Susan Orlean was able to follow around this 10 year old boy for a few days, maybe a week, diving into the psyche of this little boy. She focused on the school-yard rules of boys and girls, and the hierarchy that exists when it comes to video games in their local pizza joint. A lot of this was well used in giving us an inside view into the life of this 10 year old boy and his friends. Some of the information felt a bit disjointed to me though. Especially when she dove head-first into the statistics of the Nintendo Gaming System. Yes, the information was useful, but the way it was given didn’t flow with the rest of the essay. She tied the end of the Nintendo research into the following parts of the essay well, but it still felt chunky just sitting there.
From what we can gather from Orlean’s essay, she was given the opportunity to follow this 10 year old boy around for about a week, and given almost full access to him during that week. She explains the school rooms, the pizza joint, his room, and his back yard in detail that could only have been gathered by probably repeat observation of her subject. She interviewed Colin, but was able to glean other details from his friends and family by casual observation. I don’t know if she really had a focusing question, but if she did, it probably would have been something like ‘tell me about yourself.’ There is a lot of information throughout the essay that doesn’t really circle around a central question. And I’m not sure if a 10 year old boy would have been able to grasp the idea of a question ‘What’s it like to be a 10 year old boy?’
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