Samantha Sanchez on Dinty Moore's "Son of Mr. Green Jeans"

   Dinty W. Moore’s piece “Son of Mr. Green Jeans” was a refreshing examination on the role of fathers and fatherhood. Upon first read-through, I disliked the piece. However I have come to appreciate it more after a closer look during a second perusal. 

Stylistically, Moore took a non-traditional approach in the telling of his story. The majority of the story was not told like a narrative, but rather it was told through a series of vignettes and seemingly unrelated events about father figures. Moore’s approach, though atypical, allowed for the reader to become an investigator forced to find meaning and connectivity among many fragmented vignettes. 

In the entire piece, the only real “hard facts” that Moore gives about his father to the reader comes in just two lines, when he says, “My own Irish father was a newspaperman, owned a popular nightclub, ran for mayor, and smuggled run in a speedboat during Prohibition. He smoked, drank, ate nothing but red meat, and died of a heart attack in 1938” (pg 391). Besides this, the reader must decipher Moore’s feelings on fathers and fatherhood by themselves. 

The piece was interesting because it required the reader to go back and take a second look to really understand what was being said. However, I felt that on the whole, the speaker’s message was muddled under so many vignettes. Furthermore, it was hard to relate to the topic in the first place, but it became even more difficult to connect to it because of all of the side stories. I felt it needed more of a plotline, or a more enforced roadmap, to help guide the reader through to the speaker’s main point. 

Of all the vignettes that Moore displays, the most poignant one arose under the heading “Natural Selection”. Moore writes, “When my wife, Renita, confessed to me her desire to have children, the very first words out of my mouth were ‘You must be crazy’” (pg 392). I loved this scene because of its simplicity, but also because it offered a direct look at the author, his feelings on being a father, and a glimpse at his relationship with his wife. While the fragmented scenes throughout the piece are interesting in their ambiguity, as a reader I felt more appreciative of the moments where I got to see the speaker completely uncloaked.

There were some similarities between “Safekeeping” and “Son of Mr. Green Jeans”. Both of them explored their topics in a non-traditional way. Both of them relied heavily on fragmented ideas and sentences to convey meaning. However “Son of Mr. Green Jeans” differs from every text we have read this semester in the way it examined the theme of fatherhood. The theme was explored first in a short anecdote on Tim Allen, and then by talking about the parental habits of the male Japanese carp, and then by talking about emperor penguins and T.V. personalities. This piece was unique in that each scene was different, though connected through the underlying theme of fatherhood.

Perry Kantor on Lia Purpura's "Autopsy Report"

Opening the Body

            Lia Purpura's “Autopsy Report” was a visceral and detailed recounting of her first experience watching a human body dissected.

The first page is rife with details of the state in which the bodies are found. Details like  “Drowned men, bound with ropes and diesel-slicked. Their ears sludge-filled. Their legs mud-smeared... their lashes white with river silt,” set the tone of the piece very quickly and efficiently. Purpura also doesn't waste time with certain conjunctions or prepositional phrases, which gives the piece a very condensed and fully-packed feel. On the first page every paragraph also starts with the phrase “I shall,” which instantly helps set the tone for who the speaker is.

As I began I wondered what direction the piece would take, as so many morbid details so clinically discussed began to make me wonder if perhaps it was about murder, or something truly sinister. It progresses on to recount the actual visit to what I imagine is either a medical examiners office or the morgue. I think at this point my fears that it was going to be something more gruesome (than it already was) were assuaged but I wasn't fully confident the speaker wouldn't turn to be a serial killer or something of the sort.

The part that seemed most honest to me was when the speaker tells us that the first time she sees a body opened up her reaction is to laugh. I find this honest because I highly doubt that would be most peoples first reaction and it also seems borderline inappropriate, which makes it all the more believable that it actually happened. But the key to the essay is the speaker's admission that to her the entire process of human dissection felt almost as if it were natural knowledge to her, as if she had always known that things would happen the way they did, “Of course blood pooled each blue-burnt circumference. Of course, I remember thinking.”

I think as a reader it made me consider visual detail in a different way, because I had never had things so vividly recounted in such a gory yet dispassionate way, as if it were a textbook describing viscera. It made me consider tone in a whole new light as well, and how even things normally very intense can be reduced. Her pithy writing also made it much easier to simply take in, there was no fluff to distract the reader from the story or the details and I think I could incorporate more of this technique into my own work. I liked that I didn't have to re-read a single line to understand what she meant by it, everything was as plain as it could be. 

As a writer I want to experiment more with tone and detail as a result of this piece. I want to see if I can achieve the same density of detail without compromising the tone I’m trying to work with. Purpura seems to accomplish this balance perfectly. She manages to combine her accurate and almost poetic recounting with very truthful comparisons: “The bladder, hidden, but pulled into view for my sake and cupped in hand like a water balloon,” while still maintaining an easily believable, almost objective, viewpoint. More of these obvious and easily identifiable analogies might also be something worth exploring in my own work.

Tam Dinh on David Foster Wallace's "Consider the Lobster"

I chose this reading based entirely on the title, that being “Consider the Lobster”. Other than shrimp, I do not eat any seafood. However I am absolutely fascinated with marine life and I love watching cooking/traveling shows that are about the sea and sea life, thus seafood. This text written by David Foster Wallace, someone who I’ve never heard of. He is apparently relatively famous today, however this piece was written back in 2003.

Wallace is sent, as a correspondent, to the annual Maine Lobster Festival. He starts off by listing all the honors and titles and sponsors that the event has garnered (I have heard of Food and Wine Magazine. Hell, I have a subscription). He does so to either build up hype or to poke fun at how serious this event has become. I suspect it is the latter. Throughout the piece he gives specific figure amounts and numbers. That helps build his credibility as well as helps the reader to really visualize and get some sense of the scale of things, such as when he says that “over twenty-five thousand pounds of fresh caught Main lobster are consumed” (526) or that  over “100,000” people attended the event, and in the footnotes there was a detail about how the U.S. produces 80 million lbs of lobster per year (530).

I like how Wallace incorporates a little bit of history and science within this piece, as opposed to only exploring lobster in the culinary world. I have heard that lobster was considered a low class food item in other centuries, however I did not know that “some colonies had laws against feeding lobsters to inmates more than once a week because it was thought to be cruel and unusual, like making people eat rats” (527). That was a really interesting detail to me.

After Wallace sets up the stage of the event, he veers the article in the direction of the ethics/morality of killing and eating lobster. There was a smooth transition. He described the different tents and the general layout of the event; and, then he mentions the PETA picketers. It was around this point in the reading that I thought of foie gras (duck liver), which is something I am completely against. While chefs utilize the whole duck, the main purpose for the deaths of some is purely for harvesting their livers and making pates’ and such hoity toity entrees. The argument with lobster primarily lies with how they are killed (while the foie gras ducks, are purposely fattened throughout their lives so that their livers would be bigger and richer in flavor). As Wallace explains, lobsters can be 1. boiled alive 2. boiled in salt water, starting off with a low temperature and slowly raising it higher 3. stab it between the eyes quickly and sharply before cooking it (536-537). His description evokes emotion from the reader, which is of course the intention. His use of imagery and auditory senses (?) were very powerful, such as when he describes how the lobster claws clank against the pots and the whistling sounds that occur when boiling them. I felt as though I was in the room.

Wallace goes on to talk about pain and the science of what the lobster may or may not be feeling. This instantly reminded me of a reading I had in a past class regarding morality of animals. This is my attempt to paraphrase it (for further reading, refer to Carl Cohen’s “Do Animals Have Rights”)…it was about whether or not animals really have rights, if they cannot understand what morality is…how can they have rights?

This proved to be a real thought provoking article. I was scared that “Consider the Lobster” might not be about seafood but instead a metaphor for something, which would’ve been disappointing to me. At first I was skeptical about the author’s tone, I felt this cynicism from him about the festival; but I was surprised at how balanced the piece was overall. In the second to last paragraph, he explains that he is simply confused and really just wants the reader to “consider” the points he presented. I feel this text has definitely achieved that. I will never look at lobster the same way. I wonder how someone who does eat lobster feels after reading this…again, I don’t eat seafood and I’ve never tried lobster, so I read this with a clear conscious!

Overall, this was an interesting article and I enjoyed reading it. It had many facets: history, science, philosophy, culinary facts, etc. That is something I’m going to try to incorporate in my own writing… the various aspects that one topic is comprised of.  

Charles Jennings on Charles Bowden's "Torch Song"

             The story “Torch Song” by Charles Bowden centers on a Tucsonan newspaper writer who spirals into depravity while working a beat that revolves around the cities numerous violent sex crimes. One tactic that Bowden employs in relating this disturbing story is a gradual slide in character from a relatively normal writer in a conservative marriage to a young man with demons who cycles through women as often as he cycles through his clothing. The voice is definitely that of a writer, with punctuated quips and witty lines that allow the reader to be drawn in to the story completely. The piece is especially relatable to other writers who understand the toll such serious and destructive subject matter as rape and murder can have on your psyche if you spend too much time wallowing in them.

One aspect of the essay that I found compelling and deserving of analysis is the author’s constant struggle with categorizing sexuality and understanding what motivations drive people to commit sexual crimes. The author expresses these feeling in a way when he writes; “We all share a biology and deep drives, and what we have created- civilization, courtesy, decency- is a mesh that comes from these drives and also contains and tames them” (Bowden, p. 71). I found it very interesting that even as he delves into the scum of the city and the most disturbing and violent crime that as malicious a city as Tucson can offer, he still is able to find commonality that binds the perpetrators and the victims together under a banner of humanity.

In a lot of ways, I think the work devours the speaker of the narrative, even though it allows him great insight into human nature and the base reasons behind sexual deviance. Although he does discover some truths, the process by which they are discovered tears his personal life apart and restructures it completely. Bowden writes; “I do not want to leave my work at the office. I do not want to leave my work at all. I have entered a world that is black, sordid, vicious. And actual. And I do not care what price I must pay to be in this world” (Bowden, p.64). The speaker shows a complete lack of worry about the state of his personal life, but rather expresses a desire to live for his work. His passion for the work consumes him and nearly derails his personal life completely before he is finally compelled to stop writing these stories and leave the newspaper. 

In his essay “Torch Song”, Charles Bowden creates a portrait of a tormented young writer on a savage news beat that drives him into sexual deviance. I thought this essay revealed a lot about the speaker, and created an extremely relatable protagonist who the reader roots for in his darkest hours in sunny Tucson, Arizona. Although it does relate a lot about the character, I’m not entirely sure I believe this story in its entirety. Writers have a tendency to exaggerate and manipulate, which is fine and expected, but it also shook my faith in the reliability of the narrative.

Rosa Wolf on Barbara Kingsolver’s “High Tide in Tucson”

    Successful, engaging nature writing such as “High Tide in Tucson” must find a very precarious balance between observation of the natural and observation of the unnatural.  It must also avoid sounding condescending or preachy.  Kingsolver does this by pointing out the human race’s missteps without unnecessary judgement.  The reader, as a result, is interested rather than insulted.  We are not made to feel like parasites or criminals, but like misguided members of a large ecological family.

     The hermit crab is used as the foremost metaphor in the essay, portraying a natural being who has had an unnatural situation thrust upon it.  We see the hermit crab vacillating between times of  disturbingly languid behavior and times of extreme busyness.  Humorously linking the hermit crab’s mysterious behavior to the often mysterious behavior of humans, Kingsolver says that “Buster was manic-depressive” (267).   This kind of personification is sometimes frowned upon by animal behaviorists and defined as anthropomorphism.  However, the great thing about creative non-fiction is that Kingsolver’s job is not to accurately and scientifically represent animal behavior.  Her job is to present the information in a way that will strike a chord in her readers, that will flow out like poetry.  Though she presents scientific facts and anecdotes, she is free to wrap them in a gauzy layer of metaphor and figurative language.  She is free to anthropomorphize a hermit crab to her heart’s delight.  She is allowed to use science as a jumping-off point for her beautiful prose.

     One of my favorite quotes in the essay is this: “We carry around these big brains of ours like the crown jewels, but mostly I find that millions of years of evolution have prepared me for one thing only: to follow internal rhythms” (269).  Not only is this beautiful and truthful, but I think that it holds the key to the heart of the entire essay.  By observing and analyzing both the environment and the creatures in it, Kingsolver comes to the conclusion that the human race would benefit from getting in touch with their natural instincts.  This is suggested as a remedy both for struggling individuals and the entire human race.     

     Another element that makes the essay successful is the introduction of fascinating but little-known facts.  The information about the moon and tides was both new to me and extremely relevant to her main idea about the need for humans to reconnect with their instincts and natural desires.  Though not everyone is going to find the same things interesting, the same can be said of any statement or subject matter. 

     I may be biased because I have read and enjoyed nearly all of Barbara Kingsolver’s books and short stories, but I never fail to be enchanted by her writing. She is a beautiful writer with a deep talent for connecting the natural world with the unnatural world, consequently creating a simultaneously philosophical and poetic essay with “High Tide in Tucson”. 

Joshua Morrison on Barry Lopez's "Flight"

Starting out, I found myself a bit beleaguered wading through the mountain of technical jargon that permeates the piece. At first I believed the specifics were to merely lend some credibility to the narrator but as the story continued and the terminology pushed on perpetually, I came to believe that the language serves a more interactive purpose. Reading the technical material made me tired (I actually fell asleep for a while) and I believe the author wanted the audience to be weighed down with it. For a time I tried to keep up with it, attempting to learn everything I could about the aircraft and how everything functioned on and in it but very quickly I was overwhelmed, as was the narrator in traveling so much.

One thing that immediately struck me was the disconnect from nature and man’s need to not only conquer nature but to use it unnaturally to feed the desires of man. How ridiculous a thing is it to have “a fresh strawberry on a winter morning in Toronto” (309). The business like, calculating and financial language throughout the piece further distances the reader from the natural world while a sense of longing is continually expressed as the narrator looks down on the beauty of the world from above in this aircraft that could be seen as a symbol for man’s ridiculous and unnatural state; “the Boeing 747 is the one airplane every national airline strives to include in its fleet as confirmation of its place in modem commerce, and it’s tempting to see it as the ultimate embodiment of what our age stands for” (310).

The initial “PENGUINS AND LIPSTICK, STRAWBERRIES AND GOLD” (308) grabbed me and I sat for a while trying to find an immediate connection between them all. It wasn’t until I got to the very end, to the last sentence that I felt I understood, “I think the of the penguins two decks below, standing up on their toes and slamming flippers that once were wings against the walls of their pens” (333). The author states that the freighting industry is driven by three things, one of which is “…frequent changes in fashion and in the design of basic products.” Throughout the piece, exhaustive lists of cargo are ceaselessly shoveled to the reader, most of which being either basic consumer goods or money. I feel the sentence starting the story is a simply summery of the disconnection between man and nature as viewed by the narrator and attempts to illustrate how humanity has not only separated itself from the natural but also has taken advantage of the natural, placing everything (including those employed in the freighting industry) in a state of limbo, without time, and breaking everything and everyone down to a bare practical, numerical equation. I believe the “Gold” represents greed and a need to have more, probably the ultimate driving force behind the whole predicament. The “strawberries” illustrating man’s need to feed their own desire, no matter how ridiculous those desires may be. The “Lipstick” as a symbol of commercial and cultural influence, a show of the western world pushing needless objects on the world as a whole, destroying foreign cultures by homogenizing everything. Finally the “Penguins”, like humans they cannot fly and have been taken out of their natural habitat for nothing more than the desire of humans.

Paying close attention to things I have read this semester as well as “Flight” I have slowly begun to recognize patterns, or rather techniques, in writing. Not just in nonfiction but for writing in general which help illustrate points through context. These techniques may not be constrained to nonfiction but I feel that they are easily visible in it. I enjoy the way Mr. Lopez used his knowledge of planes and the freighting industry to wear down the audience so that they experience some of what he went through. Although tiring my reader may not be something I wish to do, it is a technique that I feel can be very effective. I also feel that taking these normal items (penguins, lipstick, gold and strawberries) and enlarging their environment and exposing the influence they have globally to demonstrate a greater human fault is another great technique I can utilize in my own writing.

Makenzie Thiel on William Harrison's "Present Tense Africa"

            William Harrison’s “Present Tense Africa” is a personal account of Harrison’s time spent in Africa.  He uses vivid imagery to make the readers feel just like they are in the story and know what is happening, just as Harrison in the essay.  Harrison then goes into describing different situations that he faced while in Africa, and the way he writes is so wonderful that it makes you feel like you are there as well. 

            Harrison also used some really strong wording; strong in terms that the wording evokes such feeling and thought and other meanings that not every author is able to provoke through their writing.  One example is from the beginning of the story when Harrison writes, “We’ve talked about what to do if the van breaks down out here, how we’ll stay close to the vehicle because, as we know, we’re the slowest beasts on the landscape.”  I found this sentence alone to be so strong because although it is a simple realization, Harrison also uses the word “beasts” very carefully.  He was able to truly show that he is in Africa, because in other parts of the world, such as the United States, we do not think of staying close so that we are not attacked beasts.  As for the word beasts, I think that also says something about the human race and how we can be as vicious and malicious as the wild animals that roam around Africa. 

            Another part of the essay where Harrison used strong and thought provoking wording was when he wrote,

“Africa is in the present tense.  Like most Americans, I live in the future or past, planning ahead most of the time, thinking what job I ought to do next, considering the calendar, or thinking and sometimes writing about where I’ve gone, what I’ve seen, and who I am because of all that.  But here one is in the moment.  A peculiar African Zen: time becomes itself, not a thing pulling us forward or a psychological thing pushing us back.  Journeys, often because they’re so difficult, tend to make destinations of little consequences, even foolish.”

            This paragraph is nothing more than the truth, showing us that the time Harrison spent in Africa had opened his mind and slowed it at the same time.  He is right, we take the moment that we are currently living for granted.  The differences in culture and lifestyle are obvious in this story, even showing that we might need to make a change and live a more Zen life.  This strong wording show me that it possible for an author to make a strong point without having to use big words, and that simple is sometimes better- such as this case. 

            Overall, I really enjoyed this piece by Harrison because it was both strong and wonderfully written.  Other than that, I also learned how to add in description without being overbearing, because I have always had a problem in doing so, and Harrison made it sound so beautiful together.