First Close Reading

The End of the Future

http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/278758

“The End of the Future” is a very pessimistic article that uses choice diction, details, and syntax to effectively debunk the idea that Western society is making any progress. Peter Thiel makes use of speculative language to both instill a sense of uncertainty and fear and to shrug off opposing points. He also includes and refutes a lot of counterpoints to discredit optimists, in addition to his hard facts juxtaposing past policies with current ones. Finally, certain syntax elements such as parallelism serve to poke fun at naïve optimism.

            For a variety of reasons, from a foreboding effect to trivializing opposition, speculative diction is abundant in Thiel’s article. The former is seen clearly in the following quote: “In the case of agriculture, at least, technological famine may lead to real old-fashioned famine.” The word may gives this statement a degree of uncertainty which somehow makes the danger seem far more real than a more concrete statement would have. Thiel also uses this suspenseful speculative language when he says, “Without dramatic breakthroughs, the alternative to more-expensive oil may turn out to be not cleaner and much-more-expensive wind, algae, or solar, but rather less-expensive and dirtier coal.” Similarly, he refers to the Green Revolution of the past with the word true, implying that the modern movement is not only less effective but less pure, or even fake. He also uses weak language to address a positive effort, but promptly smacks it down with firm, definite negativity in the following quote: “We may embellish the 2011 Arab Spring as the hopeful by-product of the information age, but we should not downplay the primary role of runaway food prices and of the many desperate people who became more hungry than scared.”

            Thiel also specifically details a number of fronts in which we have recently stopped progressing. Among them are the halting increases in transportation speeds, America’s failure to break its energy dependence, and the slowing gains of the Green Revolution. In addition to these specific details, he also includes a number of counterpoints and immediately refutes them, to not only make his case but also to discredit the other side.

            Specially-crafted syntax is used to mock whatever idea Thiel is addressing. In the quote: “Nixon’s 1974 call for full energy independence by 1980 has given way to Obama’s 2011 call for one-third oil independence by 2020,” Thiel uses parallel structures to show that not only has progress not been made since 1974, but society has actually regressed. Also, by putting quotes around the term Keynesianism, Thiel implies that it isn’t a real philosophy and isn’t to be taken seriously. The essay also contains some snide remarks embedded in sentences, such as the following quote: “The New Deal deficits, however misguided, were easily repaid by the growth of subsequent decades.”

            Thiel set out to essentially stomp on everybody’s hopes and dreams by using specific diction, details and syntax to paint a vivid picture of how society is going to the dogs.

First Prompt essay

Choose a work of recognized literary merit in which a specific inanimate object (e.g., a seashell, a handkerchief, a painting) is important, and write an essay in which you show how two or three of the purposes the object serves are related to one another.

Basil's portrait of Dorian has two main plot functions in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. It serves as the catalyst for Dorian's descent into hedonism when he wishes that the painting would age in his stead. Ultimately, Dorian's problems are resolved with the destruction of the painting.

When Dorian is first introduced to Lord Henry Wotton, Henry warns him that his youth and handsomeness will not last long. Lamenting this realization, Dorian wishes that Basil's portrait of him will age in his stead, leaving him free to enjoy his youth indefinitely, and initiating a downward spiral into a hedonistic lifestyle. His eternal youth drives him to cause Sibyl's suicide, murder Basil, and ruin a number of other lives.

The story concludes with a paranoid and regretful Dorian wishing to repent. Guilt and fear of karma catching up to him overwhelm Dorian, so he destroys the painting, the manifestation of all of his guilt. The painting returns to its original appearance, and Dorian and promptly dies.

The two plot functions of the portrait are directly related. The painting allows Dorian to enjoy his youth indefinitely, which he takes full advantage of. As time passes, however, he becomes paranoid, thinking somebody will find the painting, or karma will catch up with him. He also becomes guilty, so destroys the cause of his problems, which restores his proper age and kills him.

Response to Course Material

            I think the least helpful of the Summer assignments, in my opinion, was reading The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing. It was just a very wordy explanation of things I’ve already learned. And Harvey used an enourmous amount of parentheses. I enjoyed reading the Sedaris essay, but it was very hard to critique without nitpicking, especially because it was a narrative and the criteria we were critiquing it with were meant for academic papers.

The Foster book, on the other hand, made me look a lot deeper for symbols, common themes, and references to other texts. Many of the chapters were things I already knew about, like the Biblical and Shakespeare references, but I had no idea how common they were. And others were new, like the chapter on references to kids’ stories. And I’ll admit I had some fun with the presentation we had to make.

The first two blog posts gave me an idea of what to expect in the course, and the forum posts were useful for getting my mind back into literature-reading mode. Not much effect beyond that.

The terms test was just irritating. I thought I’d done poorly with my 60% but after talking with classmates, that actually wasn't too bad. The same quote from V for Vendetta appeared in the test three times. So I guess that means literary devices are unbelievably common. And there are so many fancy words for things that can be readily described in layman’s terms. I guess concision is important so it’s handy to have a word for every single possible combination of words in the English language but keeping track of them will be godawful. I’m curious as to what we’ll be hearing in class about it, haha. A curve would be pretty nice, but I hear a few people did rather well so I don’t see that happening.

sedaris is the prettiest girl at the harvest moon ball

Despite being a narrative, David Sedaris’ “Me Talk Pretty One Day” exhibits the ideal qualities of academic papers specified in Harvey’s The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing very well. Harvey’s ideas of gracefulness and clarity, among other characteristics, are perfectly embodied in Sedaris’ essay. However, Sedaris occasionally neglects Harvey’s idea of concision, adopting the dreaded “Pompous Style” or including unnecessary expressions.

“Me Talk Pretty One Day” is a remarkably graceful excerpt that doesn’t stumble over what it’s trying to say. The events and ideas are phrased in ways that are easy to process. For example, Sedaris lists off some things he likes and dislikes to his teacher: “When called upon, I delivered an effortless list of things that I detest: blood sausage, intestinal pates, brain pudding. I’d learned these words the hard way. Having given it some thought, I then declared my love for IBM typewriters, the French word for bruise, and my electric floor waxer.” (Sedaris, 13). Notice how both lists contain three items; this is called tricolon, and Harvey dedicates a section of his book to it (Harvey, 5.4). Tricolon is a kind of parallelism, based on the idea that 3 is a magic number that is balanced and simple to process. Sedaris also uses this literary structure when telling us about what his drunken mother loves as well (Sedaris, 12).

            Sedaris’ diction also gives this excerpt a high degree of clarity. Harvey instructs us to “Choose the Active Voice over the Passive Voice” (Harvey, 2.3). The reasons he gives against the passive voice are about intentionally obfuscating information in politics and thus not really applicable, but the principle still applies. The passive voice leaves the agent of the sentence unclear, and abuse of it could lead the reader into a lot of confusion. Sedaris avoids this problem by using the active voice almost exclusively in his writing. The few times at which he does use the passive voice could be excused, considering this piece is intended to be a descriptive narrative rather than pure exposition.

             The essay is not without flaws, however. Pompous writing, condemned by Harvey in the first chapter, is found in several isolated places where Sedaris’ usual, more concise language would be appropriate. One such example is found on the third page of the excerpt: “While I can honestly say that I love leafing through medical textbooks devoted to severe dermatological conditions, the hobby is beyond the reach of my French vocabulary, and acting it out would only have invited controversy.” (Sedaris, 13).  The vocabulary choices and sentence structure are needlessly formal, unlike most of the passage. Another such example is also on the third page: “I absorbed as much of her abuse as I could understand, thinking – but not saying – that I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object which is incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself.” (Sedaris, 13). The humor is charming, but again, the phrasing has a particularly high concentration of fancy words and doesn’t get straight to the point. Like his use of the passive voice, however, this could be attributed to the nature of the essay.

            Generally speaking, Sedaris wrote a fantastic piece that adheres to the guidelines set forth by Harvey. For the most part, he sticks with the ideas of gracefulness and clarity very well. And drifting away from concision from time to time may be forgivable, because “Me Talk Pretty One Day” is a narrative.