the mechanism of terror in El Salvador," when her and her husband were the only people sitting on the porch of the Sheraton at night, and they saw two armed people around them, with only candle light illuminating them in the darkness. They were the only ones around and felt lost and hopeless, something that sounded a bit ridiculous to me. Although there had previously been murders at this Sheraton, the victims were specifically targeted, not killed at random. In my opinion, Didion didn't have any reason to fear, and just used this moment as a way to instill fear into her readers. People are captivated by fear and violence and using this mechanism of fear in her book was a great way to keep people hooked and reading.

On the opposite side of things, Christopher Dickey used a much different style in his reporting of El Salvador. Dickey's journalism tended to have a much more objective approach than did Didion's, and didn't capitalize as much on the fear factor. Dickey utilized experts of the area and situation in order garner a good feel for what was going on in El Salvador. While Joan Didion did this as well, I believe that because Dickey was publishing these articles in the Washington Post, his visits had to be more about facts and less about emotions and the style of his writing. For example, in June of 1982, Dickey was in San Antonio, El Salvador to write an article for the Washington Post reporting on how a Salvadoran Colonel was using the Rebels' tactics against them in order to defeat them. For this article, he spent almost all of his time shadowing Lieutenant Colonel Sigifredo Ochoa, quotes and references him multiple times, and also uses his experiences to help better his article. He discusses how Ochoa is one of the only Colonel's in El Salvador who has bought into the counterinsurgency tactics encouraged by the U.S. and taught to him by Israeli's and through some Taiwanese training courses.