Response to "Household Words"

This piece was so focused and overtly political that I really wouldn't have thought of it as "creative nonfiction".  It read more like a persuasive essay with a clear thesis that it tried to argue throughout.  I think the author, for the most part, did a good job of backing up her claims, though a lot of her support were simple appeals to the pathos of the reader.  I would like to point out that, based on my own experiences (which are, granted, anecdotal), European cities have as much or more homelessness as those in America, and that people in these cities seem to have the same attitudes attributed to Americans in this essay.  Also, I think the link between watching the woman being beaten up at the stoplight and the plight that is homelessness in America was an obscure one, and I don't think that it added much as an introduction.

Response to "The Dead of Winter"

This piece was very moving for being so short.  I think it encompassed a lot of issues that women may have to face, and particularly it dealt with abortion without getting overtly political.  The honest, almost confessional tone of it made it seem very personal and realistic, and the artwork made it even more so, particularly the frames depicting a fetus with wings (presumably angel wings?) and her reaching for it.  It was sad but not overly so, only enough to make the author's point, I think.  I also enjoyed all the depictions of snow and winter, because I think that such a "cold" setting and tone was appropriate for the piece.

Response to "The Things They Carried"

Demetria Martinez's "The Things They Carried" was a short work, but accomplished much in its roughly two pages.  The whole thing was just the creation of a certain image or sentiment.  It asked for the reader's sympathy when detailing all the things found left behind by the corpses of Mexicans that attempted to immigrate to the U.S.  Some of the things listed were mundane, normal, or expected, and others, like those that implied the deaths of small children and babies, were quite emotionally gripping.  The essay, though short, offers an interesting perspective on immigration and has a strong emotional effect on the reader.

Response to "Uncle Tony's Goat"

This piece was about a young Native American girl and her Uncle's strange attachment to a goat.  The uncle was depicted as a stern disciplinarian, and it seemed the children were somewhat afraid to set a foot wrong with him, like in the beginning when he got on to them for shooting arrows and such.  Toward the end, the narrator had a run-in with Uncle Tony's belligerent goat and then the goat escaped.  The goat seemed to developed somewhat in parallel to the Uncle in that they were both hornary and a bit unreasonable.  It seemed that in the end when Uncle Tony decided to give up chasing the goat, it may have been a way of reconciling with the narrator or "giving up" some of his sternness in some small way.

Response to "A Sea Worry"

This piece was very short, and I feel that when a piece is so brief it should aim to accomplish a lot with its few words.  I'm not sure what you could say this piece "accomplished", but the only thing I picked up on was a hint about the difficulty of being a foreigner in America (the narrator talking to one of the surfers so that he didn't "lose language").  I would also add that, stylistically, it struck me not so much as "blurring the lines" between fiction and nonfiction, but it really came across as completely fictional.  Other than that, I had little reaction to this essay; it mostly struck me as a brief narrative that said little.

Auto-Pilot

Throughout high school I worked at Zaxby's, an aesthetically pleasing, slightly overpriced, fast food chicken restaurant.  The store at which I worked was right across the street from the high school, so of course most of our customers were of that demographic.  It was a fun place to work; most of the employees were also high school students and our oldest manager was 28.  This created a very laid back, permissive, fun atmosphere in the workplace.  Sometimes, one might say, too fun.  When work was as lassiez faire as my job at Zaxby's was, it was easy to go on auto-pilot, relying on only the most basic and repetetive instinctive functions to get you through the shift. 

So one night when I was the drive-thru cashier, as I stood in the little offset drive-thru station with my headset on, idly leaning on the counter out of boredom, the headset beeped to alert me to the car that had just pulled up.  "Thank you for choosing Zaxby's, this is Jake, how can I help you?" came automatically out of my mouth as I was surely preoccupied with what I was going to eat for dinner that night, what homework awaited me after I got off, or something of the like.  Not really paying attention to the customer, I let my fingers react to his order, pressing the appropriate menu buttons reflexively until I noticed he had stopped talking.  "Will that be all for you?" I asked.  "Yeah, that it," the customer said.  Normally I would have repeated his order, asked whether it was correct, given him a total, and asked him to pull around.  However, running on the intellectual auto-pilot that I was, I reflexively said "Okay, love you, bye."

It took me a moment to realize that auto-pilot was running the wrong program there.  What was worse, it seemed to take everyone in the store a moment too; the speaker for the drive-thru was audible loud and clear in the kitchen (so as to give the cooks a head start on the order) and they had heard every word, but for three or four seconds, everyone in the store stopped what they were doing and looked around as if they had just realized that they forgot to put on clothes this morning.  Then all at once everyone fell to laughing, myself included.  That night I realized what I had long suspected, that customers never really listened to what you were saying anyways, as they assumed it to be all as pre-programmed and ritualistic as it truly was; the customer pulled up to the window and I answered him with a red face and body language that screamed of restraining laughter.  He could surely hear the laughter coming from the kitchen.  I think he thought we did something nasty to his food.

Responses to "What Fundamentalists Need for their Salvation" and "A Girl Among Trombonists"

The first essay, "What Fundamentalists Need for their Salvation," by David James Duncan, struck me as a very fresh and interesting perspective:  someone who calls himself an "evangelical Christian" writing an essay criticizing rightist fundamentalism.  I thought his opener was very appropriate and attention getting; censorship is an issue that is more widely agreed upon than some other controversial topics (especially among college students, I would think), and the anecdote about him reading his own book in a school where it had been censored was interesting.  From that point, his essay largely became a very focused and, for the most part, well-reasoned rant (an ironic statement if ever there was one).  The conclusion summed it up nicely, basically saying that what the fundamentalists need is the people they are excluding.  This piece was very well-written and provided an incredibly relevant perspective on the matter.

The second essay, "A Girl Among Trombonists," was less interesting to me, though I wouldn't say it was bad.  The way I read it, it started off promising some exciting social struggle with the intro about her being such a trailblazer of ban geekettes, but immediately went into a drawn-out and tedious account of what they wore, how they marched, how they traveled to their competitions, and so on.  The middle was very hard to get through, but I found the end a bit more colorful, in which her male bandmates used her to "practice" boob-groping.  Overall I think it was her conclusive reflections that made it worth the read; this conclusion seemed to be the only part in which what she was trying to say actually came out, and I think it was driven home nicely by the last line about the female trombonist in the San Diego Symphony never having been a "girl among trombonists".

Response to "Holocaust Girls/Lemon"

First of all, the title of this piece is a little weird to me, and I'm not sure if I missed something, but I didn't pick up on the post-slash portion of it.  A lot of this piece didn't make much sense to me; for instance, I thought the introductory bit that defined a "Holocaust Girl" as not necessarily a Jew or a woman was interesting, but I didn't see much explanation of that.  I did appreciate the author's distance from the piece (which she pointed out in the interview, talking about the various ways in which she cloaked the personal pronoun "I"), which I felt gave it a more universal appeal than the limited one you would expect.  Overall, to be honest, I probably didn't get much out of this piece because my roommates are throwing a moderate-sized party right now, as they do pretty much every weeknight, and it makes it pretty hard to think about the horrors of the holocaust when you can hear people throwing up in your bathroom.  I think the immediacy of the latter makes it a little more horrifying.

lol

to me the worst thing sum1 can write is a formal composition for a class that is written with a total disregard for grammar or, worse, in chat lingo.  im kinda a grammarian at heart and i find it hard to even force myself to write like this, bcuz its like my fingers have the muscle memory of proper usage and even some kind of respect 4 english.  newayz, i figure this topic is probly pretty boring 2 most ppl, bcuz most ppl dont really care about grammar at all, so i get 2 indulge myself with my own idea of bad and at the same time write to the prompt of something that will b boring and sucky 2 everyone.  whats sad is so many people probly wont even notice how horrible this is, bcuz in a time of facebook and iphones its like proper english has become totally irrelevant.  there should b a paragraph break here but w/e.  i know every1 in this class is either an english major or someone whose at least a lil interested in writing, but most ppl are in the antiformalist camp of disregard for all but the most basic elements of grammar and taking quite liberal literary license.  im not.  i was the random weird nerdy kid on the edge of his seat in high school when the english teacher was talking about syntax and misplaced modifiers.  ive gotten even more neurotic as ive studied it more in college, for instance, i wanted to throw a "sic" after the word "whose" earlier to seemingly indicate that my misuse was intentional, but even that was going to be an intentional misuse that i thought was too technical for anybody thats not as interested in linguistics and grammar as i am.  at this point my body is physically rebelling against going any further, i meant to throw in some more chat acronyms or phonetic misspellings but i dont really no how to express my thoughts in english that bad (sic [lol]).  so i guess ive not only rattled on about grammar, a dull subject to most, but also made myself look incredibly dull thru the process.  thats either gonna make u say well i gess his essay cant be any worse than this or o shit now i really dont wanna read his essay lol

Responses to "A Path Taken with All the Certainty of Youth," "The Ashes of August," and excerpt from Louis Riel

The first essay, "A Path Taken," was short, but I felt like it did considerably much in its few words.  Despite the fact that it seemed intended to be a brief memoir, I felt that on another level it was a sort of profile of the author.  It showed her eccentricity and at the same time her genuineness; I expected it to start with something to the effect of "In second grade I wrote my first poem, and then I knew...".  It was a very interesting and different perspective on how a particular person became a writer, and I think the information was enlightening and useful to someone in this class.

"The Ashes of August" was probably the most intensely "lyrical" essay I've ever read.  Every sentence was packed with flowery language and elaborate descriptions, to the point that I lost track of what the memoir was actually saying quite often.  Of course the language was elegant, but I don't know if I personally view this as a good thing (or at least, the extent to which it was taken) in this particular example.  However, I thought it was very skillful how the author paralleled memoir with historical exposition and place narrative, the first two in particular seeming hard to develop so well within the same essay.

The excerpt from the graphic novel Louis Riel was unlike anything I've read before, in that it was a historical graphic novel.  I must admit that I let the introductory biographical piece color my interpretation of the writing probably a bit too much, reading it with the assumption that the author would be a bit more "out there" than necessary.  Overall the narrative didn't make much sense to me, probably because I am unfamiliar with the person it profiled and the context of the events.

"Nothing More Universal than One Person"

I think that this statement by Satrapi in her interview is well in accordance with one of the themes of this class (at least, as I have perceived), which is the inherent allure of the individual.  Memoir taps into that individuality.  Despite the apparent contradiction, there really is nothing more universal than an individual, because it is the most basic commonality shared by all:  we are all people, pursuing our lives as individuals, participating in the human condition.

Once, when I was seventeen, I was driving down Blanding Boulevard, the main highway in my home town of Orange Park.  The speed limit on the particular stretch on which my story takes place is fifty five miles per hour, which, for the locals, translates roughly to "at least sixty five in the right hand lane".  As I drove down the road that day, probably somewhere between sixty and seventy miles per hour, the hood of my car abruptly flipped back and shattered my windshield.  The rearview mirror went flying past my right ear as shards of glass went everywhere.  I knew this stretch of road very well, so it wasn't as incredible a feat as it sounds for me to ease on the brake and pull off the road without being able to see the road in front of me.  I was very calm as I put the car in park, turned on my hazard lights, unbuckled my seatbelt, and stepped out of the car.  But as soon as I was out of the car, panic set in as I checked my body for wounds.

That's not the only time I had a near-death experience in my '95 Honda Accord, nor was it the most extreme, believe it or not.  It malfunctioned in freak ways roughly once every other month, and I eventually named it Joan Rivers because it was so old but its parts were constantly being replaced.  Plenty of people have car troubles, but I'm pretty sure many of my experiences in Joan are unequaled.

Yet still, the hood-through-the-windshield scenario can be called a universal experience.  I don't know anyone who hasn't had some kind of trouble with or been in a dangerous situation in an old car.  I don't know anyone who hasn't after twenty years had at least one moment where they thought "holy shit, I could have just died."  I don't know anyone who hasn't been that stupefied by something that unpredictable happening, so scared, so confused, so at a loss as to what to do, or any other emotion I felt that day.  That said, there's nothing more commonplace or universal than your hood abruptly flying open and shattering your windshield on the highway, because we're all human.

Response to Persepolis and interview with Marjane Satrapi

I thought the excerpt from Persepolis was relatively straightforward and easy to understand.  It was about a somewhat hot-button issue, which certainly made it interesting.  I had a little trouble figuring out where the narrator actually stood on the political issues surrounding her; at times it seemed she was pro-government, at times anti-government, sometimes capitalist, sometimes Marxist.  I eventually came to the conclusion that she seems to have changed her mind somewhere in the middle of the comic, and then changed her mind again right before the end, but I am not sure.  Overall I really liked this graphic memoir.

I thought the interview with Marjane Satrapi was a nice way of giving context to the work of Perseplois as a whole; it filled in some of the blanks left by the excerpt.  This interview got me interested enough that I think I would like to see the film as well.  I wasn't sure what to think of the author in the interview, but it was clear that she was proud of her work and pleased with the outcome.  The most interesting part to me was the fact that she was given total control over the film adaptation, something that (I think) is pretty rare.  That is the biggest thing that actually makes me want to see the movie.

Pets ≠ People

My dog Eve died this summer.  She was a Rottweiler, and although I am of course biased, she was the most gorgeous dog I’ve ever seen.  Shiny coat, muscular build, perfect proportions.  She was intelligent, obedient, and loyal; really, she was just an overall great pet.  I suppose this is why my mom had such a hard time when she died.

When my brother and I were kids and my mom got home in the afternoon, she would usually walk past us (sometimes going as far as to actually nudge one of us out of the way) to say hi to the dog first.  She always said that Eve was her third child, but it often felt like she was the first child, or sometimes the only one.  Likewise, Eve would mope on the couch all day while Mom was at work, getting up only to take a drink of water or scratch at the front door to be let out.  The two were horribly codependent.  So in May when my mom found out that one of Eve’s kidneys was failing, it was really like she was watching her child die.

Mom and the dog were back in Jacksonville while I was in Tallahassee, so I couldn’t be there to help her, but we talked almost every day, and almost every day it ended with Mom in tears over the dog.  I personally felt like it was a little much.  Don’t get me wrong; I loved that dog.  My eyes even started to well up a bit while I sat down to think about writing this essay, remembering how on Christmas we’d put on Eve’s jingle bell collar and call her “Christmas Eve” and let her unwrap all the presents for us.  But I think I loved the dog like a dog should be loved:  with the realization that she was a pet and not a human.

I’m not sure if my mom is unhealthy, me callous, or maybe both.  Mom is no longer dragging herself about like one of the people in an antidepressant commercial, but she still cries on each “anniversary” (observed every month) of Eve’s death.  I still miss Eve and think about her from time to time, but I spend more time thinking about how much I loathe my grandparents’ Chihuahua-rat terrier mix, or how much I love my roommate’s chocolate lab that I’m slowly stealing from him.  I’m sure I’ll mourn the lab at some point (though certainly not the Chihuahua), but I’ll be sad and move on.  Dogs are wonderful pets, but they’re not people.

Responses to "Nightmare Studio" and Pyongyang

"Nightmare Studio" had a style that was very novel to me.  The author's words and pictures almost seemed like a stream of consciousness, just letting one idea flow from the next as naturally as possible (reminiscent of the new advertisements for Bing), which struck me as very interesting in a graphic form.  The author expressed ideas in an abstract way that was often hard to grasp completely, but still made sense in a strange way.  I wasn't sure exactly what the author was trying to say; is this simply a description of a dream he had?  I suppose it seemed more like a general example of what his dreams are often like, rather than referring to one dream in particular.  Overall I wasn't sure if this piece was craftily intricate or just overdone.

Pyongyang was also very novel to me.  The introduction about the author really hooked me when it pointed out that so few foreigners have ever seen P'yongyang; it made me feel like I was privileged to be accessing such information.  The author's narration was very straightforward (a nice contrast to most of the comics in this book), and I thought it very concretely grasped, as well as it could in such brevity, P'yongyang culture, and some of the reasons that their society is how it is.  This piece was more interesting from a perspective of intellectual curiosity for me.

Responses to Palestine, "Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man," and "The Black Veil"

My favorite part of the essay "Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man" was simply how articulate and well-reasoned it was.  I found that the author presented his arguments in a way that was very similar to human (or at least my own) thought patterns.  At first, I expected it to be a bit poking fun at nonpolitical people (if that was the author's aim then it escaped my notice), but it was surprising to find that he actually justified very nicely his lack of political activism.  I actually really liked the author's point of his striving for a broader political effect through his writing than through focusing on particular instances or issues, and overall found the essay to be very well written and an interesting new perspective.

"The Black Veil" was one of my favorite essays that I've yet read in this class.  I loved how the author's mundane job in a seemingly interesting field so closely paralleled his internal struggle with moving to the west coast and with people in general.  I thought his descriptions of San Francisco were maybe a bit too stereotyped, although I don't know if that's a fair criticism since we are to take what he says as fact since it is a memoir.  Overall I thought the narrator was appealing and likable, and I would like to read the entire piece.

Palestine escaped me for several reasons.  I had trouble with the physical organization of the piece:  I couldn't tell what was dialogue, what was narration, and in the case of dialogue, who was talking.  There were a lot of phrases and references that were unfamiliar to me, and the whole thing seemed like a very loosely assembled group of ideas.  That said, I didn't really understand the piece or what it was about, but would like to go back to it if I could understand some of those references that gave me trouble and figure out the layout of it a little better.

International Day of Peace

My birthday, September 21st (yes, today), is apparently also the International Day of Peace.  I find this interesting for several reasons, the first being that I've never heard of it before.  The second interesting thing about this is that for some reason the FSU wireless server (which I'm using right now) forbids access to the International Day of Peace website.  I'm not sure if there is a reason for this or if it is somehow in error, but, that said, I'm drawing this from Wikipedia.

Also known as World Peace Day, it was first celebrated in 1981, and is commonly recognized by a ceasfire in warzones, or lack of war altogether.  There is a "Peace Bell" at the UN headquarters, made of coins from countries around the world, rung on World Peace Day every year.  The Bell was donated by Japan, intended to be symbolic of the "cost" of war.  This year (today), comedy clubs around the world are participating in a program called "Stand Up for International Peace" in hopes of drawing media attention to the effort.

Other interesting September 21st events include the birth of Stephen King, the Death of Virgil, the first publication of the Hobbit, and, of course, my birth.  And to celebrate my birth and World Peace and the rest, I'll be sitting through six hours of classes and coming home to spend roughly as long studying.  Happy World Peace Day!

Responses to "Cancer Made me a Shallower Person," "Caring for Your Introvert," and "June: Circle K Recipes"

I found Miriam Engelberg's "Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person" motivating in a strange way.  I thoroughly enjoyed her dry sense of humor throughout the comic (particularly the allusion to a mechanic working on a car), especially given the subject matter.  I also liked that she was very forthcoming about her own flaws, like the fact that she felt a need to tell everyone with whom she came into contact about her diagnosis.  It was interesting reading what she went through, and while I've never been through anything similar, it seemed that her thoughts and feelings (and more particularly the way she recounted them in the memoir) were very realistic and human and therefore relatable on some level.

I was not sure what to think of Jonathan Rauch's "Caring for Your Introvert."  The first thing that I noticed was that the introduction was very elementary (a series of rhetorical questions leading to a "here's the answer" statement of thesis), but as I got further into the essay it occured to me that the introduction may have been satirical in some way.  Sometimes Rauch seemed to be tongue-in-cheek, and others completely serious, and I wasn't able to decide which tone he was aiming for.  He made some statements, particularly the one about introversion being an "orientation" rather than a choice, that seemed a little extravagant or strange, but not so much that they must have been satire.  I finished the essay having enjoyed it for the very reason that I did not know what to make of it.


The last reading, Karen Tei Yamashita's "June:  Circle K Recipes," was the least enjoyable to me.  It seemed to have little focus other than listing recipes and using them to set up vaguely related stories or sentiments, and I found her style very choppy in a way that was hard to understand.  She used many fragments in her writing, and while I understand that this is a perfectly acceptable use of literary license, it seemed to me that she didn't preface these fragments with enough context to make them easily understandable. 

Interview with a Psycho

Strange as it may seem, I still regularly keep in touch with my high school English teacher.  Her name is Ms. Chambliss, she's about 180 years old, three times a divorcee, and yet has more pep in her walk and more edge to her mind than my graduating class in its totality.  Chamby, as those few of us who could get away with it liked to call her, is certainly an acquired taste; her name was often used as a measure of hyperbole to describe something terrifying ("you better not hit on his girl again, he'll go Chambliss on your ass").  But I adored her.


So I recently e-mailed Chamby to touch base and let her know how everything was going for me.  I told her that this summer I had failed a class, and her response led to a back-and-forth between us that would not be at all a stretch to call an "interview."

In high school, Ms. Chambliss had been a stickler for not only attendance but attentiveness in class.  She swore by discipline and studiousness, and that's why I was shocked to read her response to my failing a class:  "Great job, party on!"  I took this as a tongue-in-cheek reprimand, and responded that, while I had certainly caught the college party bug this summer, I wouldn't let it get the best of me.  Again, she responded in her usual eccentric manner:

"I'm happy for you that your grades slipped because you discovered partying. Keep it up! Grades can be negotiated, but partying is #1.  All work and no play makes Jake a dull boy. You can do both and be successful, Honey Chile. It looks as though you are headed for a career in writing/teaching, and I can guarantee it will make you feel rewarded in some strange way. Take care."

I'm still not sure what she means, but as our e-mail "interview" continues, I'm actually starting to think she's being literal rather than sarcastic.  And if she is, it just shows not only that her reputation for slight psychosis is well-earned, but that the guise people present when they're in professional 9 to 5 mode is not always who they really are after they punch out for the day.

Responses to "What Helen Keller Saw," "Interviewing," and excerpt from Candyfreak

Cynthia Ozick's "What Helen Keller Saw" was basically a brief profile of Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan, with parts about other significant figures in Keller's life but the main focus remaining on Helen Keller.  The piece raised many questions about the way history views Keller, calling into question her authenticity on several accounts.  I found this interesting because I have never heard any of the accusations mentioned in Ozick's essay, like the charge of plagiarism concerning her story about fairies.  Ozick seemed to be defending Helen Keller in most cases, but for me personally, all the essay did was raise many questions about Helen Keller that weren't directly answered in the end.

Chapter Nine of the textbook, "Interviewing," was a short instructional piece on the process of interviewing for creative nonfiction.  I found most of it common knowledge, though I was surprised to read that most journalists don't use recorders or take verbatim notes.

The excerpt from Steve Almond's <i>Candyfreak</i> was a bit hard for me to follow.  I did enjoy the author's style, and I thought it had a few idiosyncratic details that made it interesting (like the narrator's losing his driver's license at the start of the trip), but overall I think it is difficult to become and remain enthused about unless you have a particular interest in candy or the behind-the-scenes life of small name candy-making.  It felt like watching an episode of Food Network's "Unwrapped," which is an interesting show to turn on for background noise and the occasional "huh, that's neat," but not something most people would watch on the edges of their seats.

PTSD

Interestingly and literally, I have almost no recall of my two years of junior high school.  The things I do recall seem less like memories and more like vague recollections of dreams I had while passed out drunk, and a lot of the time they're very different from what others who were there with me remember.  Sometimes I think it's like a mild case of post-traumatic stress disorder; those were probably the two worst years of my life.

Mostly I remember just feeling really awkward and not having any friends.  Only, most of the people I consider my closest friends now are people I met in junior high.  And when I tell them this, when I tell them about my memories of middle school friendlessness, they remind me of that.  But yet, despite the fact that I know I met them all in junior high, I almost don't remember it.  More so I remember them being there, and my having a sense of their having been there for a few years already, in early high school. 

I wonder if this horrible experience of junior high is somewhat universal?  It makes sense to me.  Seventh grade is about when puberty kicks into full swing, when hormones are raging, people are learning to be deceitful and cliquey, and some sense of the future starts to set in.  But I remember it being more than that; I was hopelessly distraught over something.  I just don't know what it was.  Looking back with an objective eye, I can say with a fair degree of conviction that it really was just normal pubescent kid stuff.  I felt weird, awkward, and lonely, but I remember it being so much more than that.  Only it wasn't.

Responses to The Winged Seed, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and Blankets

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was a very enjoyable read for me.  One of the first things I liked about it, something that I thought was reasserted throughout the excerpt, was that the narrator did not ask for the reader's sympathy in the self-pitying way that the narrators of many memoirs do.  What I mean by this is that while the situations in Heartbreaking Work were unfortunate and it was in fact very easy for the reader to feel sorry for the narrator, neither the author of the memoir nor his character in the narrative portrayed self-pity, in my opinion.  Eggers's character seemed almost unaware of the misfortune of his situation, and seemed to simply accept it and move on. 

The excerpt from Blankets was my favorite of these pieces.  I felt it was bursting with a literary value that did not come off (to me) as pretentious or contrived at all.  Thompson's first struggle--the break-up--was very universal and portrayed with a stark reality (excellently supported by the accompanying pictures) that made it very tangible, and the pressure to which he was subjected about college was also very easily identifiable.  I thought the symbolism (particularly the bits about "looking directly at the sun" and the ice as a "scab") was very well done, and the metaphors added a lot to the memoir.

As far as The Winged Seed, I didn't quite connect to it like I did the other two selections.  While it was well written and the topic of alienation in general was apparent to me, I feel that I missed the true point that Li-Young was trying to make.  I didn't see the connection between his linguistic struggles, his father's faith, and Ethel Black. 

Responses to "Memoir: A History" and excerpt from Eat, Pray, Love

The first text, "Memoir:  A History" was stylistically a bit strange in that it was a review of a review, but throughout the piece the sense of it being a review yielded to that of it being a cursory history of the genre of memoir.  I thought the piece did an excellent job of narrating the genre's history and pointing out its landmarks, such as the work of St. Augustine, the Book of Margery Kempe, and the secular movement that led to what most of today's memoir is.  Despite the fact that it was partially a critique of memoir in general, I thought the article did a good job of remaining objective, pointing out the genre's flaws as well as its positive qualities.

The excerpt from Eat, Pray, Love was a combination of memoir, travelogue, and profile (a profile of the narrator's sister).  It is difficult to react appropriately to this particular excerpt outside the context of the work as whole.  This particular short piece was mostly a profile with little scene or movement, and if that is an accurate sample of the book as a whole, I imagine it probably leaves the reader wanting.  Also (again this is said with only knowledge of the particular excerpt), I found the narrator's martyrdom to be a little irritating, though perhaps the rest of the book justifies that aspect of her.

Responses to Chapters 1 & 2 of Creating Nonfiction

The first two chapters of Creating Nonfiction served as a very general introduction to the topic of "creative nonfiction," discussing what it does and doesn't encompass and the subgenres therein.  The text gives vague descriptions of both what is creative nonfiction and what is subgenres are, mostly through the use of example rather than definition.  These subgenres include memoir; essay; critiques, rants, and reviews; lyric and reflective essays; place writing; the city essay; and literary journalism.

I found the text to be very subjective, casting judgment calls on many types of creative nonfiction.  I believe the fact that the text deems each category worthy or unworthy, deeming it so as if it were fact, detracts severely from its objectivity and therefore from its authority.  I hope to see more objectivity and strict exposition from the rest of the book.

My Six-Panel Autobiography

Panel two of my autobiography is interesting to me, because I'm not sure what even made me think to include it.  I started to really like writing around fourth grade, when I started writing a lot of short stories.  In sixth grade I finished writing what I thought of then as a "novel," around eighty or ninety pages long.  It was called "A Family Secret" and it starred thinly disguised people from my real life at the time, and was about my little group of friends and I discovering that we all had magical powers, with which, of course, we had to fight the bad guys and save the day.

I guess what makes that a landmark or a "panel" in my life is the fact that it's the last piece of writing I really, truly, fully finished.  I've written short stories here and there, always meaning to go back and revise and polish them, and I've been working on the same novel for almost five years now, into which I always get a couple hundred pages and decide it sucks and start over (or simply lose interest), but panel 2 in my autobiography represents the last time I really felt I finished a piece of writing.  I'd like that to change.

Assignment 8/24/10

Big Boy:  This article was difficult to interpret out of context, but I imagined it as one of a series of seemingly trivial moments that the author felt actually defined his character.  The author's frantic reaction to the giant turd in the toilet was based on what he thought others would think of him; his only focus was his image.  Through his brief dealing with the turd seemed to reveal to himself the fact that it was no more a reflection on himself than anyone else there, and that the event in itself was not important.

My Little Brother Ruined My Life:  This memoir was the narrator's memory of a week spent with his younger half-brother.  The narrator initially makes himself very easily sympathized with, but as the narrative continues, I found the narrator coming off as too self-pitying and having taken his victim complex too far.  The whole essay seemed to sit upon the brink of a character change, specifically of the narrator changing himself by setting his brother on a different path than the one he took, but in the end it was not so.

American Goth:  This essay had a very witty sense of humor that I much enjoyed.  The narrator made herself eccentric enough to be interesting but not so strange that as to be difficult to identify with.  Initially, the mother seemed unlikable in her disdain of intellect (i.e. the "book phase" comment), but the narrator's experiences throughout the essay offered a different perspective, that her mother was only trying to show affection in a strange way.  The narrator almost ended the story having gotten what she wanted, but the cab driver's reaction showed that she couldn't truly change her nature.

Six Panel Autobiography:  This comic was an interesting alternative form of memoir.  The author picked six general landmarks in his life and detailed them in graphic format, and embedded in this was the simplistic irony of the fifth panel's revelation that the author is actually a graphic novelist.