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.
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