The Next 41 Pages: The Southerner and the Turtle.
Over the course of the next 41 pages, Gornick talks about the personal essay. Rather than talk at length about her opinions of what makes a good personal essay, or share her pieces, Gornick selects an eclectic groups of essays, that to her exemplify what a great personal essay is. Among the many examples Gornick uses, I found two of her examples to be most intriguing.
The first example of an exemplary personal essay is Harry Crews "Why I Live Where I Live." Gornick reinforces the idea of the unsurrogated narrator, declaring that Crews shows no shame in his piece. In his opening paragraph, Crews displays an aggressive swagger, basically declaring "here I am, take it or leave it." Gornick praises his aggressive nature, noting that the reader will want to understand why this man is the way he is. As important as he aggressive intro, Gornick notes, is his insecure second half of the essay. Gornick notes, if Crews wrote with an aggressive tone throughout, and offered up nothing more, the essay would fall flat. People are complex. No man is one hundred percent of something. Gornick applauds Crews ability to balance machismo and insecurity.
The second essay that caught my eye was Edward Hogan's "the Courage of Turtles." In this lesson, Gornick uses Hogan's essay to show how a personal essay can be veiled in another style. Hogan's essay is a self-investigating, introspective piece disguised as nature writing. Hogan's voice in the essay is so calmly detached, that the reader is lulled into thinking he is indifferent to the subject. Only after a couple reads can the reader see that the piece is not about turtles at all. The end of the essay really strikes Gornick. She admits reading the end three time, finding three possible endings. A personal essay, especially one as introspective as this one, can inspire different interpretations. Below is a link to the essay (page 1-6 is Hogan)
http://www.cwu.edu/~garrisop/makeup_quiz_essays.pdf
Golden Lines: "That's it. There is no more. The piece has arrived."
Questions: What is the difference between confession and self-investigation?
Strategies: Think of your deepest, darkest secrets. Try to write a paragraph about each one. Pick the strongest, and investigate that secret.
I like the learning this week. I think I am as a writer and a teacher of writers afraid of that strategy. I do love the golden line and think that it would be a powerful line to use with students' who have arrived in their writing piece.
ReplyDeleteJohn, I enjoyed reading your post about your professional book! I found both stories you selected to be very intriguing as well. I love literature that tries to disguise certain elements because as a reader, it is interesting to read. One of my favorite quotes, by Ernest Hemingway, kind of resembles this type of writing- "If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of the iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. The writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing." I hope to grow as a writer and employ Hemingway's theory of omission!
ReplyDeleteAlice Neira