It seems that this week I either really loved or really hated each piece we read. I LOVED George Orwell, but didn't really love at all/was pretty indifferent to Mark Kramer's "Access" and Joan Didion's "Slouching Towards Bethlehem."
I really enjoyed Orwell's whole piece. I thought that he had a really good narrative going for awhile that I was really interested in, and I also really enjoyed his transition into the four motives for writing--maybe because I identify with them, but whatever. I found them all to be really true in some sense--some more than others--but the way he writes is really engaging and, in some cases, amusing. I particularly enjoyed the last paragraph: "All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand...And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality" (316). I love this. LOVE. It's just...true.
Mark Kramer, in contrast, didn't do a lot for me. I had a really hard time relating to his piece or even really understanding it--I felt like there was a lot of history or something that maybe I just don't know, and that was standing in my way. I just didn't...connect...with the piece, and had a really hard time figuring it out. I re-read the first few pages over and over again, thinking that maybe I just wasn't getting it or something, but I still found that I wasn't getting it. I don't know.
Joan Didion...I have really mixed feelings about. I wonder if I would've like it better if the intro had been different, but I felt like there was a really hard transition from the beginning and her just saying "When I first went to San Francisco in that cold late spring of 1967 I did not even know what I wanted to find out, and so I just stayed around awhile, and made a few friends" (85) to the rest of the piece. I mean, What? I was like, Really? Is that really all you're going to say about it? I was confused at first, and then I obviously figured out what the piece was about, but I just...was irritated, I suppose, with her beginning. There were brief moments of her piece that I thought were good/interesting, but for the most part I was just unenthusiastic about her piece.
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I wasn't so sure about the Orwell piece. I mean, I thought the four characteristics were pretty accurate, and I liked the idea that anything you write ends up being political, but I wasn't really sure how to apply it to what we're doing in this class. I guess I just didn't really feel inspired after reading it. But I really liked Didion's piece. I didn't have a problem with the beginning - I felt like it kind of summed up the mood of that particular time, and it also made the writer a character, but in a very understated, camera-lens sort of way.
ReplyDeleteI'm big on Orwell's piece. There were a lot of intriguing introspections he made of himself as a writer that I feel I can relate to. I suppose it was the way he spoke about writing, like a living breathing thing that pushed him on; Orwell's in control, but it's the sound of written words, the organization of phrases and "purple passages" that gives his writing meaning. I think we can apply that sort of understanding/passion to our writing, even in the smallest sense. Perhaps that's what made it applicable to me as a writer.
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