Holy Shit. I thought One Flea Spare was good. I had no idea. I finished Naomi Wallace's In the Heart of America today on my lunch break and I've been a little bit fucked up ever since. Whereas One Flea Spare is intellectually outstanding and beautifully lyrical, it is essentially a play about poverty and sex set during the plague in England. In the Heart of America touched me much deeper. It is a play about war: how Iraq and Panama and Vietnam are connected, what killing does to young American men and the impact of the United States abroad. It is also a play about Arab-Americans and what it means to be Arab and American. Add to this the same devotion to getting rid of poverty that Wallace showed in One Flea Spare and the same understanding of the world's poor. PLUS In the Heart of America is a play about homosexuals, without being a play about homosexuality.
It's masterful. Everyone should go read it right now.
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